LOS ANGELES — The on-again-off-again campaign to turn Walt Disney’s Chicago birthplace into an attraction has taken an unexpected new turn. And two theme park ride designers who mostly work for Disney rivals are at the wheel.

For more than two decades, preservationists and entrepreneurs have tried to get people to care about a little house at the corner of Tripp Avenue and Palmer Street in Hermosa, a working-class neighborhood about five miles from downtown Chicago. Walt Disney and his brother, Roy, were born in an upstairs bedroom, historians say. Their carpenter father, Elias, built the home in 1893 from blueprints their mother, Flora, helped draft. They lived there until 1906.

Over the years, aldermen have voted against giving landmark status to the house, which has remained a private residence. Why not make it a community center and offer art lessons for children? Funding repeatedly fell through. How about listing it on eBay as a cultural treasure? No bites.

Then, last spring, Dina Benadon and Brent Young, a married couple from Los Angeles who own Super 78 Studios, a company that designs theme park attractions, stumbled across another mention of the house on the Internet. They bought it for $173,000.