New Owner Renews Lease Offer : Governor’s Mansion That Wouldn’t Give Up

SACRAMENTO —  For nearly 10 years, the would-be dream mansion that Nancy Reagan helped design for California governors sat unwanted and unfinished.

Cobwebs hung from the corners of the 18-foot cathedral ceilings. No rugs or furniture graced the bare concrete floors. A window was marred by a bullet hole. Utility systems broke down and stayed that way. Unmowed grass on the mansion’s prime 11 acres dried up in the blazing summer sun.

The sprawling, tile-roofed house, with its two kitchens, two dining rooms, eight bedrooms and eight bathrooms, resembled an empty supermarket.

Now, the scene is changing.

Matt Franich, a Palos Verdes developer, says he fell in love with the Spanish-style mansion.

When the Legislature put the house on the market, Franich bought it last September for what he considered a bargain, $1.53 million.

Franich at the time said he wanted to lease the house back to the state, at cost, so that Republican Gov. George Deukmejian could live in it.

The cost, however, was staggering. By the state’s own estimate, the mansion needed $1 million in refurbishing and repairs.

Critics said it did not make sense for the state to sell a house and then pay $18,000 per month to lease it. Deukmejian rejected Franich’s offer and moved into a $400,000 home bought with donated money.

But Franich has not given up. He says he has renewed his lease offer, although he has not received a response.

Franich said he is fixing up the home--and spending a bundle to do so--because he is sure a governor one day will live there.

“When it’s finished, he’ll say, ‘Boy, I’m really glad Matt did this,’ ” Franich said. “There won’t be a lightbulb out. There won’t be a weed on the place. Everything will be perfect.

“We’re steady in the boat as far as we believe the governor should be here.”

Franich has talked in the past of creating a private club or subdividing the property, but insists that is not what he really wants.

“This is the proper place for a governor, so I think ultimately that’s going to happen,” he said. “But it may take years. Who knows?”

The public will have an opportunity to inspect Franich’s extensive embellishments May 10 when the mansion will be opened for a local charity fund-raiser.

Beyond a spacious, open-air courtyard lined with huge flower pots, mansion visitors are greeted by framed pictures of Ronald and Nancy Reagan in the entryway.

Franich said he wrote to President Reagan, who did not respond. But Franich said he is certain Mrs. Reagan will someday visit the house. “I know Nancy put her heart and soul into this. She was at the architect’s office every day. I know she would love to see it,” he said.

He has installed more than 11,000 floor tiles covered by more than 40 Persian rugs, planted 280 trees, created parking for 300 cars, built an adobe-style walled fence, installed wrought-iron gates, put up decorative light posts and installed a closed-circuit television monitoring system.

Then there is the uncompleted 50-foot swimming pool with a fountain in its center, a spa to be adorned by lion’s head fountains on each side of a spilling waterfall and a lavish bathhouse and sauna. Construction workers are still laboring on those.

Franich doesn’t want to tell the cost of it all, handled by subcontractors whose names cover two typewritten pages. But he will say that replacing one missing German-made bronze lock on one of the 116 glass-paneled doors “cost me over 400 bucks.”

“Everything in this house was done first class,” Franich said.

Built by the state for $1.4 million on riverfront land donated by friends of Reagan, the house was rejected by then-Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., a Democrat who preferred an apartment near the Capital.

Deukmejian once toured the 30-room mansion privately with his wife, Gloria, and publicly said he wanted to live there. But Sen. Alfred E. Alquist (D-San Jose) scoffed at that, saying Deukmejian felt compelled to accept the house built for the Reagans but finished after Reagan’s second term expired.

Alquist, who led the drive to sell the mansion, insists that Deukmejian really did not care for it.

Franich, 56, and his wife, Pat, 53, say they are crazy about the house, which seems to dwarf everything put into it. “The rugs look like somebody threw some postage stamps around,” Pat Franich says with a laugh. “We’re overwhelmed, but it’s a home that grows on you.”