The following is the second portion of a two-part story. To read part one, visit http://www.signaltribunenewspaper.com/?p=29306 .
[aesop_image imgwidth=”500px ” img=”http://www.signaltribunenewspaper.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Gaviota-house-1.jpg” credit=”Courtesy Mary Justus ” align=”right” lightbox=”on” caption=”A photo from 2008 shows debris on the property at 2477 Gaviota Ave., where a historic home, once valued at $1.2 million, has been the source of controversy.” captionposition=”right”]
A 107-year-old Signal Hill home that has been at the epicenter of ownership conflicts and City intervention is now in the hands of a new owner who has agreed to retain its historic value.
For some time, the Signal Hill Historical Society had partial ownership of the building and planned to convert it into a museum.
However, because the structure was in significant disrepair, it would have cost the organization too much to renovate it and bring it to code in order to use it as a historical attraction.
The 1,252-square-foot home, located in the Crescent Heights Historic District at 2477 Gaviota Ave., was built in 1908, and it has changed owners numerous times since. In 2008, Willard Gilliam, who co-owned the house with Arthur Holland, had bequeathed his half of the ownership to the historical society.
Terry Rogers, a local realtor who also serves as president of the Signal Hill Chamber of Commerce, ultimately handled the sale of the home when Rama Singhal purchased it a year ago.
Because the home is in Crescent Heights and the City has stringent rules for what can be built there, Singhal is required to maintain its integrity. Singhal said he purchased the home in order to restore it and prevent it from being demolished.
Signal Hill City Manager Charlie Honeycutt said Singhal agreed that he would restore the house in honor of its historical architecture and that he paid an outstanding water bill, which resulted in the City removing a lien that had been placed against the property.
A pricy eyesore
“The history is that…Will Gilliam and Arthur Holland owned the property. Will Gilliam actually lived in the property,” Honeycutt said. “He, over the years, had collected a number of old cars, and he would basically just store them on his property. He really didn’t take care of his property. There was overgrown vegetation, broken windows, just junk and debris stored on the property, and it had become a problem for his neighbors. So, we carried out code enforcement on the property, basically giving the property owners the ability to address these various concerns. Essentially, they didn’t do it, so the City then had to go to court an order of abatement from the court that allowed us to go on the property and deal with the code-enforcement violation, which, a lot of it was just removing these abandoned vehicles and the overgrown vegetation.”
Honeycutt said the cost of the clean-up totaled almost $29,000 and that an unpaid water bill added up to $824.90. When asked to estimate the number of vehicles on the property, the city manager noted that it had been some time ago, but he figured there were likely between 20 and 30 cars.
Terry Rogers, the realtor who ultimately handled the sale of the home, said that 10 years ago, a friend of Gilliam approached her about helping him sell the house. She said that, before getting involved, she did some homework. Before meeting with Gilliam, she consulted with Honeycutt, the fire department and the police department, and she discovered that the property had already been “cleaned up” twice. She said that because of the previous problems and the fact that there were two owners involved, she was reluctant to handle the sale.
“I’m thinking, ‘Why do I want to help this person and take this listing, because there’s another partner involved?'” Rogers said. “So I called the partner, which was Art Holland at the time, and it still was till the day [Gilliam] died, and I asked him, and he said, ‘Absolutely not.’ He did not want to sell it. Who would have thought that the partner (Holland) 10 years later would be asking me to help him sell the property? And then the story unfolded. We were always told only one story by Willard Gilliam. We were never told the other half. And when you hear the other half, there was a grave injustice done to Mr. Holland in the poor choice of partners.”
Rogers compared the state of the property to the set of a popular 1970s sitcom that was set in a junkyard.
“It was like Sanford and Son. It was like a major dumping ground,” she said. “So, the day I went to go talk to [Gilliam], I go to the property, and I am not joking you… he is walking the property and giving me a tour as if there is nothing wrong with this Sanford and Son dump site. I am not joking you. He bends down and picks up a Life magazine that was President Kennedy, I believe, on the cover, and it was wind- and weather-damaged, and he acts as if it’s a collectable in pristine condition.”
Rogers said that at one time, the home had been “highly desirable” and a “very prominent home in the city of Signal Hill,” but under Gilliam’s care, it had fallen into utter disrepair. She had to let him know that she wouldn’t be able to sell it, but the home’s condition wasn’t the only obstacle to his putting it on the market.
