Yes, this is an overindulgence of a child – but I’m not nearly as offended by that as I am by the neighbor’s complaints and the government’s intervention. After all, it’s only a treehouse.

When Les Firestein, a television producer, and his wife, Gwyn Lurie, a screenwriter, wanted to do something really special for their daughter, Sydney, they enlisted their friend Roderick Wolgamott Romero.

Romero is a renowned builder of elaborate treehouses for such celebrities as Sting and Donna Karan. His work can be found in the "fantasy gift" section of this year's Neiman Marcus holiday catalog. Beginning price: $50,000.

In the backyard of the Firestein-Lurie home, which sits on a tree-studded half-acre north of Sunset Boulevard, Romero and his buddies built a roughly 10-foot-by-10-foot structure of reclaimed wood, salvaged windows and vintage stained glass from Buenos Aires that would quicken the heart of any fun-loving child or parent. The treehouse includes a viewing deck bordered by a railing crafted from tree branches from the backyard.

In return, Romero asked for a week's worth of lodging and all the Baja Fresh meals he could eat. With his tattooed arms and braided, knee-length hair swept up under a tweed cap, Romero and his pals worked for days, even in the rain.

Richard Fleming, the couple's next-door neighbor and a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon, was not amused.

He feared that children could perch in this aerie and look in on him and his wife in their backyard pool and hot tub. He suspected, also, that city codes had been violated.

Enter the city of Los Angeles. As the treehouse neared completion last Thursday, city inspector Thomas Sze arrived on the Firestein-Lurie doorstep, responding, he told them, to an anonymous complaint.

"Oh, that's big," Lurie said he told them after looking at the treehouse and the much larger platform on which it rested. Sze also expressed concern about the structure's safety. On Friday, he delivered a written order that all work be halted.

"We're requiring plans and permits if [they] want to continue," Dave Keim, the city's chief of code enforcement, said in an interview Tuesday. "We'll work with them to try to legalize thisÂ…. It's not going to be easy."

The morals in this story?

1) There is too much government when even treehouses are regulated structures.

2) Some folks need to learn that their property rights end at their property line.

3) Kids are not allowed to be kids today – we either coddle them so much that they never experience the simple joys of childhood, or we overindulge them so much that they never experience them as simple pleasures.

Posted by: Greg at 01:45 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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