Las Urbanistas

Condominium tower projects started during a construction boom in Miami have begun to lose investors even before the buildings are complete.

By ABBY GOODNOUGH; Published: May 26, 2007

MIAMI, May 25 — As dozens of condominium towers conceived during Florida’s real estate boom near completion, investors who snatched up units in the preconstruction phase in hopes of turning a quick profit are increasingly trying to break contracts, even walking away from fat deposits.

“Motivated” sellers are flooding online forums like Craigslist with advertisements for condo units still months or years from being finished. And lawyers have been inundated with calls from people hoping to avoid closing on units they bought during the speculative craze of 2004 and 2005.

“I get two or three of these calls a day,” said James Ryan, a lawyer in Boca Raton who said he had 40 clients looking to get out of condo contracts. One, Mr. Ryan said, abandoned a $340,000 deposit rather than close on a $1.6 million unit that lost its appeal as the market faltered.

The numbers suggest that it will only get worse. In Miami-Dade County alone, 8,000 new condo units will be completed this year and nearly 12,000 more in 2008.

But demand has dropped markedly, and people who thought they could “flip” condos — buying, then selling for a steep profit before construction is done — are parting with that fantasy. After years of stunning price increases — 25 percent in the West Palm Beach-Boca Raton area, for example, from March 2005 to March 2006 — condo prices have started dropping.

Condominiums in West Palm Beach and Boca Raton sold for a median price of $211,800 in March, down from $224,600 a year earlier, according to the Florida Association of Realtors. And in Fort Lauderdale, the median price in March was $195,500, down from $202,600 the previous year.

As a result, many buyers want out — not an easy prospect unless they are willing to forfeit the 10 percent or 20 percent they put down, from $15,000 for an inexpensive studio unit to hundreds of thousands of dollars for a waterfront penthouse.

“I see buyers unleashing all possible means to try to get out of contracts,” said Gary Saul, a lawyer in Miami for developers, adding that in some projects, 20 percent of buyers want their money back.

Frank Scarfone, a retired engineer who bought two preconstruction units at Hollywood Station, a complex going up in Hollywood, is seeking to cancel his contracts. Each unit is priced at $300,000. The developer promised a city view from both units, Mr. Scarfone said, but now another building in the complex is blocking it — a change that he said made the contracts unenforceable.

He sent a letter demanding his total deposit of $120,000 back, and after getting no reply, picketed the developer’s office. Then Mr. Scarfone called a lawyer, Matthew Schlesinger, who has been unable to recoup the deposit so far.

“If we have to sue,” Mr. Scarfone said, “we’re planning on suing.”

Tom Leon, a retired business executive who moved here from Illinois, said he planned to give up $200,000 in deposits on two condo units in Miami, priced at $500,000 each, after finding “no loopholes” in his contracts. He said he was not especially bitter, since he had made money flipping other properties at the height of the boom.

“I’m of the frame of mind that you have to be prepared in business or investments to take a loss,” said Mr. Leon, 72, adding that he never had any intention of living in either of the units. “There are some people that mentally can never bring themselves around to that, especially in real estate. But there’s a time to hold and a time to fold, and in my opinion, this is a time to fold.”

The condo mania of recent years also beset cities like Las Vegas, Phoenix and Washington, but while those markets are also full of resales, analysts say South Florida drew the most investors.

“Between the Latin American influence and the out-of-state buyers who have a love affair with Miami because of its ambience,” said Jack McCabe, a consultant in Deerfield Beach who tracks the South Florida housing market, “they flocked to it and pushed it to the point where about 70 percent of all sales were to investors.”

Real estate analysts say South Florida’s housing market peaked late in 2005, and would-be flippers stopped buying in 2006. People who bought condos before 2005 might still make money or at least break even if they sell soon, the analysts say, but those who bought at the height of the mania stand to lose a bundle.

Ann Nortmann, a sales associate with Majestic Properties, said one of her clients, a New Yorker, bought 11 condo units in Miami starting in 2004 and has sold six — the last at a $40,000 loss. Ms. Nortmann and others said that with the glut of properties for sale, it might be more prudent to lose a deposit than hold onto a condo indefinitely.

Many speculative condo buyers were foreigners, especially Latin Americans looking to shelter their wealth from precarious economies in their home countries. Mr. Schlesinger said he was trying to help some Colombian investors get out of contracts in a project on the Miami River, a hot area during the boom, where prices are now languishing.

