City Sets Date to Consider Revoking Permit for Weddings at Historic Mansion

Though Arpi Evans intends to fold her wedding venue business at the , she nevertheless will fight to hold onto its special events permit, she said Tuesday.

Currently involved in multiple civil suits concerning the historic mansion, she has racked up what city staffers say are multiple code violations for weddings there.

"It's been a tough piece of property," Evans, a San Juan Capistrano resident, said.

The Planning Commission has scheduled a public hearing Sept. 13 to determine if it should revoke the "conditional use permit." The permit lays out special rules under which Evans may operate the venue.

Evans said she wants to hold onto the conditional use permit to be able to carry out existing wedding contracts. "I don't want any litigation from brides and grooms who have already signed contracts."

. They've accused the city of not enforcing portions of the permit that regulate the volume of party music and where on the premise alcohol may be served, among other restrictions.

"She isn't playing by the rules," Cameron Grenier said.

The permit mandates that Evans comply with all state laws, including those imposed by the the California Department of Alcohol Beverage Control. Although ABC initially granted Evans more lenient rules for serving alcohol, it eventually responded to noise complaints by barring alcohol from the rear of the mansion.

ABC told city staffers that its "more recent investigation of the operation has revealed a pattern of violations" of that rule, and for a short period, the ABC declined to issue permits at all. ABC said that its investigators saw alcohol being served anyway.

There's also a condition in the permit that requires the city to go in and monitor events. "Our monitoring of those events indicated noise exceeded city-allowed levels," city staffers wrote in a report.

Evans has installed a "sound blanket" to keep noise from wafting into neighbor's homes, but it hasn't yet gotten the city's stamp of approval.

Evans contends that all of the complaints come solely from the Greniers. They live on a scrap parcel just behind the mansion, left over from the construction of the next-door Seasons Seniors Apartments, built by Grenier's dad about 10 years ago.

"This is not a quiet area that they are living in—if this was a neighborhood we wouldn't be here," Evans said, referring to the commercial zoning on the property.

Cameron Grenier's great-grandparents built the Forster Mansion in 1910. She said that with the weddings it's "been so abused."

Evans had a lease option agreement with property owners Phillip and Maryanne Charis to purchase the mansion, but that expired in May.

She also owns the "beach bar" Coconuts in Dana Point. Evans filed for bankruptcy April, saying the cost of running the wedding venue business has put her in substantial debt. In March, she filed a suit against the Charises for fraud, because she says they never told her they didn't have the proper event permits from the get-go.

The Charises had already filed an unlawful detainer suit against her, claiming she owes them more than $150,000 in past-due rent.