Condo Owners Bid Final Farewell to Red-Tagged Homes

Leaving a home where he expected to spend the remainder of his days, 80-year-old Bill Mayo found it relatively easy to say goodbye Tuesday as he packed his few remaining belongings and prepared to walk past the red condemnation tag posted by the city.

It was the last time Mayo and members of 20 other families were allowed back in their units at Crown Cove condominiums after their homes were evacuated and subsequently condemned following the March 19 landslide in the Niguel Summit development along Crown Valley Parkway in Laguna Niguel.

“We fixed the place up, put in the hardwood floors and figured I would live here the rest of my life,” said Mayo, working around his unit on San Felipe Drive, just a few doors from a scene of eerie devastation.

“I’ve seen the last of this place,” he said. “When I leave here, I’ve seen the last of it.”

Thirty families have been relocated as result of the failed slope, including residents of 21 of the 41 units at Crown Cove and nine Niguel Summit residences at the top of the ridge.

For those who left March 19 and 20 as houses snapped, glass broke and sliding mud rumbled, their first visit in more than two months on Tuesday was a mixture of calm and destruction. Thick bougainvillea vines were growing--oblivious--over fallen or sagging fences while trees holding up failed walls and roof sections were lush and green.

Stacy Roberts, a condo owner for five years, almost shuddered as she looked past security fences into the overgrown lawn, once neat and carefully tended, now crowding an unusable swimming pool.

“It’s scary,” Roberts said. “It’s a scary place to live now.”

Roberts and husband Monte are living in an apartment in nearby Aliso Viejo, unable to recoup any money from their condemned condo and unable to buy anything else in the area.

“We’re in limbo,” said Monte Roberts. “The prices of houses are going up, and we can’t do anything about it.”

Thomas E. Miller, attorney for the homeowners association at Crown Cove, said the association as well as the 21 dislocated families have taken a financial beating from the disaster, which is believed to have resulted from El Nino rains, the weight of additional fill dirt on the hilltop Niguel Summit development and a deep underground slide plane, or geographical fault.

“We want to get the money to rebuild and reestablish this community, the way it was,” Miller said. “This whole thing could have been prevented--that’s what upsets us.”

Homeowners have sued Hon Development and the owners of home builders J.M. Peters, among others, for the March 19 slope failure. The suit claims that defective grading and the addition of 4 million cubic yards of earth contributed to the failure.

In an agreement worked out last week, Hon and Peters will pay $20,000 a month for temporary relocation costs for displaced homeowners. The costs have been paid by the homeowners association until now. The new arrangement will last until September, when the case is scheduled to go to trial in Orange County Superior Court, Miller said.

Other residents of the condominium complex said they are suffering losses daily, living in the shadow of toppled and crushed buildings that remain unstable.

“The creaking and moaning and groaning at night, the tiles falling, these are the things that bother us,” said Jonathan Brewer, who lives in a unit that looks out at the three condo buildings slated for bulldozing. “The things are shifting. They pop and crack. You’re cooking dinner, or watching TV, and you here this ‘r-r-r-r-R--R--R!’

“It’s not conducive to raising kids.”

At the ‘Mayo house, Bill and wife Sophie wrestled appliances and fixtures with the help of son David and two grandsons. Bill Mayo, his words monitored carefully by his lawyer, recalled the night of the landslide.

“There was a knock at the door, and they said, ‘Out! Out!,’ ” Mayo said. “They woke us up at 2:30 in the morning and said to get out. So we grabbed a few clothes and got out.

“It was quite a surprise--they didn’t give us much time. The next day, they gave us about six hours, and that was delayed an hour and 15 minutes when another [hilltop] house came down.”

On Tuesday, Mayo and son David pulled a white Magic Chef stove out of its slot in the condo’s kitchen, and slid it toward the front door, across the hardwood flooring Bill Mayo installed himself.

“Guess we won’t have to worry about scratching the floors,” David Mayo said.

In the garage, Bill Mayo picked through work benches and garage shelves, his onetime handyman’s haven, from among the cans of paint, tins of wood finish, bottles of car polish and boxes of pesticides, along with a Yuban coffee can and a small can of odds and ends. He picked up a paint roller and a yard sprayer and carried them out to David’s pickup truck.

“I’m not all that bothered by it, I guess,” he said, looking around the garage. “It’s one of those things you have to live with.”