Getting out of real estate contracts is hard, Mr. Schlesinger said, because under state law, buyers have to prove that developers “materially” changed a project in a way that is “adverse” to the buyer. Many buyers want soaring property insurance rates to fall into that category. But a new state law says they cannot.

“About half the time I have to tell people, ‘Listen, there’s nothing I can do,’ ” said Mr. Schlesinger, adding that 20 percent of his clients end up forfeiting deposits.

Gregg Covin, a developer building Ten Museum Park, a downtown high-rise overlooking Biscayne Bay, said that none of his buyers had lost down payments, but that 45 out of 200 had resold their units before closing, often at the same price they paid in 2003 and to so-called vulture investors looking to scoop up multiple units at pre-boom prices.

Like many other developers, Mr. Covin requires original buyers looking to resell to do so through an in-house program, and keeps a 6 percent commission. Because his is one of the first boom-time buildings to be finished, he said — closings are taking place this month — he has had no problem finding replacement buyers.

“Right now, today, there is no shortage of end-users in Miami for finished, nice product,” Mr. Covin said.

Still, the few new buildings that have opened report many units up for resale. In Blue, a downtown high-rise that opened last year, 87 of the 330 units, or 26 percent, are back on the market, according to the Multiple Listing Service. In One Miami, which also opened downtown last year, 155 of the 800 units, or 19 percent, are for sale.

“When you drive by in the daytime, they are gorgeous,” Mr. McCabe said. “But when you drive by at night, there’s no furniture on the patios and only one light on out of 10.”

This being South Florida, some are figuring out how to profit from the downturn.

Mark Zilbert, a real estate agent, recently started CondoSuperCenter.com, a clearinghouse for people willing to resell preconstruction units at their original price. He said he expected thousands of listings.

“I ask if they’d be willing to sell at their 2003 price and walk away with their deposit back,” Mr. Zilbert said. “A lot of people are saying, ‘Yes, please, yes, please, yes, please.’ “

The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision was conceived as a perfect cube, half of it buried underground. It houses broadcasting archives, offices and a museum, making it a cultural focal point for the city of Hilversum.

By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF; Published: May 26, 2007

HILVERSUM, the Netherlands — It’s almost daunting to note how many young architectural talents are flourishing today in the Netherlands. If Rem Koolhaas, the profession’s reigning intellectual prince, casts a long shadow, it’s clear that plenty of emerging architects have managed to assert strong creative voices of their own.

Willem Jan Neutelings and Michiel Riedijk stand out from the usual Koolhaas clones. Still relatively unknown in the United States, their firm has steadily built a reputation in Europe for bold designs that draw on everything from primitive temples to comic-book illustration and the decorative ephemera of Andy Warhol. They also have something as rare in architectural circles as raw talent: a sense of humor.

The completion of their Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision here can only elevate their status. Wrapped in a luxurious skin of colorful cast-glass panels, it is their most gorgeous work to date. Yet beneath the glittering surfaces they have fashioned a serious critique of a world saturated in advertising and marketing images, and reaffirmed architecture’s heroic stature.

A leafy suburban hamlet southeast of Amsterdam, Hilversum is best known as the center of the Dutch television industry. Yet it has quietly amassed an impressive array of architectural works. The folded concrete forms of the Villa VPRO, the offices of a private broadcast authority designed by the Dutch firm MVRDV, are visible from a distance; Willem Marinus Dudok’s low, graceful brick town hall, a landmark of early-20th-century Modernism, is a short drive away.

The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, the home of the national broadcasting archives, was conceived as a perfect cube, half of it buried underground. In addition to the archives and offices, it houses a museum, making it a new cultural focal point for the city.

Standing on an isolated lot flanked by a small garden, its glowing glass shell recalls the translucent exterior of Gordon Bunshaft’s 1963 Beinecke Rare Book Library at Yale . Like many architects of their generation, Mr. Neutelings and Mr. Riedijk have been heavily influenced by postwar architects like Bunshaft: the brutal directness of his buildings carries particular appeal when so much architecture is corrupted by fairy-tale images straight from Disney. Both buildings are taut, confident structures. But Mr. Neutelings and Mr. Riedijk’s building is rooted in pop culture rather than in the ethos of postwar corporate America.

Conceived in collaboration with the 65-year-old artist Jaap Drupsteen, the structure’s panels are imprinted with famous images from Dutch television: the justice minister riding his bicycle, say, or Johan Cruyff scoring a goal. Using computer technology, Mr. Drupsteen ran the images together and baked them into the glass.

