2 Houses Get Knocked Off Their Perch

On the cliffs of Malibu, above Pacific Coast Highway, two dream homes came down Saturday while business owners below waited restlessly, wondering how much longer the highway will remain closed and customers kept away.

As Caltrans crews worked throughout the day to shore up the site of a landslide and demolish the two houses that were in danger of tumbling down a hill, PCH between Topanga and Las Flores Canyon roads remained shut to traffic. Caltrans officials late Saturday said they hope to have the road reopened by the July 4th holiday weekend.

“I’ve been here a long time and I’m not used to this,” said Susan Asai, who has owned the Bear to Bear party store for 17 years.

As she sat curling black and white ribbon to tie onto balloons, Asai said June is usually a brisk business month. But with patrons unable to get through, she said, revenues for the month have been way off.

“We’re starting to pull out our gold teeth and sell them,” joked one merchant, who asked not to be identified.

Just north of the closure, merchants complained that revenues have fallen by at least 50% in the past few weeks. Many added that frequent customers stayed away because of the inconvenience posed by the alternative routes to Las Flores and PCH, which include taking winding roads for miles through the canyons.

By noon on Saturdays in June, traffic is usually “bumper to bumper,” said Grace Kim, owner of the Malibu Surfers Motel and Malibu Bay Sportswear next door.

But this weekend, only a few cars whizzed by, leaving the highway quiet enough to hear tiny lizards scuttle through the overgrown chaparral.

“We’re usually surrounded by pollution because of all the traffic that comes through,” Kim said while visiting Julee Solomon’s beauty salon near by.

“It’s really a nightmare,” agreed Solomon, as she prepared a client’s hands for a fresh coat of nail polish. At the last Malibu City Council meeting, Solomon and other merchants expressed anger at the California Department of Transportation, saying that crews were not working fast enough to reopen the highway. She said many business owners have tried to persuade the city to provide shuttles to bring people from the southern end of the closure to the north.

“It’s really caused a lot of financial hardship,” she said. “We’re a small business in a small town. It’s the time of the year when we should be making more money. But I’m better off than a lot of people because many of my clients live on the north side” of the closure.

Caltrans spokesperson Rick Holland said crews were working around the clock to make sure there were no other safety hazards on the highway. Last Monday, the state agency shut down the highway shortly after reopening it. Rocks and boulders had tumbled down again, Holland said.

“I understand their complaints,” he said. “But our No. 1 concern right now is safety.”

Some merchants said getting to work has been an added frustration.

“Before, it took me only 25 minutes to get to work from Santa Monica,” said Joe Ng, owner of the China Den restaurant. Because of the detours and unpredictable traffic patterns, Ng said, he leaves home at 9:30 a.m. to get to work by 11:15 a.m.

“‘It’s very bad,” said Ng, who has owned his restaurant for 20 years.

Merchants who are new to Malibu are still getting used to the kinds of hardships that seem to plague the area, from mudslides and fires to rolling boulders and floods.

“We just opened the business and we did well the first three weeks, but yesterday was the first day we had no sales,” said Kyle Mathews, co-owner of A Different Dimension bookstore.

Just north of Ng’s restaurant, George Assouad sat calmly on a patio chair outside of his liquor store, and stared out into the empty parking lot in front. “This happens sometimes in the winter,” he said. “But business has never been this bad.”

Meanwhile, the owners of the two homes that Caltrans is demolishing wandered around their properties, one still sifting through the last of her possessions, the other in disbelief at how quickly the day had arrived for his home to come down.

It had taken three years for Les Steinmetz to rebuild his home on Sierks Way after it was destroyed in the Malibu fires of 1993. Late Friday afternoon, demolition crews began knocking down his four-bedroom home. They returned early Saturday to finish the job, bulldozing the kitchen walls and cabinets and Italian slate tiles that he had once carefully set in place.

“This house was built like something out of NASA “ said the 53-year-old Steinmetz, who said the house was built to withstand fires and earthquakes--but apparently not landslides.

Steinmetz, who has moved to a rented house, said he would not rebuild a home in Malibu.

Next door, as Caltrans workers closed in to begin demolition, Joan Knapp finished sorting through her belongings, making sure that possessions collected during her 35 years in the house were safely packed away.

“My home was the only one [in the immediate area] to survive the floods, fires and earthquakes,” said Knapp, 61, wiping away perspiration with her gloved hands. “It stood against everything, but it couldn’t survive Caltrans.”