World's biggest lottery winner focuses on preserving neighborhood as he knew it

By Kate Northrop

$2 billion Powerball lottery winner Edwin Castro's Malibu mansion was one of the many homes flattened in the Palisades fire disaster earlier this year. Now, he's buying up several plots of land to help rebuild the area he grew up in.

Several investors have been reportedly picking through the ruins to seize and repurpose plots of land that were destroyed in the devastating L.A. fires, and one of them is none other than 33-year-old $2 billion Powerball jackpot lottery winner Edwin Castro.

Castro, an Altadena native, isn't just looking to build housing complexes for profit. While he said he's not giving the future homes away for charity, he's focused on selling single family homes to residents looking to settle in the area permanently so that he can help restore the neighborhood he knew before the fires.

"This is for a family that wants to move in," Castro told the Wall Street Journal while walking through the remains of a lost home. "Those are the people that need to be looked out for right now."

In January, the Eaton fire decimated Castro's hometown alongside the Palisades fire, which led to at least 31 deaths and more than 16,000 destroyed structures.

So far, Castro has spent $10 million on 15 plots. Most of the residents selling their land are those who would rather take a lump sum over embarking on an arduous reconstruction projection, which could take several years.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Altadena residents are voicing concerns about what the investor activity means for the "small-town feel" of the community characterized by Craftsman houses and Spanish Revival homes, with one local group fearing a "second wave of disaster" spurred on by the arrival of investors looking to profit off the tragedy.

Castro is cognizant of this, which is why he wants to build single-family homes and exclusively sell at market value to those seriously wanting to set their roots down in Altadena.

"The profit margin doesn't need to be egregious," he told reporters. "But I'm not building these homes just to give them away."

It's a move that he says will hopefully keep long term families in the neighborhood and people turning homes into rentals at bay. Castro, who is not married, is also thinking of settling there, toying with the idea of building a home on two cleared lots. He dreams of adding several eclectic and unique features to the future house, such as secret underground rooms, and making it a distinctive "Willy Wonka-esque" building.

"I want to have kids like yesterday," Castro said to the newspaper. "It's about family. Family is important."

Castro draws a lot of inspiration from his father, who worked in construction and would often show off the neat projects he got to work on in his job, such as the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

"He'd be like, 'I built that building. I worked on that. I'm working on that,'" Castro recalled his father saying.

The lottery winner wants to do the same for his future kids — show them that he helped rebuild the community that he holds near and dear.

"I want it to feel like the old neighborhood," he explained. "Like if you put all those houses pre-fire in a time bubble."

Some current residents are skeptical about his plans, which could take as long as ten years to complete.

"He's just another person trying to get some profit," resident Seriina Covarrubias told the Wall Street Journal. Covarrubias' home had remained standing after the fires but retained smoke damage.

However, other residents are breathing a sigh of relief that a local is one of the major players heading up the rebuild effort, rather than an out-of-state investor group that may not remain true to the neighborhood feel.

"I feel better about him than anybody else because he's from the area," Altadena native and contractor Joel Bryant said in an interview with the Journal.

The ten-year timeframe for the project is partially due to Castro's lack of experience in real-estate development, but it's also a deliberate decision.

"You don't want to be the first to finish your homes because everybody else will be doing construction," Castro rationalized. "If you sell at the end of the timeline, the whole neighborhood will be at value."

He's hired a team of professionals to guide him along the process, including a design consultant to draft blueprints and manage regulatory obstacles such as obtaining permits and dealing with inspections. Castro is leading off the endeavor with two small lots that are each going to feature a three-bedroom Craftsman-style home with an attached residential unit. Those plans have already been submitted to the city for permits, his design consultant said, and they expect to receive them in a few months.

(Click to display full-size in gallery)The January fires which tore through ritzy LA neighborhoods left at least 31 dead and decimated 57,000 acres of land. Altadena was among the communities worst hit.

(Click to display full-size in gallery)Powerball winner Edwin Castro's $3.8M beachfront Malibu home with 2 bed 3 bath and 1,541 sqft, pictured before it was destroyed by fire.