The effect is mesmerizing. The images are only barely discernible from certain angles, as if the building were imprinted with the faint traces of shared memories. But the exterior facades are also a sly critique of contemporary culture. The blur of images conveys the daily bombardment from the Internet, television, movies and newspapers, yet here they seem frozen in time, as if temporarily tamed.

Inside the building that tranquillity gives way to a comic-book version of Dante’s “Divine Comedy,” with strict divisions between various worlds. Visitors enter via an internal bridge that crosses over an underground atrium. From here, a vast hall conceived on the scale of a piazza leads to a cafeteria overlooking the calm surface of a reflecting pool. On one side of the hall looms the ziggurat form of the museum; on the other, a wall of glass-enclosed offices. Here the spectral glow of the interior of the cast-glass skin evokes the stained-glass windows of a medieval cathedral.

It’s a stunning space whose power lies in the contrast between the various architectural experiences within. Clad in cold gray slate, for instance, the underground atrium is a striking counterpoint to the heavenly glass walls above. Mr. Neutelings and Mr. Riedijk call the atrium their “inferno.” It also evokes a tomb: big, square openings are cut through the atrium’s walls, revealing a series of corridors painted a hellish red. The archives are tucked behind these corridors, where researchers and scholars, you suppose, toil away with the concentration of monks.

Neither fiery nor blissful, the offices are something closer to purgatory. Arranged in neat little rows, they open onto long, narrow corridors that overlook the bustling main hall. The office interiors are more contemplative, the colored cast-glass panels alternating with more conventional strip windows. The colored glass emits a soft glow that is strangely soothing.

But the true inferno, in visual terms, is the museum. Mr. Neutelings and Mr. Riedijk set the entry stairs off to one side of the main hall, as if they were trying to avoid it. There are hints of the architects’ presence inside: the walls of the museum auditorium are covered in an elegant, diamond-shaped pattern, and two small openings pierce the darkness at the top of the stairs to the museum’s upper floors, offering sudden glimpses of the colorful glass skin.

But the architects had no control over the design of the exhibitions, and what little architecture there is here is completely overwhelmed by a nauseating mix of interactive installations, reproductions of stage sets and tchotchkes from old Dutch television shows. The effect is cringe-inducing.

Like many architects, Mr. Neutelings and Mr. Riedijk are struggling to come to terms with a society that is on the verge of being completely consumed by global advertising and marketing images. More often than not, architecture is becoming a tool of those interests.

By sealing off these competing forces in distinct worlds and then juxtaposing them, the architects have subtly reasserted the dignity of the public realm, while providing a potent commentary on where our culture is heading.

Even after winning the biggest fare increase in more than a decade, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority still finds itself in a cash crunch that keeps several projects in limbo.

By Jeffrey L. Rabin and Rong-Gong Lin II, Times Staff Writers; May 26, 2007

Even after winning the biggest fare increase in more than a decade, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority still finds itself in a cash crunch that leaves several rail projects in limbo.

If it survives an expected legal challenge, the boost in fares will help stabilize the transit agency’s deficit-ridden finances. But the increase is significantly less than what MTA staffers originally sought to close a projected $1.8-billion deficit over the next decade.

That leaves the MTA with a fundamental challenge that has faced the agency since its birth 14 years ago: how to operate a vast bus system while simultaneously building or expanding light-rail and subway lines.

The MTA has dramatically increased its mass-transit network this decade, finishing the Red Line subway to North Hollywood and opening the Gold Line from downtown L.A. to Pasadena and the Orange Line, a busway across the San Fernando Valley. The agency is in the midst of building two more rail lines at a combined cost of $1.5 billion: a downtown-to-Culver City route known as the Expo Line and an extension of the Gold Line from downtown to East L.A.

MTA Chief Executive Officer Roger Snoble offered a sober assessment Friday of what comes next.

Although he believes the agency can afford to complete and operate the Culver City and East L.A. lines, he said other transit projects now being considered, including one busway extension, could face significant delays.

“There has been a big expectation that we will get it done sooner than is financially possible,” Snoble said. “This whole experience shows we need to be realistic about our expectations…. It may delay some projects.”

Among them:

• The Expo Line extension from Culver City to Santa Monica, where officials have already purchased property around the Sears department store near City Hall and plan to convert the store’s auto center building into a transit center.

• The Gold Line extension that would run from Pasadena to Montclair, in San Bernardino County, with a possible link ending at LA/Ontario International Airport. The line has been pushed aggressively by officials in the San Gabriel Valley, who have long complained that their region has no light rail service.

