White Knight Rides In to Save ‘Castle’ From Ruin : Architecture: Owner of topless dance club puts up $65,000 to help Irvine homeowners meet city codes. Turreted house had faced the wrecking ball.

A last-minute agreement Friday has spared the “Kron Street Castle,” an architecturally unique residence that city officials have been threatening to demolish for more than 10 years.

A wrecking ball was scheduled to hit the house today after city officials said they were left with no other means of forcing Haym and Fern Ganish to finish a remodeling job they launched in 1982.

Neighbors have complained that the turreted, rock-faced castle is an anomalous eyesore, while city officials contend it violates dozens of building and safety regulations.

But Mark Bailey, owner of a topless dance club in Lake Forest called Captain Creams, stepped into the fray at the last minute and put up $65,000 to bring the Ganish house up to code.

“It’s done,” Bailey said, standing in the Ganishes’ yard late Friday, just hours before the family was to have been evicted. “They’ve got their home.”

City officials would not comment on the specifics of the unusual compromise, which reportedly calls for the Ganishes to live in a local hotel until the end of remodeling, set to begin Thursday.

“I can tell you the house is not going to be demolished this weekend,” said one Irvine official who insisted upon anonymity.

Irvine Mayor Michael Ward said, “We didn’t want to knock it down to begin with.” He added that he is grateful to the City Council members who “stuck by their guns” and forced the Ganishes to the bargaining table.

“It feels good,” Haym Ganish said moments after meeting Bailey and going over terms of the agreement.

Fern Ganish said the deal effectively ends the nightmare that has been haunting the family all these years.

Haym and Fern Ganish and their three children have lived in the house since 1978.

“We’re going to have about three weeks to hire a contractor, to fix any things (the city) were considering defects or hazards,” Fern Ganish said. “They’re really minor.”

She said the agreement calls for the Ganishes to make the house more compatible with the sleepy little cul-de-sac on which it sits.

“After that, we’ll just be like any person that’s remodeling,” she said. “No demolition. No threats. No nothing.”

Bailey, 45, said he was inspired to come to the Ganishes’ rescue because of his many tussles with local municipal governments who oppose his business.

“I’m in the adult entertainment business,” he said. “My whole life is getting beat up by cities. . . . It made me incensed. I just couldn’t understand how this could go on. These people are trying to participate in the American dream, and the city is talking about bulldozing their house.”

Captain Creams is a topless club in a Lake Forest shopping center, where women wrestle in pits of hot shaving cream.

Bailey said he’s not worried about getting his money back from the Ganishes, whom he had never met until Friday.

“It really doesn’t even matter who they are,” he said. “It’s just a cause that I felt I had to be involved in.

“The Ganishes are not people that are looking for a handout, and we said, ‘OK, well, whatever we spend for this project, we’ll put together some kind of deal with you and you pay it back in payments you can afford.’ ”