SEAL BEACH : The Fur Flies Over Couple’s ‘Doghouse’

Two years ago, Mark and Betsy Thompson watched helplessly as neighbors added a second floor to their house, blocking the ocean view the Thompsons had enjoyed from a bedroom window.

So the Thompsons decided to build a “doghouse” on top of their home--a small, non-habitable addition permitted under city building codes.

But they are creating a doghouse like no other in town: It is a 6-foot-by-6-foot, shiny aluminum dome that rotates 360 degrees and has a mechanical skylight that slides open. The structure, which looks like a mini-Palomar Observatory, is perched on a tower-like brick column, and the whole thing is 31 feet tall, rising well above most other structures in the quiet neighborhood.

Thompson, an amateur astronomer, plans to train his low-power telescope on comets, double stars and the nearby planets.

The doghouse is popular with kids in his Sandpiper Drive neighborhood, Thompson said. “They love it,” he said. “They think it’s really neat. They can’t wait till it’s done so they can come up and use it.”

But area homeowners, alarmed at the prospect of a telescope looming over their patios and swimming pools, want the City Council to order the doghouse torn down. They also want the city’s building code amended to prevent the construction of doghouses such as the Thompsons’.

“There is a huge loophole in the code, and these people are taking advantage of it,” Seal Beach resident Alan Shields recently told the City Council. “They’ve used a part of the code that allows for covered stairways and have built a fully functioning mechanical observatory. I ask you to rescind permits where there are clear abuses. Force the homeowner to take that observatory down.”

But regardless of how the dome looks or what neighbors think of it, city development director Lee Whittenberg said the structure is probably there to stay. It meets all the requirements of the doghouse ordinance, he said, which allows such structures to rise 7 feet above the city’s 25-foot height limit.

“There is nothing in the code requiring people to reveal what’s inside their doghouse,” Whittenberg said. The only rule governing the use of a doghouse is that it may not be a habitable space, he said.

Shields and resident Jerry Anderson are spearheading the anti-doghouse drive. They have gathered about 270 signatures on a petition calling for a building code amendment that will prevent builders from exceeding the 25-foot height limit and ban “structural appendages that create visual impacts of an unaesthetic nature.”

Anderson and Shields have also persuaded the City Council to discuss the issue at its April 23 meeting, at which time the zoning code may be changed.

“Clearly, this is a problem,” said Mayor Victor S. Grgas. “I wouldn’t want something like that looming over my back yard.”

Whittenberg said city staff will recommend that the City Council change the code so that builders must first gain the approval of the Planning Commission or the City Council before building a doghouse or exceeding the 25-foot height limit.

Shields said he will support any action that will place some controls on the construction of doghouses.

“I think the code is wrong, and the only option now is to do whatever I can to get that code changed,” Anderson said. “Here we have a fully functional observatory, and they’re telling me it’s a roof, and it is not. It’s time we stopped such flagrant abuses of the code.”