Building on the Past : Neighborhoods: Preservationists hope to save the area’s old bungalows by relaxing city standards for add-ons. In the meantime, the quaint dwellings are giving way to larger, modernist houses.

Mark Ryavec won’t need charts or numbers to signal the end of the recession. He will hear it. It will sound like bulldozers.

The Venice preservationist envisions them clawing down the funky old bungalows that give the area its beach village feel, clearing space for more of the huge, modernist boxes that first muscled their way in before the market dried up.

“It’s like a loaded gun,” Ryavec said.

He and other local preservationists in the Venice Historical Society plan to be ready. They are proposing a unique historical preservation program that would entice Venice property owners to save the 1,000 or more pre-World War II buildings by loosening city building standards that they believe encourage demolition too often.

Although it is no epidemic yet, the tension is most obvious in the neighborhood near Ryavec’s 1907 home--the 10-block area east of the Windward Avenue traffic circle that was part of Abbot Kinney’s Venice of America tourist attraction. The area is a candy store of architectural styles--from the shingled, deep-eave Craftsmen to the Italianate balconies and miter-shaped windows that recall the other Venice.

Along streets that were once gondola-streaked canals, at least half a dozen old bungalows fell in quick succession in recent years to make way for spacious, ultramodern homes.

“There are too many people coming in and buying the old houses going back to 1906, 1907 and 1909, and they see these things as shacks and tear them down to build 2,000-square-foot blocks,” said Betsy Goldman, a real estate agent and president of the historical society. While the houses themselves aren’t necessarily significant, Goldman said, the danger is in losing the homey look of the street.

It is a two-headed problem. The high costs of property near the beach prod owners to wring what they can out of the cramped, tennis-court-size lots by creating more living space or adding rental units, Ryavec says. But it is difficult--if not impossible--to add to bungalows and still provide required on-site parking and buffers with adjoining property. In the end, he said, some property owners too often find it cheaper simply to tear down the old bungalows and build big.

Ryavec, a lobbyist and onetime deputy county assessor, and other members of the historical society say the city needs to make it easier to add to the old buildings--keeping the historical appearance largely intact--by easing some of the parking requirements and other restrictions on building height and buffers.

“We’re not telling people not to build these things,” he said. “We’re saying, let’s give these people who want to preserve the older buildings a reason to do it.”

Under the historical preservation proposal, an owner who expanded a pre-1940 building would not have to provide additional on-site parking. If the expansion involved adding a new living unit, only one new spot would be required, rather than the two per unit now required. Such buildings would be allowed to rise to three stories and be free of additional rear and side buffer restrictions.

The group wants the program, called a historic preservation density bonus, to be included in a major land-use plan that city officials are drafting for Venice. The historical society also is proposing separate preservation measures for the community’s quaint walk streets and arcaded beachside buildings on Windward Avenue.

The density bonus program would differ from preservation strategies elsewhere in Los Angeles, such as special preservation zones, that place restrictions on property owners.

Los Angeles city planners have not decided what preservation measures will appear in the Venice Coastal Land Use Plan, said Melody McCormick, who is preparing the document. A draft of the plan, which will guide building and development in Venice, could be ready for public comment by summer’s end. The preparation process has already dragged on for years.

Any call to loosen parking rules is sure to be controversial in the crowded beachside neighborhoods, where finding a weekend parking spot already is a daunting task.

“We have to face the fact that there’s not enough parking in Venice. If you add more units and don’t require more parking . . . it would definitely change the balance,” said Venice builder Michael Koren, who has restored old homes and plans renovations at his 80-year-old house.

Proponents argue that the preservation measure would not significantly aggravate the shortage of parking places. Not everyone would take advantage of the density bonus, they say, and demand for parking will encourage builders to provide it whenever possible, even at old houses.

“We’re not going to solve the problem of parking in Venice on the backs of these structures,” Ryavec said. “We can’t (do that) and expect many of them to survive.”

The proposal also raises the ticklish subject of Venice’s competing identities. It may be a vault of memory linked to frontier dreamers like Kinney--but it also is a frontier itself. After all, some people like the experimental new buildings, and some of the tiny, termite-eaten old bungalows are just not worth saving. “Venice is not a place where people go to seek conformity,” said one builder.

The conflict can be a private agony.

Harold Gerard still feels lousy about getting rid of the little 1915 bungalow that he and his wife fell in love with and bought four years ago. Their architect couldn’t figure a way to shoehorn in office space and a painter’s studio by adding a second story. The place was just too small.

In the end, the couple gave the bungalow to a community group and had it moved from the Rialto Avenue lot rather than razed. In its place they built a 4,000-square-foot building that goes up 2 1/2 stories and typifies the modernist invasion. Some neighbors complained while it was going up. Just before the couple moved in last year, someone spray-painted a greeting on the garage door: “This bldg (sic) is ugly.”

“It would have been a beautiful building,” Gerard says of the old bungalow. “It would have been in keeping with the neighborhood. It just wasn’t big enough.”