David Lee Hoffman spent 53 years turning two acres of Lagunitas hillside into a sprawling, self-built world of cement caves, temple-like tea stores and a homemade ship named Titanic II floating in a garden pond. On Tuesday, the 82-year-old tea importer was ordered out for good, as a court-appointed receiver took over the property he calls The Last Resort and moved to sell it after nearly two decades of legal battling with Marin County.
The order capped a court case that dragged on for close to 20 years and cycled through five different judges, according to NBC Bay Area, whose reporter Joe Rosato Jr. visited the compound as Hoffman packed. Marin County Superior Court had ordered Hoffman to vacate by Tuesday, with the receiver set to take control of the property that morning. County building inspectors had previously red-tagged several of the structures and ordered them torn down, and Hoffman admitted he never obtained a building permit for what he built.
Hoffman told the station that officials were effectively taking his property, his possessions and his life's work over that missing permit. He said he was unsure where he would go once he left the land that had been his home for more than five decades.
A Compound Built From Salvage and Sustainability Dreams
The Last Resort was never a conventional home. Hoffman built exotic temples and caves over the decades to store his tea, along with a chicken coop and dozens of experimental structures he envisioned as a demonstration of sustainable living. The compound's more than 30 unpermitted structures were assembled from salvaged materials, including granite shipped from Fujian, China, cobblestones pulled from San Francisco streets and slate shingles that once covered musician Don Henley's Los Angeles estate, according to the Point Reyes Light.
Among the eco-inventions on site were a worm-composting toilet nicknamed “Le Petit Pissoir” and a three-story, solar-powered “Shower Tower,” the same outlet reported, describing systems Hoffman designed to test zero-waste design principles. Sinks on the property drained into a pond that watered an organic garden, and the compound had long welcomed tours and school groups eager to see the setup firsthand. The compound also had custom bio-filtered graywater and rainwater systems.
Before Silk Road Teas, a Life Shaped by Travel
Hoffman bought a two-acre property in Lagunitas for $30,000 in the early 1970s after years of traveling through Asia, going on to found Silk Road Teas and become one of the first Western importers to popularize rare Chinese pu'erh teas, according to Business Insider. He sold that company in 2004 and later ran The Phoenix Collection tea archive. His travels through remote Chinese farming villages to source handcrafted organic teas were documented in the 2007 film All in This Tea, directed by Les Blank and Gina Leibrecht, per Wikipedia.
Even as the legal fight intensified, Hoffman kept building. He continued adding new structures while the case was ongoing, and constructed additional buildings even after inspectors had already checked the property, according to the station's report. He has said his structures were built to last for centuries, and supporters helped him pack his tea collection this week, with Hoffman voicing concern that outside temperatures could damage tea he had kept safe inside his caves.
State Recognition Couldn't Stop the Eviction
The tension between preservation and code enforcement played out publicly well before this week. In February 2024, California's Historical Resources Commission voted unanimously to nominate The Last Resort for the National Register of Historic Places, defying an explicit request from Marin County Community Development Agency Director Sarah Jones to reject the application over unpermitted construction and health hazards, the Point Reyes Light reported at the time. The U.S. Department of the Interior placed The Last Resort on the National Register in May, but that historic designation may not save the property's structures, as the same court order requiring the sale also directs the receiver to sell the land with the buyer responsible for addressing the longstanding code violations.
The tension between preservation and code enforcement played out publicly well before this week. Advocates cited a local landmark designation during later eviction appeals, though the designation meant little in the legal battle, the Light reported.
A 2021 Sale Order and a Mounting Bill
The legal saga includes a formal vacate-and-sell order issued by Judge Paul Haakenson in 2021, according to a February report from the Point Reyes Light. The order remained in force through later challenges and delays. By 2021, fines tied to the property had reached hundreds of thousands of dollars, while debts and receiver fees had also accrued. County authorities have said the sale proceeds are meant to help satisfy that outstanding debt.
Marin County officials told NBC Bay Area their interest is in resolving health, safety and code violations according to law and court orders, and that the county is simply following the direction of Marin County Superior Court. In February hearings, county legal representatives reiterated that any buyer acquiring the property from the receiver must submit a plan for bringing the property into compliance, which county staff would evaluate, the Light reported.
During 2024 receivership hearings, court-appointed receiver Eric Beatty disclosed that two architectural preservation nonprofits, the San Francisco-based Buckminster Fuller Institute and the Wisconsin-based Kohler Foundation, had expressed interest in acquiring and preserving the compound as a living museum, according to the Point Reyes Light. Local supporters had also formed the Lagunitas Project to raise funds toward saving the site, though no purchase materialized before this week's deadline.
Neighbor Dispute at the Root of a Long Fight
Don Gates, who has followed the case, said a dispute with a neighbor snowballed into Hoffman losing his life's work. Hoffman, who is battling Lyme disease that has left him frail, said he had considered staying and risking being handcuffed rather than leave voluntarily. The county had threatened to have him removed by sheriff's deputies if he refused to vacate.
In the end, Hoffman packed hundreds of pounds of tea this week and planned to move his collection into a storage facility as the receiver prepared to take control of the property Tuesday morning. What happens next to the caves, temples and Titanic II now rests with whatever buyer is willing to take on both the compound and the code violations that have defined its fate for two decades.
