In Rich Enclave, a Boom in Housing

What sound does $7 million make?

Snap, boom, crunch.

At least when a 27-ton track loader is gnawing and stomping its way through a two-story tear-down to make way for a bigger, more expensive home in an exclusive Newport Beach neighborhood.

Like a giant termite gone mad, the bulldozer first took out the three-car garage, then headed for the rest of the house Tuesday, brandishing its scooper at anything that got close until it ate its way almost to Newport Bay.

Tear-downs are a way of life in Harbor Island, almost expected in a 31-house colony that counts among its residents George Argyros, who has been nominated as U.S. ambassador to Spain; where Irvine Co. chief Donald Bren is getting ready to break ground on a new abode, and where each house has a dock.

Even this house, a 4,688-square-foot monument to 1970s modern architecture, with its sharp angles and bone-colored stucco, couldn’t be built until its predecessor came tumbling down. But that was just an unpretentious two-story beach cottage, less than 2,000 square feet, that was built in the 1930s or ‘40s, when violinist Jascha Heifetz had a home at the tip of the island. That house was eventually torn down to build two other homes.

You may not be able to find vacant land along the Southern California coast. But if you’re rich enough, what difference does it make?

The Harbor Island tear-down will be replaced by a 5,465-square-foot house with an attached 874-square-foot garage and a one-vehicle carport, architectural style yet to be determined.

The owners, Todd and Debra Johnson, who recently moved from Colorado, bought the house last June. They already have a vacation house on Balboa Island. The couple, who provide nursing staff for hospitals, declined to discuss their new home.

Talk is that the house sold for around its listed price of $7 million. On Harbor Island, that’s not so expensive. “Harbor Island is the most exclusive property in Orange County, bar none,” said real estate agent Bill Cote, who sold a home there two years ago for $14.5 million to Robert McNulty, former chairman of Shopping.com Inc.

But this still ranks among the most expensive tear-downs around, real estate agents said. Of course, it pales when compared with the $10.25-million Bing Crosby estate that TV producer Aaron Spelling bought in 1982 only to tear it down and build a home for more than $60 million.

Sometimes people buy the house next door and knock it down to make their lot larger.

“If you’re spending $7 million, that’s enough already,” said Cecelia Waeschle, a broker at Coldwell Banker in Beverly Hills. “You usually want a house for that. You don’t want to have to tear it down.”

The Johnsons’ house was built in the early 1970s by John and Elaine Bond, owners of Road & Track magazine, said architect Bill Ficker. As purveyors of Ferraris and other sports cars, the Bonds were interested in modern architecture.

“Most people on Harbor Island probably didn’t like the house,” Ficker said. “It’s an intrusion on a rather nondescript pallet of architecture. It’s like a piece of modern art. You’re not going to have everyone admire it.”

When the house was almost complete, the Bonds took Ficker, his wife and daughter to England aboard the Queen Elizabeth II and then to Denmark, where they selected all the furniture for the house.

There have been several owners since then, each of whom has added touches.

Most recently, the house was owned by John Elmore, a farmer in Brawley who used it as a second home for 10 years.

Inside and outside, the four-bedroom, 4 1/2-bath house was a mix of opulence and 1970s shag-rug chic.

The construction was solid, the walls were plaster. “The studs inside the walls, I can’t buy stuff of that quality now,” said Baxter Alex, a partner in Prestige Builders, which is supervising construction of the new house.

There was a fountain in the courtyard. Steps out the back led to the dock, which will be replaced.

The staircase banister was made of white oak, without knots, as was the home entertainment unit upstairs.

The kitchen floor was covered with hand-painted Mexican tiles and the doorknobs were solid brass.

The bedroom carpet leaked into the hall where it ended in midstream. The rest of the hall was covered by short-pile shag carpet in burnt orange with splotches of brown.

With the OK of the Johnsons, neighbors had carted away whatever they wanted from the house, from the plants outside, to the garbage disposal, to the gates to the shower enclosure.

Workers had found a safe behind a cedar closet. Alex had rolled it over to listen if there was something inside.

“I always have a fantasy that I will show up at a job and there will be an envelope under a desk filled with $100 bills or stocks and bonds,” he said.

Finally, demolition man Tom Sherman pounded the bulldozer into the house Tuesday, ripping and tearing through a bedroom, then the kitchen, then a bathroom, the red and blue shower tiles exposed to the world, then ripping out a tree, finally bending a steel beam as if it were rubber.

With only 10 feet between houses, Sherman made sure the walls and debris fell inward, instead of into the neighbors’ property.

“This is like surgery,” he said.

But in this case, the operation was successful when the patient died. After six hours, all that was left of the house at 1 p.m. was a pile of rubble to be emptied into dumpsters and carted away.