BOTTLE VILLAGE NEEDS A BIG CASH DEPOSIT

Members of the Preserve Bottle Village Committee have cleared so many hurdles in their eight-year drive to save an old lady’s vision that it seems rather anticlimactic to be stuck with the problem of fund raising. But the effort to restore and reopen Grandma Prisbrey’s Bottle Village has come to that, according to David Kaplan, committee president.

“Right now, it’s a money issue,” says Kaplan. The Simi Valley Planning Commission last week granted a special-use permit, so the committee is finally free to proceed with restoration, and eventually re-open the village to the public.

Kaplan estimates that about $100,000 is needed to restore the 13 disintegrating buildings that Tressa (Grandma) Prisbrey constructed of bottles and cement and to landscape the premises at 4595 Cochran St. in Simi Valley. It will take another $125,000 to refurbish the interiors, reinstall Grandma’s collections (presently in storage) and erect an archive center around a trailer at the village.

“That doesn’t sound like a lot of money, but raising it in Simi Valley is like raising $2 million or even $20 million in Los Angeles,” Kaplan says.

The project got a big boost when the Ahmanson Foundation awarded it a 3-1 matching grant (for an undisclosed amount) on monies raised before the end of October. Meanwhile, the committee is approaching other foundations and small donations are dribbling in. “We love these checks,” says board member Joanne Johnson, opening the mail in the trailer that serves as the village office.

The current fund-raising effort caps a long battle to save the folk art environment from demolition and to win community support for a -acre lot full of funky buildings, mosaic walkways, wishing wells and assorted constructions made of materials rescued from a nearby dump. Some devotees have described the meandering creation as a priceless example of “divine disorder,” while detractors have characterized it as a worthless eyesore.

“This has not been a fun involvement, it has been a learning involvement,” says Kaplan, who is about to turn over the committee presidency to Helen Dennert, one of seven board members.

Prisbrey, now 91 and confined to a nursing home in San Francisco, began building the village in the ‘50s when she was 60 and continued for nearly 20 years. An inveterate collector, she had acquired 17,000 pencils and needed a place to put them. Finding concrete blocks too expensive, Prisbrey bought a bag of cement and began gathering bottles.

Before long she had built a house for her pencils and additional homes for her collections of dolls, seashells, books and bric-a-brac. From the inside, the walls have a stained-glass effect, turning the little houses into temples containing carefully organized displays of cast-offs. Outside, the buildings are linked by walkways and fences and punctuated by sculptural creations.

While she lived in a trailer at the village, the wiry old woman led tours of her artwork, both enchanting and antagonizing visitors with her wit and cantankerous personality. When her husband died and she was unable to keep up mortgage payments, Prisbrey sold the property. The new owner allowed her to stay on as caretaker until he defaulted on payments.

The late Ollie E. Phillips then bought the village, ordered Prisbrey out and announced his intent to bulldoze the place and build condominiums. A bitter struggle ended when Preserve Bottle Village Committee finally gained control of the property, first with the help of Jim Quinn, an Oregon-based published of glass-art magazines, and recently through a gift from an anonymous donor.

Though the city of Simi Valley promptly gave Bottle Village a $25,000 matching grant, committee members soon felt trapped in bureaucratic entanglements. Throughout the early ‘80s, they were faced with an overwhelming array of regulations regarding permits, safety hazards and earthquake standards. Even expert consultants had difficulty seeing how an eccentric folk artist’s construction could conform to contemporary building and safety codes.

But that chapter is essentially history now. The committee has satisfied all 33 requirements for their special use permit, including winning the approval of a neighborhood council. Parking, the last stumbling block, was resolved in April when the nearby Tapo Plaza Shopping Center agreed to provide 10 places plus one for a shuttle bus.

Probably most important, the group now has an official-looking plan for restoration. Called “A Conceptual Report for the Mitigation of Seismic Hazard for the Structural Elements of Grandma Prisbrey’s Bottle Village,” the concept, developed by Howard F. Stup and Associates, was approved in April by the Simi Valley Building and Safety Department.

More detailed plans are now in the works for replacing roofs, constructing footings and bonding walls, but the conceptual report “proves there’s an acceptable way to glue Bottle Village back together,” Kaplan says. Meanwhile, masses of donated bottles wait outside the buildings in big wire baskets.

The composition of the committee has changed over the years as activists have become burned out or discouraged, but current members sense an increased acceptance of the project as the city grows up around the village. If nothing else, detractors have come to respect the committee’s perseverance.

The group has attracted considerable help in volunteer labor, free consultations and discounted materials. Periodically, they also get an injection of excitement from some individual or group that discovers Grandma. Last year their heroine was named Woman of the Year for Ventura County, and screen writer Leon Weiss is currently working on a script about Prisbrey that he hopes to have produced as a TV movie. The village also has been designated California State Historical Landmark No. 939 and Ventura County Cultural Landmark No. 52.

But between bursts of good news is the hard work reality of the restoration and money needed to pay for it. Without that, the facility cannot be opened to the public. “We just want to make it happen before it’s too late,” says Kaplan. “Deterioration doesn’t take a vacation.”

Information: Bottle Village, P.O. Box 1412, Simi Valley 93062, (805) 583-1627.