Beach Enclave at Home With Its Isolation : Ventura: Pierpont Bay residents are cut off from the rest of the city by a freeway and have little visitor parking. So they have the sand all to themselves--as they prefer it.

By PEGGY Y. LEE

Aug. 22, 1993 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Art Murphy sauntered down the beach on his daily walk and checked out his fellow sun worshipers. The mid-August weather was ideal for tanning, but only a smattering of beach-goers were stretched out on the sands of Pierpont Bay.

It was, Murphy noted with relief, a long way from the hordes of humanity who flock to the beaches in Los Angeles and Orange counties.

“This is like a private beach because there’s no parking,” said Murphy, who moved 10 years ago to the Pierpont neighborhood from Covina. “You go down to Santa Monica or Laguna, and it’s wall to wall people. But there’s no parking here, so they go someplace else.”

Murphy is typical of the Pierpont residents who say they are quite happy to be isolated from the rest of the city of Ventura and keep the state beach for themselves.

North of the Ventura Harbor, and sandwiched between Marina Park and the San Buenaventura State Beach volleyball courts, lies a small neighborhood that is a geographic anomaly and a beach lover’s dream.

The Pierpont area is home to 1,240 people who live on streets that all lead directly to the beach. The area is physically isolated from the rest of the city by the Ventura Freeway. And only one major street--Seaward Avenue--leads in and out of the community.

On almost every street there are “No Parking” signs, which discourage visitors from staying for long periods of time.

The only available all-day parking is in a tiny, city-owned parking lot at the end of Seaward and along Pierpont Boulevard. People can leave their cars for two hours on Seaward, but space is limited. Parking in streets off Pierpont Boulevard is prohibited, and businesses on Seaward have tow-away signs.

“There’s no parking, there’s only portable bathrooms here,” said Andy Wright, a 29-year-old Pierpont native who was sunning himself on the beach. “People don’t want to come to this beach--which is fine with everyone who lives here.”

The neighborhood--about 30 streets that begin at Pierpont Boulevard and end at the sands leading to the Pacific Ocean--was first subdivided into small lots in the 1920s, said Everett Millais, the city’s community development director.

“The original intent of the subdivision was not to be permanent homes. It was marketed as a little second-house type of thing,” Millais said.

The area was annexed into the city in 1969 and has some of the smallest lots in Ventura. According to U.S. census figures, the bulk of the houses were built in the 1960s and 70s.

Little development has occurred in the last decade, but city officials said they are noticing older houses are being remodeled or rebuilt. There are no standard architectural guidelines for the neighborhood, and the result is an architectural mishmash dominated by Cape Cod and Mediterranean styles.

Real estate agents and residents say property values the last decade have shot up because the newer arrivals in Pierpont are from the Los Angeles area and have money to upgrade their homes.

Bob and Carolyn Holycross, a retired couple from Arcadia, said they purchased a single-story house on Cornwall Lane about nine years ago for $150,000. They estimate it is worth more than $250,000 now.

“We’re looking forward to joining the neighborhood,” said Carolyn Holycross, who was resting on a sand dune and watching her two grandchildren play in the water.

“It’s quiet, and we enjoy the beach, but it’s not so far from L.A. that we can’t get there readily.”

She and her husband have been leasing their Cornwall Lane home to tenants for the last nine years, and they are planning to move there in October after contractors finish rebuilding it. They discovered it was ravaged by termites, and are sinking about $100,000 into rebuilding the house, she said.

Pierpont’s population has barely changed since 1980, but its demographics have. In 1980, the census reported 1,241 residents. In 1990, the population was 1,240.

But as the area has become more upscale, more residents with money and higher education levels have joined the neighborhood. On the whole, Pierpont residents are better educated, holding more managerial and professional jobs compared to the rest of the city. Pierpont households have a median income of $40,714, and almost 22% earn more than $75,000.

“This place started as a weekend getaway for people,” said Linda Wigton, a real estate agent at Herrick & Company, which has an office in the neighborhood. “They liked it so much, they began moving up here permanently.”

Residents and realtors predict that the area will continue to become more affluent in the future because there are few vacant lots left to develop.

Ken Small, a 70-year-old retired dentist who moved to Pierpont 14 years ago, said he and his wife had kept a small house in the neighborhood for five years before leaving Northridge and settling in Ventura permanently.

“We came up every weekend and we hated to go home,” Small said. “We like the small-town atmosphere.”

Small said Pierpont has taken on a spiffier appearance as more people have discovered it.

“It takes more money to live here,” Small said. “I hate to sound class-conscious, but it’s improved the area.”

Small said he has not noticed any tension between the newer arrivals and the longtime residents. For the most part, people don’t object to the neighborhood’s property values rising, and “it’s been so gradual, there’s no friction.”

But some renters say they worry about gradually getting priced out by the newer, wealthier arrivals. About 13% of Pierpont households have an annual income of under $15,000.

About 45% of the neighborhood is renter-occupied, and the median rent is $764 a month.

“There are some people who can barely scrape together the rent every month,” said Tom Adams, a 47-year-old management systems analyst who moved to Pierpont a year ago. He said he, too, worries a little about his rent getting prohibitively expensive.

