Suds Aren’t About to Settle in Dispute Over Carwash Sign

For years, Ben Forat tried to figure out what was wrong with his money-losing carwash. Customers just wouldn’t come, and those who did complained that they had trouble finding it.

Then he had a vision.

“I needed a big sign,” said the Studio City business owner.

The behemoth fiberglass confection he put up, a hand clutching a giant yellow sponge emblazoned with the words “Studio City Hand Car Wash,” with a replica of a hot pink Corvette on top, got him plenty of attention.

Forat’s business tripled, but the local homeowners association complained that the sign, which was erected without a permit, violated city codes.

And now, two years after the brouhaha began on Ventura Boulevard, the spat has spilled into Los Angeles County Superior Court, where the 35-year-old man and his mother, Shamsi, were charged last week with the misdemeanor crimes of erecting an illegal sign and failing to comply with a city Department of Building and Safety order.

Forat said he doesn’t know why his mother was criminally charged, because he is the sole owner of the carwash. Both face a maximum of a year in county jail and a $2,000 fine if convicted. A judge will have the discretion to order the sign’s removal.

“It’s a completely illegal sign,” said Dale Thrush, the planning deputy for City Councilman Joel Wachs, who represents the neighborhood. Thrush said Forat repeatedly refused to comply with city law.

“He’s either going to have to conform, or the sign will have to be removed,” Thrush said.

Prosecutors and local critics said the 26-foot-high display stands 6 feet taller, and juts out 8 1/2 feet closer to the street, than city regulations allow. People in the neighborhood began complaining in 1998, according to Deputy City Atty. Don Cocek.

In March 2000, a Los Angeles City Council committee ruled that the sign could be granted an exemption if Forat reduced its size, moved it farther from the street, paid $6,000 to a special account for street beautification along Ventura Boulevard, and apologized to the public, according to city prosecutors. But Forat has so far refused.

“They’re trying to destroy my property rights as a business owner,” Forat said.

He has sued the City Council, claiming that it had abused its discretion, in a lawsuit that will be heard next week.

Forat claimed he had offered to pay the $6,000, but that Wachs’ office asked him to raise that to $20,000, which he considered outrageous. Forat said he believed he was being retaliated against because of his refusal to pay.

Thrush verified that Forat had offered to pay $6,000 for planting trees along the boulevard, but said the amount wasn’t enough.

“It struck me that that wasn’t going to get us much,” Thrush said. The $20,000 figure, which Thrush said he believed had been proposed by the homeowners, “was a suggestion that it was one of the things he could do for the community for all the trouble he caused.”

Officers of the Studio City Residents Assn., whom Forat said are his prime antagonists, could not be reached.

But other members of the community said they could not understand what the brouhaha was all about.