Firm Wins Contract to Raze Apartments
The City Council has awarded a $239,000 contract to raze 57 rundown Antelope Valley homes.
A.T.E. Environmental won a contract that includes the abatement of asbestos and septic tanks and demolition of the vacant homes, said Palmdale housing coordinator Mike Miller.
“These properties are hangouts for transients and for crime activity,” Miller said.
For years, the city has tried to work with the owner of the homes, former Beverly Hills neurosurgeon Milton Avol, to improve the properties. But Avol repeatedly failed to bring the houses up to municipal building codes, Miller said.
“Everybody has tried to work with him to get him to do something with these properties,” Miller said. “His M.O. has been that he promises and promises and never delivers.”
Avol lost a bid in late January to prevent the city from razing the properties.
Last August, a group including city property inspectors and rehabilitation experts found that “even after rehabilitating these properties, they would have zero value because of how much actual work had to be done to them,” Miller said.
Avol was repeatedly prosecuted in the 1980s for not fixing the slum conditions at his Hollywood-area apartment buildings.
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