Family’s Popular Statuary Business Falls Victim to Success and Sentimentalism

Diane Phillips built a little paradise on Ventura Boulevard. But in a classic California twist, it was destined to be a paradise lost.

And now “God’s little acre,” as one devotee calls it, is slated to be bulldozed for a public storage building.

The paradise in question is a quirky business called Garden Statuary, located on a busy section of Ventura Boulevard. Myrtle trees, pines and wisteria cover the property--a hushed domain of cement goddesses and nymphs--and for 50 years a local landmark.

“It’s beautiful,” said neighbor Robert Heller. “It’s like a little oasis in the Valley.”

Phillips, 82, started the cement-statue business in 1946, had a house built there where she raised her three children, and always hoped she would pass it all on to her grandchildren.

But instead, in a family saga worthy of a serial, the property at 19130 Ventura Blvd. ended up being purchased by Glendale-based Public Storage Inc., which plans to build a public storage facility on the site.

The story of how the statuary’s founding family relinquished its homestead is perhaps nothing remarkable among family businesses, which often founder in the second generation.

But this one has a peculiarly California spin: After cultivating the business when Tarzana was just a sleepy stretch of walnut groves, Phillips’ dream was lost in the whirl of dream-making that came with the Los Angeles real estate boom of the 1980s.

In a collision of opportunism and sentiment, her son Dennis Dallugge, courted a developer to cash in on the land value, then got entangled in a disastrous legal battle because he didn’t want the trees that he’d loved since boyhood cut down.

Phillips, who lives in Solvang, tries not to think about it now. “I just closed my mind to the whole thing. It’s too much tragedy.”

She’s not the only one to mourn the passing of the business. The current operators, Don and Judy Buksar, would like to keep it going. But because they own the business and not the property, they must move out upon being notified by Public Storage.

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“Every day we are here is by the grace of God,” said Judy Buksar. “If we owned this place, no amount of money would get us to sell.”

As she spoke, she pointed out cement Davids and Greek deities on the lot, and the Statue of Liberty, which overlooks Ventura Boulevard. Water gurgled in the fountains behind her, and hummingbirds zinged over her head.

Some neighbors want city officials to preserve the site. The statuary “is one of the last pieces of the old Valley . . . you want to hang on to one little piece,” explained Daniel Green, a city zoning administrator.

Phillips originally bought the property for about $5,000, and ran the business with her first husband, Rudolph Dallugge, she said. Back then, the area was scarcely inhabited.

Her son Dennis played on stilts in the walnut groves nearby, and tended the little volunteer Aleppo pines that sprang up around the statuary.

“I nurtured them. The ones that bent over, I straightened,” he said. “They were only 6 inches tall. Then they grew 90 feet high.”

In 1965, Dennis, now 52, and brother Gary Dallugge, 55, took over and made the business highly successful. In those days, both brothers worked hard, say acquaintances. Dennis spent long hours late at night working on the grounds.

The cement statues were coveted by a host of new homeowners in the Valley, particularly in the wealthy hills around Garden Statuary. Celebrities stopped in, and the brothers soon grossed half a million dollars a year, they said, enough to provide each with comfortable salaries.

But when the ‘80s hit, the temptation to cash in on the skyrocketing value of the property became irresistible, they said.

About that time, Dennis also started taking drugs and drinking, he said. “I got hooked on cocaine. All those celebrities and wealthy people, they would come in and you’d say, ‘Have a drink!’ . . . and you’d do lines of cocaine.”

He soon dropped out of the business he worked so hard to build, he said, adding: “My brother was running it, and he got fed up. I was just coming in to get money and go out and party again.”

Meanwhile the family was getting deluged with offers. Someone offered them more than $2 million. Then someone else offered more than $3 million, Dennis said.

The brothers began to let the business slide. “Already we were spoiled with the money we were going to get,” said Dennis. “We already had our retirement. We knew we were getting rid of the business, so we let it go,” he said.

Finally, “I made the decision,” said Gary Dallugge. “I thought, heck, I might as well make more doing nothing than to put up with what I’m putting up with,” he said.

Family members entered into negotiations with Dennis Bass, a developer who asked for a ground lease of the property for up to 75 years to build a shopping center on it, according to court documents.

At the time, ground leases were a popular alternative to purchasing property, and seemed to offer a means of keeping the statuary property in the family.

But just as the family was about to cash in on the deal, which would have netted them a $300,000 down payment, and several thousand dollars per month for years to come, Dennis Dallugge balked.

Bass planned to cut down nearly all the trees, he said.

He refused to sign the final lease, and in court later, he claimed he thought he had rights of approval over tree removal, court papers said.

Bass sued, claiming in court papers that Dennis Dallugge’s actions cost him thousands of dollars in pre-construction financing. The result was a legal judgment against Dallugge in 1989.

The damages were so great that Dennis Dallugge’s share of the property was foreclosed on by Bass, said Dallugge. Dennis Menke, attorney for Bass, confirmed these events.

The family’s dreams of a giant windfall from the property was fast fading. In the flurry of legal battles that followed, they racked up hundred of thousands of dollars in legal fees, Gary Dallugge said.

The statuary business was transferred to the Buksars, who were family acquaintances.

The brothers’ parents, meanwhile, had split up. Diane Phillips remarried.

By then, the dizzying real-estate market peaked. No shopping center was ever built. Bass’ portion of the property was transferred to another developer.

So last January, the developer and Phillips, who still owned a part, agreed to sell the property, which has an assessed value of about $1.6 million, to Public Storage--”the first buyer who came along,” according to Marlene Dallugge, Phillips’ daughter.

The family’s portion of the proceeds, minus taxes and legal bills, is a fraction of what they’d once hoped to get, she said.

Dennis Dallugge, whose wife recently died, now works as a handyman. He says he’s kicked drugs, and doesn’t “know what will happen from day to day.”

Despite some bitterness, Gary has taken him in and is helping him raise his children. “I am sad about the whole thing, but life goes on,” he said.

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As for the property, Public Storage promises the facility it plans there “will look like no storage facility you have ever seen,” said Jeff Stephens of CCA Associates, a consultant for the company.

The building will look like an office building, “and you will not see any orange doors,” he said.

Today, Marlene Dallugge is hoping she can still save the family house by moving it. But she knows there is little hope of saving the trees and the garden.

“We will never see that [real estate] boom again, and thank God,” she said. “It ruined a lot of things.”

Dennis Dallugge says he will never go to the statuary lot again. But occasionally, he drives by on the Ventura Freeway and can’t help looking over.

“I can still see the trees,” he said.