One Man’s Fantasy Is Another’s Nightmare

AGOURA —  Tucked away in an oak-studded canyon in the Santa Monica Mountains sits a glimmering extravaganza called Fantasy Island, a multimillion-dollar monument to one family’s dream of creating the ultimate romantic retreat.

With its fake Greek columns, man-made ponds and waterfalls and 12,000-square-foot party tent, the 23-acre site is a popular venue for weddings, bar mitzvahs and other milestone celebrations.

It is also the feature attraction of a five-year battle between neighbors, who have lodged hundreds of complaints over noise and traffic, and Avi Datner, a flamboyant Israeli immigrant whose family owns the site and whose rhetoric hasn’t exactly defused tensions.

“Every story has three sides,” Datner told a visitor during a recent tour of the kitschy kingdom. “My side, their side and the truth.

“I never lie. I just don’t always talk politically correct. I tell people to go ---- themselves. This is the privilege of making a lot of money and being independent. . . . If I go into a meeting, I don’t care if it’s with [County Supervisor] Zev Yaroslavsky or God. I’ll tell them to go ---- themselves.”

Personalities aside, residents of Triunfo Canyon say the case illustrates the county’s utter failure to control the use of one of its loveliest areas. Datner’s retinue of lawyers, however, contend that the county is merely trying to appease a small group of vocal neighbors at Datner’s expense. Fantasy Island may not top the county’s problems, but it does symbolize just how time-consuming, contentious and confounding such disputes can be.

Authorities are pursuing Datner and his sister, Shula, for a host of alleged violations ranging from operating without a business license to possibly polluting a nearby creek. A showdown is scheduled for December, when a fed-up judge has ordered everyone to attend a Municipal Court hearing to try and sort out part of the legal morass.

Meanwhile, Fantasy Island has partied on. Ads have run even after the criminal charges were filed, and the retreat has drawn hundreds of guests at its weekend events. Neighbors say they’ve endured years of honking horns, screeching tires and amplified music.

“You don’t want to listen to the Macarena late at night,” said neighbor Yvette Robertson.

She and other residents worry that because Triunfo Canyon Road provides the only access in and out of the area, a typical Fantasy Island crowd could block emergency vehicles or create a life-threatening bottleneck in the event of a fire. They are also frustrated with what they described as county officials’ reluctance to enforce their own rules--not only for the benefit of residents but for Fantasy Island’s clients as well.

“Here you have the public going to an essentially unlicensed business,” said Chris Willig, a resident of neighboring Lobo Canyon. “You would think there would be a higher standard. But the county is so uncoordinated.”

Shula Datner, who is president of Fantasy Island’s corporate owner, Shula Inc., declined to be interviewed.

Avi Datner, meanwhile, said this story should have nothing to do with him because he has never been a salaried employee of Shula Inc., which is in bankruptcy and has signed over its operating responsibilities, including obtaining permits and licenses, to a nonprofit religious group called American Kosher Supervision.

Datner said he only acted as Shula Inc.’s manager during its bankruptcy proceedings. Yet in documents filed in bankruptcy court, Datner has stated he has been the general manager of Shula Inc. since its inception in 1990.

As for neighbors’ complaints, Datner said he has gone out of his way to reduce the noise, including spending more than $250,000 to build sound walls and cover the tent with a special leaded cloth. Datner also said his offer to hire a sound engineer of the neighbors’ choice went ignored.

The neighbors are so bent on reporting him, Datner said, they once complained of noise when he was hosting a charity event for deaf students.

“I think originally the problem started because we’re Jewish . . . and we came with big money,” said the 45-year-old Datner, who emigrated from Israel in 1973. “There are rednecks here. Then it kept escalating.”

Datner’s neighbors angrily deny those assertions, noting that some of the local residents are themselves Jewish.

“I think if Avi and the neighbors would get together, they could probably work this out,” said one of Fantasy Island’s satisfied customers, Rabbi Moshe Bryski of Chabad Agoura. “Instead, what you have now is both sides talking at each other instead of to each other.”

Philip J. Hess, an attorney who defended a group of neighbors against a lawsuit Datner filed in 1994, called Fantasy Island “one of the more bizarre sagas of bureaucratic indecision.” County officials have strategized over Fantasy Island on numerous occasions during the past two years, Hess said--usually without results. In recent months, prosecutors have gotten involved.

The district attorney’s office--which contends that Datner continues to run Fantasy Island despite his claims--is pursuing six charges against him, his sister and Shula Inc., all relating to licenses and permits. It has charged Datner with five more complaints, all dealing with noise and nuisance problems at the retreat. Prosecutors also are reviewing evidence submitted by the state Department of Fish and Game that the retreat has polluted a nearby creek.

“The law on almost all these issues is not nearly as clear as people would like it to be or believe it to be,” said Sheriff’s Capt. Bill McSweeney, who commands the Lost Hills station.

A key problem, according to Hess, is that the retreat is located in an area whose zoning for resort and recreation was created 70 years ago. During this decade, the archaic zoning has posed a challenge to county officials faced with regulating the area’s exotic uses--polo fields, archery ranges--in a region now inhabited by people and in the age of amplified music.

For example, the 1920s zoning allows for a “dance pavilion,” but county lawyers had to consult a dictionary to figure out exactly what a dance pavilion would be in the 1990s. They finally concluded it could be “a large tent or canopy.”