Another source of irritation has been some of the wealthy homeowners who have built large residences that blocked their neighbors’ ocean views, Adams said.

He pointed to one such example from his second story apartment. “See that?” he gestured indignantly. “I don’t even look out that window. I don’t even bother cleaning that window.”

Regardless of income level, most residents say they moved to the area to be near the ocean, and the common focus on the beach lifestyle is what holds this community together.

Bathing suits, shorts and T-shirts are the dress code in Pierpont. Although signs prohibit dogs and alcohol on the beach, residents tend to look the other way, because they typically take a casual approach and consider the beach to be their back yards.

“You have the yuppies here, and you have the homeless here,” Adams said.”The beach draws people here and it unifies us. You don’t get that hot drying air that makes people crazy inland.”

Pierpont residents are indoctrinated into this lifestyle early. Parents in the neighborhood regularly bring their children to the beach, and the local elementary school also makes regular field trips there.

“All classes go to the beach at least once a week,” said Pamela Chasse, principal of Pierpont Elementary School, a K-5 school in the neighborhood that has about 270 students.

As part of the curriculum, students learn about marine life and tides, Chasse said. The school mascot is a pelican and class pictures are taken on the beach. Even the teachers and staff go there during lunch and on breaks, she said.

Seaward Avenue, the only commercial strip in the Pierpont area, is primarily devoted to tourism and the beach lifestyle in general. Locals and tourists alike patronize the surf shop, the bikini shop and the restaurants along the street. Most of the restaurants have outdoor dining so customers can enjoy the climate.

Merchants say the isolation of Pierpont and lack of parking sometimes hurt their businesses, but also ensure a steady stream of local customers who don’t want to wander far from home.

“We’re not that big a tourist destination,” said Mike Blue, who owns a fast-food restaurant on Seaward Avenue. “This is a jewel in the rough.”

Steve Abraham, who owns a surf shop next door, said, “You can’t grow any more because you have the state beach on one side and the marina on the other, and the freeway in front of us. A lot of people come down here, find there’s no parking and then leave. It hurts us.”

Some business owners say they would like to close off Seaward Avenue and put parking at the top of it, so that the street would be more pedestrian-oriented.

Along Seaward Avenue, a few empty storefronts are testimony that businesses are not clamoring to move down there. The three motels and the nearby Doubletree Hotel attract tourists regularly in the summer, but merchants say they have to rely on Pierpont residents to support them.

Most of the restaurant owners call their patrons by name, and this intimacy adds to the small-town atmosphere that Pierpont residents enjoy.

“I don’t make my living from tourists,” said Eric Wachter, who owns a restaurant and bar that overlook the ocean. “I try to cater to the locals.”

Wachter, who has one of the oldest restaurants on Seaward Avenue, recalls that Pierpont was “a lot crummier” when he opened his establishment 12 years ago.

“It was a lot of run-down apartments, more transients,” he said. “There wasn’t any one thing that I can put my finger on that changed this place. The right people just started coming.”

About half of the tourists who visit the area come from the Los Angeles area, said Shari Monson, who manages the Inn on the Beach, the 24-room motel at the end of Seaward.

Wachter noted that unlike some areas that have a tourist trade, the Pierpont locals enjoy having visitors in their neighborhood.

“I think our locals enjoy the color from the tourists,” Wachter said.

Tom Ferguson, 43, who has lived in Pierpont for six years, said, “We see each other so much it’s kind of nice to see new faces.”

But Ferguson admitted that locals probably wouldn’t be so friendly if the relatively low number of visitors increased drastically.

“The fact that there’s no place to park makes it kind of nice,” Ferguson said.

But as a trade-off to living within walking distance of the water, residents withstand living cheek by jowl in small lots with tiny front and back yards. They pay higher rents compared to other parts of Ventura, and homeowners must paint their houses frequently and take diligent care of their cars because of the corrosive effect of the salt air. Others say the transients who wander through the area are a nuisance.

The neighborhood also used to have gang problems, but that has tapered off in recent years because the leaders of the local gang--the Pierpont Rats--have been jailed or have grown out of the gang, police said.

Tony MacLaren, a 32-year-old truck driver who moved to Pierpont five years ago, said some gang members had lobbed a rock onto the hood of his car about a month ago.

But most residents say they haven’t noticed much activity from the Pierpont Rats in recent years.

“They’re all grown up,” said Tim Garman, a 41-year-old field worker for Southern California Gas Co. “I haven’t seen any graffiti out here in a long time.”

Linda Willison, who moved to Pierpont Boulevard about two months ago, said parties from neighbors tend to keep her awake at night. She said she is paying $800 a month for her duplex--which was $300 more than her former rent.

Transients go through her trash every night and she has to wash her car twice a week because “it rusts easily.”

But Willison said she wouldn’t give up her place for anything. It’s a safe area, her neighbors are friendly, and most important of all--she can walk to the beach.

“It’s worth it.”

Pierpont at a Glance Population: 1,240

RACIAL BREAKDOWN

White: 91.5%

Latino: 5.7%

Asian: 1.7%

Black: .6%

Other: .5%

EDUCATION

(25 years and older)

High school degrees: 93.5%

College degrees: 33.9%