Irvine Co. Gains Control of Land in Lease Dispute

IRVINE — With a stroke of a pen rather than a wrecking ball, Los Angeles businessman Harry Shuster on Tuesday relinquished control of a disputed parcel of land to the Irvine Co.

His peaceful eviction and quiet exit from 300 acres near the El Toro Y closes another chapter in Orange County’s nastiest tenant landlord dispute that once threatened to destroy the Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre and Wild Rivers water park. But his attorneys vow it won’t be the end of the story.

“As MacArthur said: ‘We will return,’ ” Shuster attorney Wayne Call said. “This is just one minor skirmish in the overall battle. We’re not discouraged in the least.”

The Irvine Co. doesn’t appear to be taking chances with a tenant who has proved as tenacious and combative as any army general. The company’s first act upon regaining control of its land Tuesday?

“We changed the locks on the entrance and exit gates,” Irvine Co. spokesman Larry Thomas said.

Shuster has been fighting for a 26-year extension after his long-term lease expired Feb. 28. He alleges that an Irvine Co. negotiator made an oral promise to extend the agreement.

The Irvine Co. disputed Shuster’s contention, started eviction proceedings, and was awarded possession of the property last month.

Tuesday’s formalities, which involved little more than lawyers from both sides signing some paperwork, capped an uneventful transfer in a property dispute that once had both sides bracing for the bulldozers.

That, of course, is still a possibility.

Although Shuster’s attorneys have appealed his eviction and are still fighting for a lease extension, they are holding tight to their trump card--a unique clause in Shuster’s lease that gives him the right to remove all improvements to the property.

Those “improvements” are Shuster’s former subtenants, the amphitheater and water park, which now pay rent to the Irvine Co.

Shuster contends the Irvine Co. plotted all along to push him off the property and swipe those two valuable tenants without compensating him. If he fails to win a lease extension, a decision that could take up to three years to be decided by the Court of Appeal, Shuster’s lawyers say he might make good on previous threats to tear down the amphitheater and water park rather than leave them for the Irvine Co.

Whether he can is yet another legal tangle.

An injunction currently protects the amphitheater from demolition. Shuster’s lease says he has a 90-day period to tear anything out, a window of time that the Irvine Co. contends expires at the end of May.

Shuster’s attorneys naturally dispute that interpretation and say the 90-day window doesn’t kick in until all the other legal wrangling is resolved.