The first work trucks rolled up at 47 N. Longspur on Christmas Eve 2013 — and they’ve never left.

The neighbors well remember the day. Overnight, it seemed, pickup trucks and trailers by the dozen started growling down the tranquil street in The Woodlands. They’d line up to park in front of the house, clogging the narrow roadway and bringing workers and construction noise with them.

“There was dust and dirt everywhere,” one neighbor said. “The whole street was just covered in mud constantly.”

Now it’s known as the “monster house,” an 18,000-square-foot home that sprawls across two lots in the curvy bend of a tree-lined street in Grogan Mills. Neighbors haven’t been able to stop it; the township can’t stop it. It stands — still under renovation — as a test to the controls in one of the nation’s iconic master-planned communities.

Even in a nation where homes are getting larger and larger, the Grogan's Mill property is legendary.

The couple who had lived in the house for years moved out a month or so before the trucks rolled up. The new owners wanted to renovate before moving in. But this was no small renovation.

Soon the constant construction stirred up an angry buzz among nearby residents. The once quiet street — populated by doctors and Exxon Mobil executives — became a beehive of cement trucks and delivery vans. Neighbors began to grouse to each other that workers were parking, eating lunch and playing soccer on their lawns.

Residential construction always inconveniences neighbors a bit — that’s a given, with the traffic and construction noise. Usually there’s an end in sight. But not at 47 N. Longspur. This month, the house has been under renovation for almost four-and-a-half years.

Neighbors say their complaints have gone nowhere. The township has threatened, cajoled and set numerous deadlines for construction to end — all of which have been broken. Finally, in October, The Woodlands Township filed a lawsuit against the owners and ordered them to wrap up the work. Seven months later, township officials are still scheduling regular inspections to see if the house is inching closer to completion.

For everyone who lives on the block, says neighbor Mary Lea Kirk, “this has been a real nightmare.”

‘Just crazy’

The home’s owners, Alexandro Rovirosa Martinez and Tanya Marquez Gutierrez, don’t yet live on Longspur Drive. They own another home in Spring.

Since the couple bought the house on Longspur, it’s been gutted and rebuilt so thoroughly, it doesn’t even resemble the house it used to be. It also doesn’t resemble any other house on the block — or in the neighborhood.

Rovirosa is the owner of Roma Energy Holdings, a company with offices in The Woodlands and in Mexico. Attempts to contact him were unsuccessful, and Rovirosa’s lawyer, Scott Kidd, a partner at Gauntt, Koen, Binney, Woodall & Kidd in The Woodlands, did not respond to requests to speak about his client’s house or the lawsuit.

Since the renovation began, the house has grown by at least 5,000 square feet. Another floor has been added. The front door has been moved to the side of the house. The driveway has been raised substantially and it is now hidden behind a wall, flanked by two security gates.

An additional small house has been built on the property, along with a pool and an outdoor kitchen. And an outer wall, reinforced with steel beams, has been built around the main home’s exterior.

“I don’t know what they’re doing over there,” said Kirk, who lives two doors down. “The whole thing is just crazy.”

Covenants ignored

Regulations in The Woodlands are supposed to prevent exactly this sort of situation. The Woodlands is a master-planned community, and written “covenants” spell out what’s permissible and what won’t be allowed. The township’s Development Standards Committee is a seven-member board with the power to enforce the covenants or approve variances.

So if you’re a homeowner and want to make a change to your property, you must submit a plan and get it approved by the committee, even if it’s just installing outdoor lights or putting in a fountain. If you don’t, you’ll hear from the committee and be obligated to make any necessary changes to keep your home compliant with the rules.

According to the lawsuit the township filed last fall, the renovation on Longspur has progressed almost as if those regulations don’t exist.

The lawsuit says Rovirosa and Gutierrez have “continuously” violated The Woodlands Covenants: The construction has been too visible and too loud, and additions to the house have not been properly approved by the committee. The committee has taken issue with, among other things, a sidewalk that lines the perimeter of the parking, the outdoor lighting above the tennis court, an extra building described as “maid’s quarters,” a drainage system, a dog run, a fountain and a sculpture in the front yard.

Decorative walls in front were built, then torn down because they violated township covenants. Other changes lingered in limbo, awaiting inspection or approval, for months or years.

“Despite numerous communications and ample opportunity, defendant has blatantly failed and/or refused to correct the violations,” the lawsuit says. It also says the owners have failed to meet several deadlines set for the completion of construction.

By refusing to comply with the neighborhood rules, the suit says, they’ve forced the township to hire a lawyer. So the lawsuit is asking for attorney’s fees, between $200,000 and $1 million.

