A derelict home is finally demolished through a health and safety receivership with Calreceivers
Phil Trifiro looked forward to Friday evening.
It would be the first time in 30 years that he would stand in his kitchen, wash dishes and have a view.
For three decades, the Thousand Oaks man and his family have lived across the street from 331 Dryden St., which steadily declined into a state of complete disrepair.
On Friday, crews with Tustin-based JMC Concepts finished demolishing the derelict house.
“For 30 years we’ve been looking at that eyesore,” Trifiro said Friday morning as he stood on the sidewalk with his wife, Mary Jane.
The long-abandoned home, owned by Eric G. Pagdin, had water-stained insulation and tattered plastic hanging from roof members.
Under a partially missing roof, the home was so jammed with stuff it was impossible to get from the front door to the back of the house.
Complaints had come in through the years about the 1,243-square-foot, three-bedroom house.
After years of failed, intermittent attempts to get Pagdin to clean up the disrepair and to talk to him, Thousand Oak officials asked a judge to put the house into receivership, which would allow for its repair or demolition.
It took less than a month for Mark Adams, the court-appointed receiver, to realize the 50-year-old structure had to come down.
“It was just not a sound enough structure,” said Adams, president of Los Angeles-based California Receivership Group LLC.
As a Bobcat skid-steer loader tore down the remaining front facade and structure, workers tossed tiles into a growing pile in the backyard, which previously had been so overgrown 11 cars had been partially concealed in the vegetation. A boat was also removed from the property.
Trifiro said that for years an old car sat in the driveway, until an unknown neighbor rolled it onto the street, where it sat until the city removed it.
Disintegrating sacks of wood chips, concrete and stucco remained in the backyard, which looked out onto a view of a valley and distant hills along with a drill press, a large, rusted oil drum and other detritus.
Once work is finished, Adams will sell the property and apply the proceeds to the cost of the cleanup. Any remaining profit will go to Pagdin.
“I’ve never received so many calls about selling a property,” Adams said, adding that the neighbors had lived with the mess for years and it was important to him to sell it to someone who is “going to do something right” rather than a person interested in flipping the property.
The Trifiros said the house at 331 Dryden St. wasn’t always in a state of disrepair. They remember when the backyard was lushly landscaped, and the owner had an aviary and their children played together.
“He was always working on the house,” Mary Jane Trifiro said.
Personal items, such as a family Bible, photographs, a scrapbook of articles from World War II, a baseball card collection, stemware and other effects from the cleanup and demolition have been stored by the construction crew.
“I’m very impressed with this crew,” Phil Trifiro said. “They are doing a very good job.”
