Turning Down the Volume

We know where residents of a plush Marina del Rey tower didn’t go to toast their good fortune the other day when they finally won a decade-old fight against noisy neighbors.

They didn’t go next door to the Fantasea Yacht Club--the current occupant of the building at the center of the noise dispute.

Homeowners still recoiling at memories of the raucous Red Onion restaurant and disco that until 1993 operated a few steps from their tower persuaded the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control to withhold a liquor license that Fantasea needs for the banquet hall it now operates there.

More than 140 Marina City Club tower residents charged that late-night yelling, horn honking and tire squealing by Red Onion patrons kept them awake for years. And they complained that boisterous banquet hall guests aren’t much quieter.

That contention was disputed during a dozen public hearings by Fantasea owners, who have sunk $1 million into converting the former Mexican-themed restaurant into a place for private parties.

Fantasea’s operators claimed that they are paying for the sins of the Red Onion--suggesting that the neighboring homeowners are rich old fogies who would be better off leaving the marina if they can’t take its trendy atmosphere.

On Thursday it became clear that the insult-flinging isn’t over yet.

Alcoholic Beverage Control officials in Sacramento announced that banquet backers have appealed the May 14 license denial. That move will trigger a new round of hearings that could last a year or longer.

Marina City Club residents have vowed not to let their victory over noise quietly slip from their grasp.

“The Red Onion was hell,” said Albert Reff, an orthopedic surgeon whose condominium is 15 stories above what is now the Fantasea parking lot. “I had to abandon my front bedroom back then. The noise was intolerable.”

Things were peaceful after the bankrupt Red Onion chain shut down the restaurant and disco. But Reff charged that the decibel level jumped in 1996 when Fantasea moved its dinner cruise business to the site and began hosting wedding receptions and corporate parties in the refurbished Red Onion dining room.

“People are rowdy and noisy when they leave. People are yelling. Horns are honking. Doors slamming. Car alarms are going off. Parking valets are shouting,” said Reff, a tower resident since 1981.

Deane De La Cruz, whose condominium is directly beneath Reff’s, said tower residents are not bothered by noise coming from inside the banquet hall.

But she asserted that some dinner cruise and party guests are “stinking drunk” when Fantasea boats return or when banquets are over and a crowd is standing in the parking lot waiting for valets to fetch their cars.

“This looked like a repeat performance of the Red Onion,” said De La Cruz, who has lived in her Marina City Club condominium for 11 years.

Neighbor Nathan Krems, a retired shopping center developer who lives in a tower penthouse, has sympathy for party-goers.

“I don’t blame them--they’re there to celebrate,” Krems said. It’s logical for them to want to say their goodbyes as they leave a wedding reception or company party and are waiting for their automobiles, he said.

But a spot next to Marina del Rey’s most significant residential area is not a logical place for such noise-generating business, said Krems, an 18-year tower resident.

Fantasea co-owner Daniel S. Ginzburg said the complainers are the ones who may be out of place.

“This is a commercial area, not some secluded mountaintop residential area,” said Ginzburg, whose banquet business and yacht charter office occupies the old Red Onion disco room--which still sports ceiling spotlights and a distinctive mirrored revolving ball.

“A lot of the people who have protested were retired people who don’t know what they’re saying,” he said. According to Ginzburg, protest leaders resorted to “scare tactics” that falsely suggested that a Red Onion-like disco was poised to return to the site.

In reality, he said, corporate parties, weddings, bar mitzvahs and the like that he has staged at the Fantasea Yacht Club over the past two years have been quiet affairs. Because he lacks a liquor license, he has provided alcoholic beverages for free, or allowed customers to bring their own bottles.

However, Ginzburg stressed that a banquet hall cannot attract private parties unless it is licensed to sell liquor. And he said that residents’ demand that he close down at 10 p.m. weeknights and 11 p.m. weekends would make it impossible to compete for business with other banquet facilities.

“You can’t say, ‘Sorry IBM, or sorry bride and groom, but you’ve got to be out by 11,’ ” he said.

*

Ginzburg said Fantasea offered to end sales of alcoholic beverages at 11:30 weeknights and 12:30 a.m. weekends and provide parking lot personnel to keep patrons from making unnecessary noise. But residents wouldn’t accept that.

So instead of compromise offers, charges and countercharges continue to fly in Marina del Rey:

* Residents assert that police had to be called to break up a “rap party” held last year at the Fantasea site. Ginzburg counters that the event was actually Snoop Doggy Dog’s wedding and that he called authorities himself out of concern that paparazzi might try to interfere.

* Ginzburg alleges that Reff once “threw stuff off his balcony and sent a parking valet to the hospital.” Untrue and “ridiculous,” responds Reff.

* The residents’ attorney, Cary S. Reisman, says that Fantasea lawyer Joshua Kaplan “has threatened to turn the banquet facility into a dance hall for teenagers if he were denied an ABC license.” Kaplan did not return phone calls requesting comment, but, according to Ginzburg, “that’s a red herring Cary is throwing out.”

* Ginzburg suggests that tower residents living next to his property got cheap prices when they bought their condominiums because of their proximity to the restaurant site. Totally untrue, residents reply.

* Residents say that a maritime museum should be built on the Fantasea site. Ginzburg, who has a 20-year lease, says the only museum appropriate for the area would be one commemorating “failed businesses in Marina del Rey.”

* Fantasea backers suggest that tower residents amplified the sound on a videotape that they played for the ABC. Residents heatedly deny it.

Nobody, however, is predicting that the volume will be turned down on this dispute.