“I told [Gilliam] it won’t work out because [Holland] doesn’t want to sell. That was the bottom line,” she said. “[Holland] did not want to sell at that time, because at that time that property was worth about $1.2 million. They had offers over that. Even Signal Hill Petroleum was interested in it at that time. If you look at the property, look at the size of it. It’s right under 35,000 square feet, and it has a spectacular view of the city. The location was perfect.”
A gift or a burden?
In a phone interview with the Signal Tribune, Holland said he found out about Gilliam’s bequest to the historical society indirectly. He got the news from members of the clean-up crew that the City of Signal Hill had charged with removing cars and debris from the property.
“It was fine with me,” Holland said, adding that he is a “low-profile person” and did not care to get in- volved much in telling the story. He did, however, commend Rogers for her part in the sale.
“I want to give Terry Rogers the benefit of putting the deal together, which was not easy,” Holland said. “I give her all the credit for that.”
Mary Justus, former president of the Signal Hill Historical Society, said that Gilliam had tried for years to transfer his part of the ownership to the organization.
“Gilliam had called me up, and he kept coming down to my business every day to get me to take it, for about two years, for the society,” Justus said. “I kept telling him, ‘No, not right now,’ because we didn’t have enough time and we didn’t have enough people to help us.”
Justus said she finally agreed to the bequest. She presented the idea to the other members of the historical society, and they were amenable to it too. “They all said yes,” she said. “They thought it was a great idea.”
She said the members went and looked at the property, which was “a big mess.” However, they decided to continue with the acquisition of the property. Gilliam gave them a quitclaim deed.
“Then, we went back over to the property to help clean it up,” Justus said, adding that the undertaking involved about three days of work getting rid of all the stuff inside that was broken and everything, where kids had been in there, breaking in.”
She said that Gilliam originated the idea of using the building as a Signal Hill museum. He even wanted to be on the property to greet visitors, Justus said.
“At first, I wasn’t too happy about having it sold,” Justus said. “We tried to raise the money, and we just couldn’t raise enough money to do all that. So, we took a vote and decided to sell it. We never would have got [Holland’s] agreement to let us buy him out. That still would take a lot of money.”
[aesop_image imgwidth=”500px ” credit=”Cory Bilicko/Signal Tribune ” align=”left” lightbox=”on” caption=”The historic home located at 2477 Gaviota Ave. in Signal Hill has recently been sold, and the new owner has said he is in the process of conducting “a full rehab from the foundation up without modifying the historic look of the house.” ” captionposition=”left”]
Justus said that the roughly $175,000 that the historical society acquired from the sale will be applied to the museum section of the new library.
“We worked hard to clean up the place and keep it cleaned up,” Justus said of the home. “We tried hard to make it a museum.”
Larry Blunden, current president of the Signal Hill Historical Society, said it was during the time that the City intervened to clean up the property that Gilliam decided to give it to the organization.
“The property became in disrepair,” Blunden said. “[Gilliam] had a lot of vehicles on the property, and the City made him clean it up, and they towed all the vehicles off the property. That’s the day that [Gilliam] signed his half over to the historical society.”
Blunden doesn’t believe Holland was particularly pleased with Gilliam’s decision.
“I don’t think he was happy about that, unfortunately,” Blunden said. “I think he felt that, you know, he was (business) partners with [Gilliam] from the very beginning. I guess [Gilliam] was quite a wheeler and dealer.”
Blunden acknowledged that the historical society had wanted to convert the home into a Signal Hill museum but could not afford to maintain it.
“The goal in 2008 was to turn it into a museum long-term, but we couldn’t afford the taxes on it [and] we couldn’t afford the upkeep,” Blunden said. “The historical society’s a small group of Signal Hill. We would need to have the money to support it. So, it came to a point where, as president, I decided we needed to sell the property. So, I got with Art Holland, and he agreed to sell it, and we put it on the market and sold it to [Singhal]. It was a long process, but it was good for everybody.”
Blunden said a museum is part of what is in the plans for the new library.
Honeycutt said that, because Singhal was willing to record a historic-preservation easement in purchasing and restoring the home, the city council felt that was valuable enough to release the lien on the property. Singhal also paid the water bill in its entirety this summer. Honeycutt said it is his understanding that Singhal will live in the house after its restoration is complete.
“We’re very pleased that [Singhal] has purchased the property and wants to restore it,” Honeycutt said. “I think it adds a lot of value to our Crescent Heights Historic District, and we hope that maybe it piques some interest to continue some new development in that area.”