• The Green Line extension from its Aviation station near El Segundo to Los Angeles International Airport.

• The Orange Line extension from Woodland Hills to Chatsworth.

• The much-discussed $4.8-billion “Subway to the Sea” under Wilshire Boulevard that Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa made a top priority when elected.

Only a dream?

Without a massive infusion of state and federal funds, officials said, the Wilshire subway remains only a dream. “That’s got a long way to go,” Snoble said.

The stakes are high, because there is general agreement that the MTA’s current 73-mile rail network simply doesn’t go enough places to lure motorists out of their cars. The agency’s planners hope that pushing rail and busways farther into the Westside, San Gabriel Valley, South Bay and San Fernando Valley will create a system in which more people can get to their destinations. With L.A.’s population rising, officials worry that congestion on major boulevards and freeways will worsen, slowing bus service further.

The first set of fare hikes, which will hit bus and rail riders July 1, will generate at least $30 million in new revenue the first year, about 11% more than current levels, Snoble said. But it’s less than the MTA chief had wanted.

A second wave of increases will be implemented in July 2009, possibly followed by another hike in 2011. That should provide the agency with enough revenue to operate the East L.A. and Culver City lines now under construction, as well as the other bus and rail services.

Already, an intense behind-the-scenes fight is underway between politicians from the Westside and the San Gabriel Valley over what rail project should follow the two now being built.

Westside forces are pushing for the $800-million Expo Line extension, saying traffic in their region is worse and that building a rail link to the ocean would be a huge relief valve. San Gabriel Valley forces say their area is underserved by rail and are pushing for a $1.4-billion route that would end in the fast-growing suburbs of San Bernardino County. (Both projects are at least six to seven years from completion.)

‘It is sobering’

Transit advocates Friday said they are worried that the MTA’s financial problems could cause delays on their projects.

“It is sobering,” said Darrell Clarke, a Santa Monica planning commissioner and co-chairman of Friends 4 Expo Transit. “We need a network of new rail lines, not just a couple of little new ones.”

LaVerne Mayor Jon Blickenstaff said the MTA’s problems probably mean that the competition for funding will heat up.

“There’s a critical need for a better transit system, [but] it’s all very expensive to build and operate, and the subsidies are not nearly adequate,” he said.

Members of Congress from L.A. County and transit lobbyists in Washington are trying to win approval of special provisions that would allow the local money being spent on the Culver City and East L.A. lines to be used to draw federal dollars for the extensions.

If successful, this effort would give the Santa Monica and San Gabriel Valley lines an extra source of funds. But even Snoble is skeptical. “It’s really a hard sell,” he said.

The fare increases approved by the MTA board Thursday will significantly increase what riders pay.

The cost of the monthly pass will gradually rise from $52 to $75 by July 1, 2009. The day pass — the most popular pass — will rise from $3 to $6 over the same period. The single-ride cash fare will rise the least, from $1.25 to $1.50 over the next two years.

Critics of the increase have already threatened to sue the MTA in federal court, arguing that the agency is ignoring the needs of working-class bus riders to build a grand rail system. Bus riders and civil rights groups sued the MTA on similar grounds in 1994, resulting in the agency’s signing off on a consent decree that kept fares stable and resulted in improved bus service.

Connie Rice, a civil rights attorney who fought the MTA often over the last decade, said Friday that the increased fares will again hit the poor hard.

“They are going to make poor people’s lives even more miserable,” she said. “It looks like they are back to business as usual.”

MTA officials have warned that without the fare increases approved Thursday, they might not be able to operate the Culver City and East L.A. rail lines after they are built.

Such restrictions would also be bad news for some projects in their early planning stages. L.A. officials are pushing for a light rail line along Crenshaw Boulevard and Florence Avenue from the Expo Line to LAX. There are also studies of a downtown route that would connect the Blue Line and Gold Line.

MTA board member Pam O’Connor, a Santa Monica councilwoman, said boosting fares was a difficult decision — but a needed one for the future of mass transit in L.A.

“You have to have a solid foundation,” she said. “And, frankly, we were on shaky ground.”

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jeff.rabin@latimes.com

ron.lin@latimes.com

*

(INFOBOX BELOW)

At risk

Expo Line extension

Where: From Culver City to Santa Monica

Est. Cost: $800 million or more

Purpose: Would bring rail to the beach and traffic-

clogged Westside.

–

Gold Line extension

Where: From Pasadena to Montclair

Est. Cost: $1.4 billion

Purpose: Would connect L.A. rail system to the fast-growing Inland Empire.

