The excavation of two long-vacant houses at 2910 and 2914 Hill St. on Friday, Sept. 25 finally eliminated what had been a residential eyesore for more than a decade.
The homes, which had at one time been assessed at $1 million each, were built in 2003, but because neither had street access, utilities or certificates of occupancy, they had remained vacant ever since. After years of postponed court dates, various ownerships, bureaucratic red tape and even arson, the buildings were finally razed last month.
The original developer, Wayne Ballinger, had never obtained street access or easements to connect electric, gas and water lines to the property. Because he never did so, and because he kept working on the houses after the City of Long Beach gave him a stop-work order, the City refused to issue occupancy permits for the houses.
Although the buildings were actually located within the city limits of Long Beach, the portion of Hill Street adjacent to their front yards was in Signal Hill.
In an April 23, 2010 Signal Tribune article, Brian Angel, whose company 6 Angels LLC had purchased the properties from Farmers & Merchants Bank for about $800,000 in April of 2008, was optimistic, along with city officials, that the homes would be up for sale by the end of that year and occupied by their new owners shortly thereafter.
Angel said he had been to numerous abatement hearings in the previous year and in every hearing he was able to show progress being made.
“Now we have no more hearings scheduled because we are at the point in the process where we are moving along to actually work on the property,” he said. “We’ve got most of the issues worked out.”
[aesop_image imgwidth=”500px” img=”http://www.signaltribunenewspaper.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Untitled-Infographic-3.jpeg” credit=”Created by Denny Cristales/Signal Tribune” align=”left” lightbox=”on” caption=”Timeline showing a history of the homes at 2910 and 2914 Hill St. that were built in 2003 and razed on Sept. 25, 2015″ captionposition=”left”] Angel explained that his company was very close to obtaining driveway and utility easements from the owners of private property behind the houses and that the easements would connect the houses to Orizaba Avenue and allow utility lines to pass through the two lots behind the houses. Angel said he was confident that his company would have the easements in the next few months.
“It’s more accurate to say the issues are heading to a final resolution, and we are very hopeful,” Long Beach Assistant City Attorney Mike Mais said at the time. “We have seen more movement out of Mr. Angel and the owners of that property in the last couple of months than we had seen from the previous owners in the last five years.”
Mais noted that in the past two weeks work crews had been grading and landscaping the front yard of the properties and that the City of Long Beach had issued permits for the work being done in the front yards.
Mais added that after that work was done, the City would send building inspectors to examine certain aspects of the homes. “At some point, our inspectors will go in to make sure there are no life safety issues in either of those houses,” he said. “Some of the work was done by the first owner of the property after we had issued a stop-work order, so we have a concern some of that work was completed without the necessary inspections.”
Mais said he had not seen any documentation that showed progress being made on the easements. “I only know what I was told by Brian Angel’s construction manager— that they are currently in escrow to obtain all the necessary easements,” he said. “When their escrow closes, they will have to demonstrate to us that they have the necessary easements before we open up Orizaba.”
Angel said he was confident that all issues would be resolved in the next four or five months. He added that, at that point, he did not know how much 6 Angels would be asking for the properties.
On July 6, 2012, the Signal Tribune reported that 6 Angels was heading for a showdown with the City of Long Beach after the City had filed a lawsuit seeking a court order to have the homes razed. 6 Angels wanted to keep the buildings intact in hopes of selling them. Los Angeles County Superior Court was scheduled to hear the case in Long Beach in late August.
On Sept. 20, 2012, one of the homes caught fire.
Angel said the fire caused $100,000 to $150,000 in damage, but the houses were insured.
“We do not know what caused the fire,” he said. “We have kicked homeless people off the property in the past, but the houses are very secure, and I do not know how someone could have gotten inside.”
Will Nash, public information officer for the Long Beach Fire Department, said a neighbor had reported the fire at 4:26pm and that it was “a slow-burning, smoldering fire, but the firefighters had to tear into the building to get to it.”
Angel said that while the easements had been obtained, neither of the houses was connected to gas or electric lines.
In a Sept. 28, 2012 story, the Signal Tribune reported that, several months prior, the City of Long Beach had filed a lawsuit seeking a court order for the demolition of the houses. The hearing, which had been scheduled for Aug. 22 in San Pedro, had been rescheduled for March 12, 2013.
“The trial date that we originally had was changed because the judge assigned to the case, for reasons we do not know, could not be there on the August date, and a new judge had to be assigned,” said Deputy Long Beach City Attorney Kendra Carney.
Carney noted that she and the attorney for 6 Angels had had two status conferences with the new judge since August. “In our last conference, the judge determined that she would like to find out whether or not the other public entities involved were planning on giving will-serve letters for utilities to the property owners,” Carney said. “We have another status conference scheduled for Oct. 26 in San Pedro, at which time the attorney for the property owner will provide that information.”
Then-4th District Long Beach City Councilmember Patrick O’Donnell expressed disappointment with the trial date continuence. “You can be sure that I am pushing the city attorney’s office to move this forward as quickly as possible,” he said. “The houses need to be demolished, and every time we seem to be getting close to having them torn down, something happens to delay the process.”
O’Donnell added that he doubted 6 Angels could prove in court that local utility companies would provide services to the houses and that, by that point in time, the owners had made nothing but empty promises. “To me, the best solution is to scrape the houses off of the face of the Earth,” O’Donnell said.
Angel disagreed with O’Donnell, indicating that 6 Angels had the will-serve letters for electricity and gas. “The only thing holding us up is that we do not have a will-serve letter for water from the City of Signal Hill,” Angel said, “and I am still working on getting that before the Oct. 26 hearing.”
Angel said the City of Signal Hill could not issue the will-serve letter until the City of Long Beach requested it, which had not happened yet. “Unfortunately, the City of Long Beach has not been as cooperative as we had hoped,” he said. “But we are still doing everything we can to move this project forward.”
