Residents Accuse Developer of Creating Landslide Threat

The storm clouds gathering Friday over Pacific Palisades as workers filled sandbags and swept debris from Castellammare Drive had nothing to do with the weather front sweeping through Los Angeles.

Eight years of frustration over excavation beneath a 50-foot cliff was to blame for the anger and invective that was raining down on a developer from Encino and a group of nearby homeowners.

Hillside residents confronted builder Nasser Ahdoot and accused him of endangering them with rockslides from a construction project that has limped along since 1992.

Ahdoot blamed the homeowners for causing delays that have created the very problems that have the neighborhood in an uproar.

At issue is a three-house construction site west of Sunset Boulevard and Pacific Coast Highway. Surrounded by million-dollar-plus homes, the site is nestled on an ocean view slope beneath the rambling estate of the late actor Joseph Cotten and above the onetime speak-easy where actress Thelma Todd was found dead in a 1935 mystery that was never solved.

On Wednesday, predictions of rain prompted Los Angeles officials to order Ahdoot to immediately erect a chain-link safety fence and place plastic sheeting and sandbags over his excavation.

On Friday morning, residents standing in Castellammare Drive to watch workmen fill sandbags complained that Ahdoot didn’t finish the job before Thursday night’s rainstorm.

They grumbled that Ahdoot should have built a cliff retaining wall years ago--long before he started any other work at the site.

“It was very scary. The rain was pounding last night and there were no sandbags out,” homeowner Joyce Aldrich said.

Neighbor Irwin Gold asserted that 17 20-foot-deep holes drilled by Ahdoot beneath the cliff for retaining-wall caissons funneled rainwater into the ground. He said such water could destabilize the entire hillside and cause landslides that could destroy houses.

During a 1993 storm, a Volkswagen-size boulder tumbled from Ahdoot’s construction site and bounced within a few feet of the front of his home, said Gold, an investment banker.

More recently, a large fiberboard tube that Ahdoot intends to use as a concrete form for one of his caissons rolled down the hill and crashed into homeowner Scott Brickell’s garage door, neighbors said.

Standing 50 feet away, Ahdoot disputed the accusations and blamed the neighbors for the problems.

“As soon as these guys get off my back, I’ll be able to build the wall. I’ve been trying for a month. I have my holes and my steel. Twice I brought a crane in to work on it, but they say I can’t block the street with it. They keep calling the city to report me,” Ahdoot said.

He said he finally bulldozed a pad off the street to park the crane. But when residents reported it as illegal grading, the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety issued a stop-work order, he said.

“They said I couldn’t grade until I got the wall up. But I couldn’t get the wall up without a place to put the crane if they wouldn’t let me use the street.”

According to Ahdoot, the 1993 boulder incident was caused by “an explosion up the street” that knocked the huge rock loose from the cliff beneath the Cotten estate’s tennis court.

“I think these people have a personal distaste for me because I’m Persian,” Ahdoot finally said.

The neighbors scoffed at that. “We don’t trust him because he has lied to us,” resident Marianne Boxberger said.

“The reason there was no room for his crane is because his rubble extends three feet into the street. You can’t close the street all day,” she said.

Gold disputed the charge that an explosion triggered the 1993 boulder incident. “How could an explosion dislodge a rock that size and not break even a lightbulb in anybody’s house around here?” he asked.

As the neighbors began drifting back to their homes, Ahdoot walked over and examined scratches and dents in Brickell’s garage door. Soon more accusations and insults were echoing along the street as workmen handling the sandbags and plastic ground covering stopped to watch.

By midday Friday, the forecast along Castellammare Drive seemed to call for continuing overcast.