–

Green Line extension

Where: From near El Segundo to LAX

Est. Cost: $150 million or more

Purpose: The two-mile route would fill infamous “missing link,” connecting rail line to LAX parking lot.

–

Orange Line extension

Where: From Woodland Hills to Chatsworth

Est. Cost: $135 million or more

Purpose: Successful busway would cross the full Valley. Costs less than rail.

–

Purple Line extension

(Wilshire subway)

Where: From Mid-Wilshire to Santa Monica

Est. Cost: $4.8 billion

Purpose: Would run through heart of city. Expensive but potentially popular.

Source: Times reports

Can a transit mall make it there? Transportation officials think it’s just the ticket for downtown L.A.

By Cara Mia DiMassa and Hector Becerra, Times Staff Writers; May 26, 2007

Wild parties under the sun draw crowds despite the $375 rum. And ladies, do you really need those tops?

By Kimi Yoshino, Times Staff Writer; May 26, 2007

LAS VEGAS — On a Sunday afternoon in Las Vegas, at the hottest pool party in town, the Hard Rock Hotel’s Jack LaFleur is the man to know. The promotions director stands at the velvet rope, deciding who will shake their booties in the sun — and who won’t.

“Only girls, send ‘em up!” LaFleur barks as a stream of 20-something, bikini-clad women hop the line, leaving a couple of hundred frustrated men in their wake. “No more guys. It’s out of control.”

This is Rehab, Las Vegas’ best-known, biggest and craziest pool party. In the 21 Sundays it will operate this year, hotel executives estimate that Rehab will rake in about $6 million — nearly $35,000 every hour it’s open. As many as 3,000 tanned, toned and oil-slicked bodies find their way into Rehab each week, where they play swim-up blackjack, gulp down $17 cocktails served in 30-ounce plastic jugs and make out under waterfalls, on lounge chairs and, well, just about anywhere.

Since it began in 2004, Rehab has transformed Vegas’ once-sleepy daytime scene into a “Girls Gone Wild” tableau of debauchery. Today, almost every major casino resort has nightclub operators managing its 21-and-over pools. They hire DJs to spin music and demand hefty cover charges. Rates vary by the weekend; on the cheapest days women pay $20, men $30.

Several resorts have separate “Euro-style,” or top-optional, pools, with half-naked women cavorting in the water. This summer, both the Mirage and Venetian — heavyweights in the nightclub arena — have unveiled re-imagined pools.

“It’s done a remarkable thing to the nightlife landscape,” LaFleur said. “Day life? It’s hard to even categorize it…. It’s finding those ways to generate revenue. For a town that’s been known exclusively for nightlife, this was extremely daring and off the charts.”

The gamble is paying off.

By 8:30 a.m., a ghastly hour by Vegas standards, people are already lining up outside Rehab, even though the pool doesn’t open until 11. “It’s almost like a ‘Star Wars’ premiere,” LaFleur said. “They sit down. They hold that spot in front.”

Others, like Lisa Tully, a nursing manager from North Carolina, show up a bit later — and flash a little flesh to guarantee access.

“As soon as we pulled the cover-ups off, they said, ‘Bam. Come up here,’ ” said the 38-year-old, who sported a pierced belly button and a black bikini dotted with rhinestones.

The truly flush fork over $1,200 for a season pass — even if they plan to visit only a couple of times.

Although LaFleur declined to say how he managed the gender ratio at Rehab, women were clearly in the majority. Ripped men with six-pack abs and check-out-my-pecs tattoos trolled the meat market in board shorts. Busty women, some obviously surgically enhanced, strutted around in high heels.

Tully and her friend Deana Yeomans, 36, recounted the sad tale of one of their male friends, who called three times to try to rent a cabana at Rehab. “How many girls?” the operator asked. None, he answered.

“They said, ‘Ha!’ ” Yeomans said. “They wouldn’t even take the reservation.”

Fifty extra greenbacks, plus cover charge, did the trick for Shawn Conti, 27, a Tampa, Fla., real estate developer in town for a conference.

“I would have spent more,” Conti said. “It’s well worth the money. I’d rather do this than go out” at night.

He figured he’d drink all day, enjoy a nice dinner, go to his hotel and pass out. Then, after a good night’s sleep, he’d wake up refreshed for his meetings the next day.

“What’s not to like?” said Garrett Williams, 25, a real estate broker. “At a nightclub, it’s dark and you can’t talk to anybody. Here, it’s light out and everyone is half naked. The number of girls wearing thongs out there is ridiculous.”

