Holy City sells for $6 million
Neighbors fret over what owners plan for rustic 142-acre site
LOS GATOS — After a decade on the market, the storied ghost town of Holy City — once the site of a flamboyant Nazi sympathizer and his oddball mix of roadside amenities including a small zoo and a peep show — has new owners.
But what buyers Robert and Trish Duggan, billionaires and top donors to the Church of Scientology, have in store for the rustic 142 acres off Highway 17 that they acquired for $6 million cash — almost half the $11 million 2006 asking price — remains a mystery.
And that has speculation running rampant among neighbors who’ve grown accustomed to it as a quiet, forgotten place among the redwoods.
“My big fear is that they’ll build houses or condos that obstruct my view or interfere with the wild- life that comes through,” said neighbor Mateo Uriarte. “It’s a little piece of heaven up here, and the reason we moved here is because we don’t want the hustle and bustle. We just hope they don’t bring the hustle and bustle to us.”
Much of the land sits on steep hillsides, and Santa Clara County planner Carolyn Walsh said it’s zoned for sparse residential use.
“Any other use such as a retreat, a camp or a place of worship could be allowed but only with a use permit,” Walsh said. “A site requirement is that it be a very low-intensity type of use.”
But neighbors living in the swath of land between Holy City and Highway 17 would love a little reassurance from the buyers, who as yet have remained silent about their plans and did not respond to interview requests.
Robert Duggan is a lifelong entrepreneur who saw considerable success in an early Ethernet company and surgical-robotics before striking the mother lode in biotech. The Phar- macyclics CEO reaped a $3.5 billion payday when the dying company developed a revolutionary oncology drug that led to its purchase by pharma giant AbbVie last year. His wife is an artist, and some neighbors believe she may have been drawn to the site because longtime resident Tom Stanton ran a beloved art glass shop that was there nearly four decades before he died last year.
“I heard she’s interested in setting up a studio
for glass art,” said Sandy Birkholz, who lives at the top of the hill overlooking Holy City land.
“She learned some trade from him,” added Richard Matusich, a real estate agent who listed the property but never met the buyer. “Then he passed, and she might open up another glass studio.”
Matusich wouldn’t say more than that. Leo Pellicciotti, the 94-year-old man who just sold the site, deferred questions to Matusich, citing a nondisclosure agreement he signed. And Matusich referred further questions to broker Bob Nastasi, who when reached by telephone asked who said he was involved in the deal and did not return subsequent calls.
Jessica Lizama, who works at the nearby Redwood Estates general store, speculates that with the buyers’ wealth, they must be planning something — maybe something that people don’t want to hear.
“Knowing they have that kind of money, that means there’s some kind of development coming,” Lizama said. “We don’t need that here.”
No church was ever built at Holy City, although a majestic redwood stand remains a site for unofficial services, with a little shrine of figurines and photographs. Neighbors are used to walking dogs and wandering on the marked private property that stretches deep into the brushy hillside thickets off the Old Santa Cruz Highway.
In Holy City’s heyday during the years leading up to World War II, it was known for its garish roadside signs drawing people to a service station, zoo, observatory, peep show, soda stand, radio station (call letters KFQU), barbershop, shoe repair and you-name-it alongside the only route between San Jose and Santa Cruz.
“I came into this world to introduce a New World within the present world,” reads literature by necktie- salesman- turned- cultleader William E. Riker. “It will be a new world of Supreme Law and Order, harmoniously working.”
Riker’s diatribes veered into expositions regarding the superiority of the white race, and he famously faced sedition charges after sending fan mail to Adolf Hitler and passing out leaflets recommending the U.S. align with Axis forces in World War II.
The four-time also-ran candidate for state governor known affectionately as “The Comforter” by his Perfect Christian Divine Way disciples saw Holy City begin its decline around that time, not so much due to his unpopular rantings as to the opening of Highway 17, which diverted traffic and his cash base of road-weary and curious travelers. After falling ill, Riker converted to Roman Catholicism at age 93, three years before his death at Agnews State Hospital in Santa Clara in 1969.
Apart from Robert Duggan’s business dealings, the couple’s connection to the Church of Scientology was reported by Bloomberg in a 2013 story that called him the biggest financial contributor to the church.
He’s also atop a list of donors in a 2009 Scientology pamphlet on the creation of the church’s “New Flag Land Base” in Florida. Realtor Nastasi was also on the list, and the pamphlet described them as being part of a “dedicated team of Scientologists who are working shoulder to shoulder to bring about construction of the New Flag Land Base and the ultimate release of Super Power.”
Birkholz said she was concerned that people “will get crazy with their speculating” before anything is known about the new owners’ plans for the site.
“They might right away demonize the people just thinking about the things that might happen,” Birkholz said.
Birkholz, Uriarte and others categorized the area of self-described “mountain folks” as a place where neighbors look out for each other but don’t get nosy, where residents aren’t hassled for having old rundown cars in their yards and a “live and let live” philosophy prevails.
Birkholz added that the new owners “don’t owe anybody an explanation.”
“But there are good, neighborly things they could do to let us know what’s going on.”