It’s the Size of Dumpster That Determines Status Here

Bill Felder was pointing out a boxy little white house, one-story stucco, without an ocean view, on a side street on Lido Isle in Newport Beach.

Felder was especially interested in this house because he is a builder, quite a successful one from the look of it, who was standing in front of one of his own creations, a two-story stucco number painted a tasteful, subtle terra cotta.

“Take a guess at how much they just sold that for?” Felder says, motioning down the street and employing a tone that a three-card monte dealer might use on a tourist who had stumbled into alien territory.

I shrug my shoulders, conceding defeat.

“Four hundred seventy,” he says, meaning thousands, of course. “And it’s a bulldoze job.”

Felder, you understand, means that literally. No sooner does escrow close on these quaint remnants of less opulent times then the wrecking crew arrives. Then they start over, and better.

“And the cheapest scraper I’ve seen on this side,” Felder says with a wave of his arm toward the waterfront homes in front of us, “is $1.2 million. So they tear that down and put up a million-dollar house. By the time you’re done, you’re talking about $2.5 million.”

Such figures bring comfort to the homeowners of Lido Isle, generating that special warmth that only a good investment can bring, and so they are digging in--just about as deep as one can on an island.

They are in the midst of a demolition and renovation frenzy that, according to reliable estimates, has left not a single street untouched. Paint-splattered dumpsters hog coveted street parking and the vans and pickup trucks of accompanying work crews take up most of what’s left.

“The joke at dinner parties is that it’s no longer the Mercedes in your garage that’s the thing, but the dumpster in front of it,” says realtor Kay Polovina, herself a renovator who has lived on Lido most of her life. “It is definitely the status symbol.”

Another newly renovated resident, who asks that her name not be used, confesses to posing bathing beauty style for a snapshot in front of her own rather impressive dumpster.

And not to be too picky about it, she confides that some residents presumedly without their own dumpsters have surreptitiously availed themselves of her own.

“It kind of ticks you off,” she says. “People have thrown rusty old barbecues, even a bathroom wash basin into our dumpster. Plus, there’s the dog doo-doo, all the walkers with their packages that don’t want to wait until they get home.

“The other day there was a guy walking down the street with a piece of concrete headed for our dumpster. He was strolling casually, as casually as you can with a chunk of concrete, and so then I said hello. He kept on walking. . . . Until I had one myself, I didn’t think about how possessive you can get of your dumpster. You find yourself kind of lurking around it.”

Not that there is much room for lurking what with all the hammering, plastering and painting going on. Residents of this snippet of real estate in Newport Bay are putting in new windows, new floors and new entry ways. They are toppling walls and punching out low ceilings. Then, what the heck, they might knock it all down and start from scratch.

“There is a house on the water in the high threes that’s in escrow now,” says realtor Polovina, meaning millions, of course.

“I bet you they tear that one down. . . . It’s a great lot, but the house does need a lot of work.”

What that means, as everybody knows, is an end to those awful little chopped up rooms with dark carpeting and flocked wallpaper. Newer is light, open and airy. This is understood to be very Californian, and certainly, very Lido.

Here even the street names--Nice, Trieste, San Remo--manage to reflect a Mediterranean savoir-faire without sacrificing good old Germanic orderliness. Except for the shoreline drives, the streets are alphabetized.

The beaches are private, as are the yacht and tennis clubs. Flowers seem always to be in bloom, and well-fed cats lounge in the hedges outlining many of the 860 homes.

Those on the periphery make up for a somewhat regrettable shortage of green space with an expanse of blue just out the back. This is where they dock their 50-foot yachts next to their smaller, more fuel-efficient “bay boats,” ideal for jaunts to local restaurants.

But residents say what really sets them apart is their community’s cozy, small-town atmosphere. Here, they all look out for each other.

Which is why, of course, homeowners seem so concerned about all the construction, as Pete Yeomans, a general contractor who works exclusively on Lido, can attest to.

“Oh, people stop by all the time,” he says above the whirl of a power saw in one resident’s garage. “They want to know what we are doing and how much it is costing.”

What it costs, Yeomans says, is usually in the neighborhood of $250,000 for your standard new look, such as a recent job of changing a rather predictable six bedrooms into a spectacular four.

“We changed one of the bedrooms into a big bathroom for the lady,” he says before rattling off such standards as a sunken tub, vanity and whirlpool. “And it has a walk-in shoe closet.”

Then there was another house, an electrical contractor pipes up, where the owners just spent $30,000 to give their kitchen cabinets a face lift.

“That was just for the cabinets,” he says.

But so as not to leave the impression that everybody on Lido is absorbed in the sociology of home improvement, it is worth noting that at least one waterfront resident, now living in her third Lido home, took exception to the idea.

“That’s ridiculous,” she says, “I’ve never heard anything so stupid. This island started out as a colony of summer houses. This is why all the remodeling is going on, to try to make these livable city homes. These properties are 32 to 42 feet wide. I’ve been on boats that are wider than that.

“This is a very friendly community, an extremely friendly community,” she adds. Then she had to go. And no, she says, I did not need to know her name.

Dianne Klein’s column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Klein by writing to her at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7406.