When it first opened, organizers envisioned Rehab as a place to relax on Sundays after a hard weekend of partying.

“That lasted about a week,” said the Hard Rock Hotel’s marketing guru, Phil Shalala. “People were actually beginning to stay in on Saturday night just so they could go to Rehab during the day.”

Once inside, people are racking up huge tabs. In addition to the $17 cocktails, Rehab serves alcohol by the bottle. Bacardi rum that retails for about $15 costs $375; for a bottle of Jagermeister — typically about $20 — it’s $400. The big spenders can drop $1,195 for a bottle of Cristal champagne, which normally runs about $300. Roving photographers snap pictures like paparazzi and post them online.

“These people have money in their pocket,” Shalala said. “The overall lifestyle that they live is work hard, play harder.”

The scene has become so successful so fast that Hard Rock is planning on doubling the size of the pool area — already 4.7 acres — in the next couple of years. It will also add an upscale, more relaxed setting by 2009.

At the Venetian, the new Tao Beach Club — an extension of the successful Asian-themed nightclub — opened in May with a party hosted by hip-hop artist Jay-Z. The pool is open daily but offers “Sunset Sundays” starting about the time Rehab winds down. The Palms’ pool promotes “Ditch Fridays.”

Others, like the Venus Pool Club at Caesars Palace or Bare at the Mirage, are trying to be different. Venus is decidedly upscale, offering frozen grapes and frozen towels and charging $650 for a daily cabana rental.

“This is just filling a void Vegas lacked in the daytime department,” said Alex Acuna of Light Group, which operates the new “Euro-style” Bare.

Bare is the smallest pool-party venue in town, marking perhaps the first time that being small in Vegas is something to brag about.

“It’s not a spring-breaky, 2,000-people pool party,” Acuna said. “It’s 250 people, intimate. Great music, great food, great drinks, great service.”

Unlike Rehab, which serves nachos and chicken fingers, Bare peddles mojitos by the pitcher, lobster tacos with grilled mangoes and shrimp lettuce cups.

And although nobody’s doing cannonballs into the pool, a battle cry to “release the twins” results in a round of free shots for ladies who go topless.

A trio of women who said they worked as cocktail waitresses at the Penthouse Club in New Orleans complied with the request. “We hate tan lines,” said Rachel Oefelein, 22, baring her chest, pierced nipples and all.

Her friend Erica Wise, 24, said they had been surprised by the pool experience: “I thought it would be a bunch of old creepy men staring, but it’s a bunch of people our age having fun.”

The friends lounged on a daybed compliments of friend Steve O’Brien, 47, a computer consultant from Pennsylvania, who footed the bill for the $350 bed and spent “well over” the $300 drink minimum. A crew of attendants flitted about, pouring a $350 bottle of Grey Goose vodka from the group’s private fridge and changing towels. The staff was so attentive that they bought extra sunscreen from the hotel gift shop and delivered fatter straws for MaLou Maxey, 31, when she told them that she “deeply hates little straws.”

“This has far exceeded any expectations I had of the place,” O’Brien said, adding that he wasn’t “all that concerned” about the rising bill as he sipped his mojito ($50 a pitcher).

At Rehab, LaFleur is bracing for back-to-back parties over the holiday weekend. On Memorial Day, Rehab is renamed Relax at the Pool.

“It’s going to be frightening,” LaFleur said. “Last year, there were 1,500 people that didn’t even get close to me to get in.”

Shirley-Ann and Herbert Leu wanted to live in peace in Washington, with a view of Canada. Then their backyard wall created an international incident.

By Tomas Alex Tizon, Times Staff Writer; May 26, 2007

Blaine, Wash. — THE invisible line that divides Canada and the United States runs along a shallow ditch just beyond Shirley-Ann Leu’s backyard, so close she could cross the border in a single hop.

At 72, Shirley-Ann, a retired hairdresser, shows no such inclination. But some in her care — namely 11 Pomeranians, two toy poodles and a young neighbor girl whom she baby-sits — appear to her all too eager to jump the ditch and roam wild across Canada.

To prevent this, Shirley-Ann and her husband, Herbert, 69, a retired electrician, built a 4-foot-high concrete wall. They saw it as a perfect solution. The wall would enclose their wards and also keep their sloped backyard from crumbling into the ditch.

Little did they know it would instigate a bona fide border conflict.

The Leus now find themselves in a legal fight against the U.S. government, which has the support of the Canadian government. The outcome will determine whether the wall stays, which party will pay if it has to be removed, and to what extent border authorities can control development on private property.

