VAN NUYS : Chateau Motel’s Future to Be Reviewed

In October, residents and merchants cheered when a nonprofit group announced it had leased the abandoned Chateau Motel and promised to transform the seedy property into a job training center for disabled people.

A dozen residents showed support for the Westminster-based agency, Asian Pacific Community Services (APAC), by appearing at the Sepulveda Boulevard motel to participate in a community cleanup. The volunteers swept, disinfected and painted some of the 46 rooms at the motel--once the site of prostitution, drug-dealing and several slayings.

But five months later, members of Asian Pacific’s motel advisory committee, made up of area residents and property owners, say the agency has failed to obtain grant funds necessary to pay for overhauling the property and starting the job training center, and may be poised to withdraw from the project.

“The owner apparently is displeased with APAC’s performance,” said Charles Erdell, a local Neighborhood Watch leader and member of the motel advisory board, which serves as a liaison between area residents and the agency.

“Apparently, APAC did not move fast enough with improvements, and the owner decided they might as well just reopen the property as a regular motel,” he added.

APAC officials did not return several telephone calls on Monday, and a representative from Councilman Marvin Braude’s office had not heard of any change in the motel’s status.

Angela Oh, a Los Angeles-based lawyer who said she “represented the interests” of the motel’s current owner, Jui Chao Chiu, would not comment on the situation.

“I resent the implication that the current owner had anything to do with the problems at the motel,” Oh said, even before a reporter asked her how long Chiu had owned the property.

In 1993, Braude asked the city zoning administration to investigate the motel along with 10 others on Sepulveda Boulevard between Sherman Way and Magnolia Boulevard. Later, the city declared the inn a public nuisance, linking it to rising crime in the vicinity. City zoning officials later decided that operation of the motel would be permitted only if the owner complied with a list of 27 conditions, including security improvements.

“Of all the conditions, the only change that I’ve seen is better lighting,” said Erdell, who owns an apartment building across the street from the Chateau.

“The man who lives there, as caretaker, is not a licensed security guard,” Erdell added.

One of the motel’s 27 operating conditions requires “24-hour, on-call security response and eight-hour-per-day on-site presence from a state-licensed security firm,” according to city documents.

Asian Pacific officials and area residents will meet today at 1 p.m. to discuss the future of the project, Erdell said.