As Jeffrey Becom, president of the nonprofit Carmel Art Association, stands in the center of the Segal Gallery room, he leans over and carefully places a golf ball on the wood floor. The ball begins rolling slowly toward the wall several feet away, then picks up speed. It hits the wall with a thud.
“This whole room has tilted,” Becom says. It’s just one clue of many that Carmel’s oldest art gallery, founded in 1927 by artists, has got a problem, one that no one seems willing to take responsibility for, leaving CAA with a possible $400,000 repair bill, equal to the nonprofit’s annual operating budget.
Besides the sloping floor, there are cracks in walls inside and outside the historic building. The lobby floor made up of redwood end cuts, installed by artists in 1947, is filled with gaps – pieces of floor keep popping up.
The issue began about seven years ago, less than a year after a major excavation next door at the corner of Dolores Street and Fifth Avenue in 2018. That was for a multi-use building that never got built due to the original owners, Leidig Draper Properties, running out of funds. (Locals dubbed the large hole “The Pit.”) In January 2020, a forensic engineering firm hired by CAA, GeoForensics Inc., concluded the 1- to 2-inch drop of the gallery’s northern wall was caused by the excavation.
“It’s very clearly the fault of driving the pilings next to us, because we’re on a sand dune,” Becom says. The I-beams visible in the soil along the property line were temporarily placed, with no concrete added for support.
CAA’s insurance company declined to pay for repairs, assigning blame to others. Leidig Draper Properties denied responsibility for the damage and instead blamed CAA for its own earlier renovation project that added a new roof and improvements on the south side of the gallery. (A representative for Leidig Draper did not respond for comment by the Weekly’s deadline.)
Neighboring nonprofit Carmel Foundation, which owns a small apartment complex directly behind The Pit, suffered greater damage. One apartment was red-tagged by city officials, forcing its tenant, a low-income senior citizen, to move out. A laundry room had to be shuttered. The repairs, which will be completed in November, will likely cost around $800,000, says President/CEO Kim Stemler. She expects they will get some reimbursement from insurance.
Efforts by CAA and the Carmel Foundation to enter into mediation with Leidig Draper’s insurance company have been frustrating. “They’re delaying and waiting for us to just give up. We can’t do that, we’re 98 years old and we aren’t going to go away,” Becom says.
In addition to the upcoming $400,000 bill, CAA paid $70,000 for a new roof and $10,000 for a tall fence to prevent possible falls over a temporary fence between the two properties. They’ve also spent about $100,000 in legal fees. A fundraising campaign is underway.
The new owner of the property with The Pit, Esperanza Carmel, owned by Monaco developer Patrice Pastor, is about to start construction of a 22,443-square-foot mixed use building. Pastor sent a letter to Becom on Oct. 10 stating that construction will begin Nov. 24.