Because the Leus’ wall is part of a larger project that includes a driveway, walking paths and patios — the entire outdoor part of their quarter-acre lot — the couple have stopped all construction until the case is resolved. The work involves heavy machinery, and the Leus don’t want to pay the extra cost of doing the project piecemeal.

In her backyard, Shirley-Ann stands amid mounds of lumber and rebar, looking as if she is about to cry.

“We were supposed to retire and spend our days in peace,” she says. “Instead…. ” She raises her hands above her head and mimes pulling her hair out. Her pink wire-rimmed glasses scrunch up against her face.

Life for the couple has been complicated — and tense — since they moved from Hawaii a year and a half ago to this rural border town 110 miles north of Seattle. The wall dispute, involving an obscure agency and a little-known treaty, is only the most aggravating part of the strange reality of living next to an international boundary.

How could she explain it?

Shirley-Ann pads around the wall to the edge of her property and places a foot in the ditch, her fuzzy black house slipper set daintily against the dirt.

“That’s Canada,” she says, her words weighted with the notion that her foot is now subject to the rules of a different nation.

Running parallel to the ditch is a two-lane road, Zero Avenue, part of the Canadian municipality of Surrey. A handful of homes dots a rolling landscape of fields and pastures. Cars zip past at highway speed although the signed limit is 50 kilometers an hour (31 mph).

Every few hours on Zero Avenue, a Royal Canadian Mounted Police vehicle drives past. At the front of the Leus’ house, on the American side, the U.S. Border Patrol makes regular passes along West 99th Street. The Leus say it took a while to get used to the patrol cars passing day and night on both sides of their house.

Underground sensors hidden on the edges of Zero Avenue detect all kinds of movement. One neighbor on the American side, Bob Boulet, says every time he mowed his backyard last year, he set off a sensor and a Border Patrol helicopter came whizzing by within minutes. Boulet says he asked the Border Patrol to mow the lawn for him so he wouldn’t bother them anymore. The agency didn’t find the request amusing.

Between Boulet’s house and Shirley-Ann’s, a surveillance camera swivels atop a 40-foot tower, watching and recording the goings-on in a 360-degree panorama.

All of this, for Shirley-Ann, translates to one thing: “Don’t even think about crossing the road,” she says, moving her foot back to the United States. “Try it. They’ll come after you.”

Which is why, in her mind, it would be disastrous if one of her dogs or the little neighbor girl were ever to jump the ditch and cross over. First, they could be run over by a car. But if they made it, how would she get them back?

The quickest legal way to retrieve them would be to drive west two miles into town, get in line at the truck crossing at Highway 543, show her documents, and drive back east onto Zero Avenue. It could take 10 minutes to get there and as long as three hours to get back, depending on traffic.

Or she could take her chances and run across the street. If she were caught, she could face a range of penalties. Crossing the border without passing through an official point of entry breaks the law on both sides.

On the U.S. side, according to Border Patrol Agent Joseph Giuliano, deputy chief in the Blaine office, a border-jumper could face a $150 citation or up to a $5,000 fine and six months in jail.

Walking back to her house, Shirley-Ann says: “People come visit and see where we live, and they flip out.”

THE U.S.-Canada border runs along the 49th parallel and stretches 5,525 miles over mountains, forests and prairies; through lakes, rivers and bays; from the tundra of the Arctic Ocean to the shores of the North Atlantic — the world’s longest undefended boundary.

Both countries have announced plans to create a coast-to-coast “virtual fence” with high-tech monitoring equipment, but vast stretches of the border remain largely unguarded. In many remote areas, mostly in the West, the only clue a boundary exists at all is the presence of a boundary monument: a 5-foot-tall concrete obelisk.

There are supposed to be about 8,600 such markers along the border, spaced so that at each marker, the next one can be seen. Some obelisks have toppled or been vandalized; others have been worn down by time and neglect.

Behind the Leus’ house, bramble bushes shroud the markers along Zero Avenue, and much of the street corridor is overgrown with cottonwood and cedar trees.

A former fishing and logging town, Blaine, population about 4,000, is best-known as the northern terminus of Interstate 5 and the third-busiest checkpoint on the U.S.-Canada border, screening about 7 million passenger cars a year.

East of the border station, on the outskirts of town, a little neighborhood surrounded by woods sits in relative isolation. It is a motley collection of old and new houses, old and young residents, and vacant lots still to be developed.

