Local News in Brief : Surprise Demolition

Bulldozers hired by a developer planning to build a 160-home gated community on the longtime site of the Renaissance Pleasure Faire in Agoura swept through the property Thursday, demolishing about 50 structures belonging to the event’s sponsors.

The demolition--which claimed six stages, six drink stands and the fair’s front gate--came as a surprise to fair supporters and preservationists, who are attempting to block the development.

Stanley Romain, attorney for developer Brian Heller, said fair sponsors had agreed to remove the structures by June 30. “We felt we had given them more than ample time to remove the structures,” Romain said. “So, today we demolished them.”

But Kevin Patterson, son of the fair’s founder, said that he had not been notified that the buildings would be “turned into rubble.” He called the action “a classic example of a belligerent developer taking the law into his own hands.”

Fair sponsors had rented the property for the last 26 years to stage the event, which transformed the area’s rolling hills into an Elizabethan English village for six consecutive weekends.