The laws are so old and ambiguous they could be difficult to enforce, Hess added, and a loss in court could set a precedent for the development industry to exploit.

“The county is scared because Fantasy Island is located in an archaic zone,” Hess said. “They didn’t want to go to court and lose and set an adverse precedent and feed Avi’s appetite to feeling himself immune.”

If the zoning is wrong, Datner said, then why not change it? His family could divide and sell its property to build homes for a nice profit. The truth, he continued, is that not all residents--particularly those with horses--would welcome such a change. And he noted that the area’s zoning existed long before his neighbors received permission to build homes.

“We’re in [resort and recreation] zoning,” Datner said. “They have no right to complain.”

At the same time, however, little has gone as portrayed since the Datners purchased the property in late 1991. The retreat was initially pitched to county planners as a model of woodsy simplicity where the family would stock a pond with fish, build a restaurant and charge customers to barbecue their catch. But it became more like the Taj Mahal than Walden Pond.

Neighbors’ complaints began almost immediately, but even before they started, authorities had a reason to visit the retreat. In 1992, sheriff’s deputies arrested Datner after he and two companions attacked a man delivering a subpoena to Datner at Fantasy Island.

According to a sheriff’s report, Datner punched messenger Darrell Peck and tried to pull him from his car while the other two men pelted the vehicle with rocks, smashing the front windshield and breaking a rear window. Datner and one of the other men pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor assault charge, received suspended jail sentences and were placed on probation.

By 1994, a sheriff’s sergeant testified before the Regional Planning Commission, which was considering whether to grant Fantasy Island an expanded conditional-use permit, that the situation had grown so problematic it was his station’s policy to dispatch two patrol cars and a supervisor to respond to complaints.

The planning commission denied the expansion request, prompting the Datners to appeal to the County Board of Supervisors. Finally, under a plan brokered by Yaroslavsky, the county supervisor who represents the area, the retreat was ordered to limit noise from the dance pavilion but was allowed to continue to run the restaurant and to host weddings and other events.

Rather than accept the new conditions, the Datners closed their restaurant and began operating under the premise that Fantasy Island was simply a dance pavilion, which the zoning allows.

Not every resident has complained about Fantasy Island but at least some, according to court records, may have been dissuaded after Datner sued two local families in 1994.

One defendant who has since moved from the area, William Spann, was sued for allegations ranging from abuse of process to defamation. He stated in a 1994 court declaration that he believed Datner had sued him in an effort to punish him “for objecting to the intolerable noise conditions . . . and to intimidate me.”

“I have personal knowledge of many instances in which members of the community have . . . been unwilling to report illegal operations at Fantasy Island,” Spann added. “These residents have expressed their fear that [Datner] will bring a huge damage action against them as well.”

Datner also sued Mary and Bob Webb, their grown son and Mary Webb’s 91-year-old mother. Filed this past February, the suit accused the family of everything from dumping horse manure on the resort to making anti-Semitic phone calls. A judge dismissed the suit, but only after the family spent $25,000 on an attorney to defend themselves.

Spann’s lawyer, Hess, said he hired two collection agencies to go after Datner’s assets to recover $32,000 in legal expenses his clients racked up successfully defending themselves. It turned out, Hess said, that Datner owns nothing on paper.

A lawyer for Peck, the beating victim, has similar concerns. Peck has sued Datner to recoup medical and car-repair expenses, but according to his attorney’s statements in court records, Datner has bragged “that he knows how to be judgment proof by utilizing his corporate status.”

Datner’s behavior and the site’s unusual zoning may have helped Fantasy Island, but bitter residents give plenty of credit to Los Angeles County itself for allowing the problem to fester. In July, for example, the county Business License Commission refused to renew the resort’s public eating license, which expired last December, in part because it lacked proper building permits.

Datner pledged to continue business as usual, saying he didn’t need the license because he closed the retreat’s restaurant two years ago. County officials said he did need one and that the Sheriff’s Department could enforce the ruling.

But a sheriff’s deputy later said he was under the impression that an enforcement effort was going to be spearheaded by Yaroslavsky--whose spokesman denied that the supervisor was assuming any sort of leadership role.

A multiagency task force later convened at the County Hall of Administration to discuss whether to try to shut down Fantasy Island for not having a business license. After meeting behind closed doors, however, the group emerged only to say it had decided to do nothing.

In some instances, existing problems at Fantasy Island have dragged on for so long they have mushroomed into new ones. Case in point: the party tent.

The area’s zoning permits Fantasy Island to have an outdoor dance pavilion--or tent, as county officials decided--but for no more than 180 consecutive days during a 12-month period. A county fire captain, however, estimated that the retreat’s mega-tent dance pavilion has been up since April 1996.

Fire officials sent a letter to Datner and his sister in July 1997, warning they had 28 days to take down the tent or face being charged with a misdemeanor violation of the county fire code. The deadline passed, the tent remained and the charge was never filed.

The reason: Officials determined that because the tent had been up for more than 180 days, it had become a permanent structure without building permits, hence it also became fodder for the September criminal complaint. Datner said he believes it’s still a tent, and he described the fact that he hasn’t been issued a new temporary structure permit as “a technicality.”

“I believe you have to obey the laws,” Datner said. “You can push them to the limit, but it’s perfectly legal.”