Besides the rural feel, the neighborhood’s biggest appeal is hinted at by the name of one of its main streets: Canada View Drive. On this road, which becomes West 99th Street, the houses along the ditch look out at British Columbia’s lush Fraser River Valley and beyond to the Coast Mountains.

It was this view that first hooked Shirley-Ann and Herbert. Their stucco ranch-style house had been built with large picture windows facing Canada.

“Look at that,” says Shirley-Ann, sitting in a bay window of her living room.

Herbert, an exceedingly genial man with gray at the temples, sits nearby, smiling, letting his wife do the talking and occasionally chiming in with a “Yes, yes. That’s right.”

Their story in sum: lived in Hawaii 48 years, married 42 years, no children, recently retired. The couple found their fixed income didn’t go very far in Honolulu. “Some days we were living on pork and beans and toast,” Shirley-Ann says. Herbert smiles in affirmation.

In 2005, the couple sold their home in Hawaii and moved here, where land was cheap and they could be closer to Shirley-Ann’s relatives in Canada. And where the pooches, now kept in a chicken-wire cage at the side of the house, could roam in a big yard.

They hired a contractor to build the wall. Workers cleared the ground in August and poured the concrete in November. The wall stretched 85 feet and cost $15,000. In January came the knock at the front door.

THE man identified himself as a field engineer for the International Boundary Commission. Shirley-Ann vividly recalls the conversation:

“He says to me, ‘Your wall violates the treaty.’ “

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she responded.

“The Treaty of 1925,” the man said, handing her a brochure. “Someone will be contacting you.” Before the man left, Shirley-Ann asked a question she has asked numerous times since. “Who are you again?”

She and Herbert had never heard of the International Boundary Commission. Neither had the city of Blaine, which had approved the wall and issued the permits. “I was surprised too,” says Blaine City Manager Gary Tomsic, referring to the IBC. The treaty was news to him.

The official name is the Treaty Between Canada and the United States of America to Define More Accurately and to Complete the International Boundary Between the Two Countries.

The document, signed by then-U.S . Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes and Canadian Minister of Justice Ernest Lapointe, established the IBC as a binational agency with one commissioner in each country, and charged the agency with maintaining an “effective” boundary. This meant, in part, maintaining a clear 20-foot-wide “boundary vista,” or swath — 10 feet on each side — along the entire border.

In a hand-delivered letter to the Leus in February, the IBC told the couple that the wall, although inside their property line, encroached 30 inches into the boundary vista and would have to be torn down or moved.

“If the wall is not removed and/or relocated … then the commission may itself cause the wall to be removed and the expenses for the removal will be invoiced by you,” wrote the U.S. commissioner for the IBC, Dennis Schornack.

In April, the Leus filed the first lawsuit ever brought against the agency.

The Leus’ lawyer, Brian Hodges, says the IBC has no authority to condemn property or regulate development on private lots without providing adequate notice to owners and local governments. The fact that Blaine officials knew nothing about the boundary-vista setback, Hodges argues, indicates the agency had not done a satisfactory job of notifying the public.

In a phone interview from his Washington, D.C., office, Schornack said he could not comment on the Leus’ case except to say property owners close to the border had “a common-sense obligation” to inquire about federal restrictions. He added that property owners in past conflicts willingly obeyed IBC requests.

Schornack’s half of the agency (the other half is in Ottawa) has an annual budget of $1.4 million. “Budget dust,” Schornack says.

The amount is barely enough to accomplish the agency’s primary mission, which is to maintain a clearly visible boundary. This means hiring work crews to go into remote areas with chain saws and machetes. Some sections in Alaska, Washington, Idaho and Montana have not been cleared in decades.

In a sense, the IBC is a victim of the historically good relations between Canada and the U.S., said Deputy Commissioner Kyle Hipsley.

Because “we’ve always been friends with Canada,” Hipsley says, the work of the agency isn’t seen as an urgent funding priority in Congress.

Schornack and Hipsley say they hope Congress will realize the importance of their work: The agency has asked to double its budget for 2008.

In Seattle, the U.S. attorney’s office is preparing a response on behalf of the IBC. The deadline is in June. The Leus continue to stare out at the construction site that would be their backyard.

Shirley-Ann, unable to set her dogs loose or plant flowers in the garden, pores over documents related to the case. Stacks of paper litter the floor beneath her chair in the bay window.

Occasionally she glances out at the view, as if trying to remember something. Every once in a while she issues a statement directed at the world.

“Retire in peace. Ha,” she says.

“Yes,” says Herbert, still smiling. “That’s right.”

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tomas.alex.tizon@latimes.com