Fort Knocks : Complaints by City, Neighbors Threaten Boy’s Treetop Abode

LAGUNA BEACH —  It may have a balcony, a skylight and an ocean view, but the $3,200 structure perched upon two eucalyptus trees behind their home is still just a treehouse, a birthday present for their little boy, say Lewis and Linda Castillo.

That’s why, the Castillos admit, they dragged their feet after a neighbor’s complaint that the playhouse blocks his view and invades his privacy drew an ultimatum from City Hall two years ago.

The city told the Castillos to get Design Review Board approval for the structure or dismantle it. When they didn’t act, the city attorney took them to court, where they were ordered to seek a city permit.

And now, judgment day approaches for 10-year-old Andrew Castillo’s luxury treetop abode.

Next week, the Castillos will appear before the review board, a panel that will chart new regulatory territory as it considers, for the first time, the fate of a wooden fort.

“I think the whole thing is pretty silly,” Linda Castillo said. “I mean, a child’s treehouse?”

But such matters are serious business in this eccentric coastal community that’s almost as legendary for its zoning squabbles as for its artist’s colony.

“I had the city attorney take them into court because they were not complying,” said Dee Dillon, the city’s code enforcement officer. “They were not coming into design review or removing it.”

At this point, Linda Castillo said, “I just want to see whether we can go through the process and keep the treehouse.”

The stakes are also high for some neighbors, like Geo Moskios, a yoga instructor who filed the complaint two years ago. He said the ocean view Andrew now enjoys once belonged to him.

“My wife and I used to be able to sit here at our dining room table and have our breakfast in the morning and look out through those trees and see that view,” he said.

“If you look in that treehouse, you can look right in my house,” he added. “There’s a major privacy issue here.”

Design review controversies are nothing new for Laguna Beach, a city that in 1991 temporarily barred a couple from moving into their new home because it was painted a whiter shade than had been agreed upon by the couple and the review board.

After that highly publicized incident, the board refused to grant another couple approval to build a new home, in part because it would have cast a shadow on an existing residence.

And another time, the city’s review board refused to let a woman keep a picket fence that was six inches too high. In that case, however, the City Council overruled the board’s decision.

The latest controversy centers on the upscale playhouse the Castillos had built for Andrew’s sixth birthday. The 10-feet-by-5-feet structure is about eight feet tall at the tip of its pitched roof.

The fort is carefully secured with ropes between two towering eucalyptus trees, so the trees would not have to be speared with nails. The Castillos maintain that the structure will not fit properly onto any other tree in their back yard.

The family has at least one defender: Michael Beanan, the craftsman who built the treehouse.

In a letter to the city, Beanan said the claim that the treehouse blocks anybody’s view is “unfair and unwarranted” because it is nestled in mature trees that already obscure the scenery.

“You mention view in this town and everything stops,” said Linda Castillo. She said Andrew would have to be a contortionist to lean around the treehouse balcony and peer into Moskios’ back yard.

But city officials say the complaints can’t be dismissed, partly because the treehouse is an “accessory structure” that must win design review approval to stay, according to Dillon.

“Any separate structure has to have design review approval,” she said, noting that this is the first time somebody has complained to the city about a treehouse. “If we hadn’t had a complaint, we probably wouldn’t even have known it was there.”

Dillon said she does not expect the structure to receive any special consideration from the board simply because it is located in a tree. And, since it is in a set-back area at the rear of the back yard, it also will require a variance, she said.

The Castillos say they met with Moskios but that a tentative agreement between the parties dissolved when another neighbor also complained about the fort, saying it also infringed upon his privacy.

Meanwhile, Andrew is still playing in his treehouse, crawling up and down the rope ladder that dangles from his vulnerable fortress.

As far as he is concerned, the cool thing about the fort is that he can go there with his pals to watch birds, eat pizza, lob rocks at trees and talk.

“You get to talk about stuff with your friends that your parents can’t hear,” such as sports, grades and their schoolmates, he said. Occasionally, they even talk about girls, Andrew said, because “there are a few nice ones.”

“We like bird-watching and stuff because there’s a hawk’s nest right above it,” he said. “I really like it up there. . . . I just wouldn’t want it to come down.”