Set of New Rules Nails This Old Cottage : Ventura: Tiny structure in Simpson Tract represents the first test case for a preservation district’s guidelines and their relationship to zoning laws.

Twenty months ago, Ventura landlord Michael Doyle bought a 1928 Spanish-revival house and the two mismatched cottages behind it in one of Ventura’s oldest neighborhoods, the Simpson Tract.

About the same time, other homeowners in the Simpson Tract formed a historic preservation committee and laid down architectural guidelines for the tract’s 182 old houses, including Doyle’s.

Then someone complained, anonymously, to Ventura’s code enforcement office that one of Doyle’s cottages had been built in the 1950s without proper permits and violates city zoning laws.

That complaint sent Doyle’s cottage down a headlong path to becoming the first test case for the fledgling Historic District’s guidelines and their relation to Ventura’s zoning laws.

After 15 months of reviews and revisions, Doyle received the approvals of city zoning, planning and historic preservation committees to keep the cottage where it stands, modified onlywith minor cosmetic changes to make it more closely resemble the main house.

But last week he received a major setback when the City Council overturned a modification in zoning rules for the cottage after the change had been approved by a zoning panel.

“The structure is illegal,” said Councilman Todd Collart, who with Councilman Gary Tuttle brought the appeal vote before the council. “I don’t think it sets a good precedent that we’re going to grant modifications to legalize illegal structures.”

But Doyle said he merely wants permission to keep the cottage where it has stood for more than three decades. He rents out the two cottages for $395 per month each. He rents the main house for $775 a month.

“They’ve violated my rights as a property owner,” Doyle said in an interview.

Meanwhile, neighboring Simpson Tract homeowners have joined in the dispute, saying at City Council meetings and in private that the cottage--known as 145 1/2 West Simpson St.--is too small and ugly to continue to exist.

“The building is obnoxious-looking, it’s offensive to me,” said Laura Smith, who owns a California bungalow in the next block. “It does truly look like a park restroom. It looks horrible.”

The City Council ruled that the tiny, 7-foot-tall stucco building with jalousie windows and asbestos shingles is illegal, and that it must be demolished unless it is moved within setback limits and made to conform with Historic District guidelines. Doyle argued that he did not know the cottage was illegal when he bought the lot and buildings in June, 1989, and that he can’t afford to move or replace the cottage.

Doyle said he has improved the site considerably, paving over the crabgrass-choked back yard to create parking for the three buildings, and painting over the chalk-white exteriors and faded blue trim with peach-colored paint and verdigris trim.

He said he would gladly make the cosmetic changes to the cottage that the Historic District wants, such as replacing the jalousies with sliding windows and covering the roof with Spanish tile.

He wants the city and the Historic District to be reasonable and let the cottage continue to stand as it has for more than three decades.

Simpson Tract Committee Chairman Richard Peterson said last week: “I have publicly stated about Mr. Doyle that he’s done a tremendous job rehabilitating his property. The thing I have a problem with is the architectural style.”

Peterson said city laws consider the building “an illegal bootleg” and said Doyle must do everything necessary to get proper building permits or raze it and replace it with a legal building

The Simpson Tract began to take shape in 1925, a year when Ventura swelled with roustabouts who had come to work the new oil fields along Ventura Avenue, according to research by the Historic District committee.

That year, landowner Carl Simpson sold some of his family’s farmland to Joseph M. Argabrite, a banker and prominent Ventura businessman, who then subdivided the land and sold it lot by lot.

Families bought the lots and blueprints for a few simple house designs. They then contracted workers to build the stucco, Spanish-revival houses with arched doorways, and peak-roofed California bungalows with clapboard siding.

The neighborhood today looks much as it did then, with rows of clapboard and stucco houses lining West Simpson and West Center streets just west of Ventura Avenue, each slightly different in color and trim.

Although some families have lived in the Simpson Tract for decades, others, including members of the Historic District’s committee, bought houses within the past five years.

But Mabel Owen, who has lived in a Spanish-revival house on Simpson Street for more than 60 years, said newcomers have no right to set rules for the Simpson Tract.

Known as the “honorary mayor of Ventura Avenue,” Owen said new houses in the Simpson Tract should be designed to fit the neighborhood, but that existing buildings should be left alone.

“I think that this, long after these things were built, is no time to fight over it,” Owen said last week. “I don’t think Doyle did anything wrong, and some of the neighbors--this bunch that’s trying to make everything the same--I don’t think they’ve got any business. . . . They’re just trying to get notoriety.”

Peterson said the committee spent a year writing the rules that, unlike those governing more picky historic districts, do not tell homeowners what colors they can use.

“We’d seen a lot of buildings on the avenue being demolished, and a lot of ugly boxes were being put up,” said Peterson, who has lived in a gray, 1925 Spanish-revival house on Center Street since May, 1987. “These guidelines are going to guide us through the next century and keep our homes the same for our children to live in.”

Doyle said he would make the cosmetic changes if the city and Historic District let the cottage stand.

Last year, Doyle began his quest to legalize the disputed cottage. First, he sought and eventually secured the approval of the Ventura Historic Preservation Commission. That panel, to which Peterson belongs, approved a new building permit on the condition that Doyle alter the cottage to resemble the main house.

Then Doyle received approval from the zoning Modification Committee for variances to city zoning laws, which allowed him to have three dwellings on a lot zoned for two, and to leave the cottage’s eaves overhanging his neighbor’s property line.

But Councilmen Tuttle and Collart appealed the Modification Committee’s decision to the council, which overturned the permit last week and again rendered Doyle’s cottage illegal.

Doyle said Peterson had persuaded the councilmen to overturn the permit. “Richard Peterson is trying to make a mountain out of a molehill, to give the Simpson Tract some new place on the map, and he’s trying to make me the sacrificial lamb,” Doyle said.

But Peterson said his objections merely followed city zoning laws.

And Collart called the zoning and historic preservation panels’ approval of Doyle’s cottage flawed, adding that Doyle should have checked the legality of the buildings before he bought them.

“The whole thing is being characterized as a feud between Mr. Doyle and the neighbors, and in fact, Mr. Doyle has got a problem with city regulations . . . and the Simpson Tract guidelines,” Collart said. “It’s not a vendetta against him personally, it’s a matter of who has to follow the rules and who doesn’t.”

Tuttle said of the property: “To Mr. Doyle’s credit, it does look better than when he bought it.”