Problems at the poles

Mathis Winkler

ONE FORD ROAD -- Don’t get Cordell Fisher wrong. He can’t think of a

place he’d rather live than his home in Newport Beach’s One Ford Road

development.

The 63-year-old retired consultant for an insurance company proudly

shows off perks such as a meditation garden and a state-of-the-art gym

that come with living in the exclusive gated neighborhood.

“You couldn’t get a nicer community to live in,” said Fisher, who

bought his home about two years ago. “This is paradise.”

Even when he first noticed the little brown spots on the wooden safety

rail around his porch, Fisher had nothing to complain about. Customer

service officials for Pacific Bay Properties, the company in charge of

developing One Ford Road, took care of problems right away.

“They would come out and fix anything I wanted,” he said Wednesday.

“The service was excellent.”

But when a limited warranty on his house expired in May 2000, things

began to change, Fisher said. Company officials refused to deal with

decay on the rails, saying that this was now Fisher’s responsibility as

the homeowner.

Besides, the city’s building code allowed the use of poplar wood to

build the rails, and Fisher’s problems were the result of a lack of

maintenance.

Armed with more than 100 signatures from Newport Beach residents,

Fisher took his case to City Council members Tuesday. He asked city

leaders to revisit the building code and take poplar wood off the list of

materials acceptable for such rails to ensure no one gets injured as a

result of decay.

But the issue is not of runaway decay, Chris Yelich, a vice president

for Pacific Bay, countered in his own remarks to the council.

Fisher, Yelich said, just didn’t follow proper procedures.

“If maintenance isn’t kept up, there will be decay,” Yelich said,

adding that One Ford Road’s proximity to the ocean made it even more

important to stay vigilant. “We take offense to the fact that what we’ve

done out there is dangerous to the health and safety” of residents.

Yelich could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

Jay Elbettar, the city’s building director who has met with Fisher

several times to discuss the matter, said he would check into the matter.

But the outlawing of poplar wood won’t happen quickly.

“There is a due process,” Elbettar said, adding that the California

building code allows the use of poplar wood as well. “We have to go

through public hearings, we have to make findings that in fact this

material is not performing.”

While Fisher claims similar decay of safety rails can be found at

other homes in the neighborhood, Elbettar said city officials have not

been able to find other cases.

Sitting on the porch of his house, Fisher said building department

officials were due any time to red tag the rail for code violations: The

distance between some of the beams in the rail exceed 4 inches and the

poles have been directly set in the porch’s concrete.

While Fisher said he’s not planning to sue the developer, he’s

thinking about reporting his rail problems to the California contractors

state license board.

Elbettar said a building inspector should have caught the

irregularities during construction of the house but added that Fisher

himself asked for the code violation citation.

“He wanted it done very quickly,” Elbettar said, adding that while

Fisher will have to pay for a building permit to fix the problem, he

won’t be fined. “He’s the person who is pushing for this.”

And in a letter Monday, Pacific Bay lawyer Julia L. Bergstrom told

Fisher that the developer would fix the problems if city officials decide

code violations occurred.

But other than that, “Pacific Bay will not agree to perform any

additional maintenance or repair to your wood porch and balcony

railings,” Bergstrom wrote, adding that company officials won’t directly

deal with Fisher from now on and all correspondence must go to the law

firm.