Growing frustration

According to The Woodlands Township’s property compliance manager, Kim McKenna, township staff members have been advised not to discuss the property because it is the subject of litigation.

But documents from the past several years show how the frustration has grown. Deadlines for completion have been set several times and not met.

In 2015, the development standards committee demanded that Rovirosa and Gutierrez allow a committee member to view the property once a week, ensuring it was proceeding on time and according to standards.

In July of that year, the owners were given a deadline of Feb. 29, 2016, to complete the house. It didn’t happen.

A year later, a neighbor wrote to the township’s property compliance office.

“Seeing as we’re now a year beyond that deadline and construction seems to be escalating rather than wrapping up, I’d like to know what the situation is,” he wrote. “It's been 3+ years now we’ve been inconvenienced by this, which is far more time than it took to build two hospitals and the entire Exxon campus. I think we’re entitled to some assurance that there is indeed an end in sight.…”

In April 2017, the township offered Rovirosa and Gutierrez a “memorandum of agreement” to avoid litigation. The home’s owners would pay $100,000 each month as a “development deposit” until the home’s exterior was finished — and would do everything they could to speed up its progress.

In response, Rovirosa paid $100,000 and began to make progress toward completing the house.

Then came Hurricane Harvey. The home took on water and Rovirosa asked for another deadline extension.

In October, attorney Bret Strong sent Rovirosa and his attorney a letter on behalf of The Woodlands, demanding a plan for completion and warning him the township was about to file suit.

“This project has become a real issue for the residents of the neighborhood and our community,” he wrote. “…Our patience and the public’s patience have neared its end.”

Within days, the township had filed a lawsuit.

The litigation was “too little, too late,” said a neighbor on the block who didn’t want to be named.

“The town has really been inept about the whole process,” he said. “They didn’t start getting serious about it until three years into the process.”

At first, the folks who live nearby just complained individually. They’d call the township and report the noise, the traffic, the slow progress. After two years of construction, Kirk said, “Finally we kind of said, ‘We’ve had it.’ So we did it as a group.”

Neighbors would file complaints and sit in on committee meetings, listing the covenant violations they saw.

“We don’t understand why the committee allowed this to go on as long as it did,” Kirk said. “This does not look good for The Woodlands.”

Deborah Sargeant, who was a member of the Development Standards Committee until late last year, says the board didn’t simply fail to act.

“Our hands were tied,” she said.

The Woodlands isn’t a city, Sargeant said, which means “we have all the responsibility of enforcing those covenants — without any tools to enforce them.”

When a homeowner violates covenants, she said, the committee’s only recourse is to file a lawsuit or place a lien.

“I recognize it’s an issue for homeowners around there,” she said. “It’s been a nightmare to them.”

Almost finished?

A few neighbors have managed to talk to Rovirosa when he came by to look at the property, but most folks on the block seem to have just stewed for the past few years, watching the house expand into a massive property that dwarfs their own homes and alters the look and feel of the block.

The house has long been a source of dismayed gossip, said Kirk, the neighbor two doors away. “I would run into people and they’d say, ‘What’s going on with the monster house now?’”

In October, Kidd, Rovirosa’s attorney, assured the township’s attorney in an email that his client was “trying to comply and is taking the agreement very seriously.”

Indeed, Rovirosa himself sent an email to the township’s compliance manager that included a timeline of construction delays that he says have sent this renovation — originally intended to last just six months — spinning out of control. He pointed out damage to the home’s original roof and wiring that had to be repaired. Flooding and bad weather that slowed down progress. Rushed work that had to be redone, including the tile work in the pool. Multiple photos in his timeline of delays show the home’s slow evolution.

This month, township officials believe the “monster house” saga may finally be nearing an end.

Because the home’s renovation has broken covenants, township compliance officials will have to tour the finished property before they can deem it livable and allow the owners to move in.

Walter Lisiewski, the head of the Development Standards Committee, said recently that he couldn’t talk about specifics, but he said the owners are making “good progress” toward completion and sounded hopeful that the construction might end soon. A representative from the compliance office is visiting the site regularly, he said.

“All I can tell you is that the owner is working very hard to finish the house,” Lisiewski said.

The township is expected to discuss the home’s completion at the development standards committee’s regular meeting on Wednesday.

Will this be the deadline that finally holds? Will the house finally be completed? After so many years, the neighbors aren’t getting their hopes up.

“It is what it is,” one neighbor said. “Nothing I say or do is going to make it go faster.”

alyson.ward@chron.com

twitter.com/alysonward