New generation is right on track

Anne Vu cannot walk to work, but she can do the next best thing: She can take a five-minute walk from her front door in Carlsbad to a train station and catch the Coaster line south to her job in downtown San Diego.

Living in a “transit-oriented” neighborhood allows Vu to avoid using a car most of the time. When she is home, she can walk to a supermarket a few blocks from her house. And for about $3 with a monthly pass, she can ride the San Diego commuter train and read a novel in the 40 minutes it takes to get downtown, less time than driving through the bumper-to-bumper traffic on Interstate 5.

“I’ve read more books in the last few months than I have in my entire life,” said Vu, a systems analyst who lives with her husband, Hung Vu, a systems administrator, and their 17-month-old daughter.

No longer a concept of city planners, the transit village is a reality in Southern California, from such high-density urban areas as North Hollywood to suburbs such as Carlsbad. Nearly every stop on the Metro Red Line, which runs from North Hollywood through Hollywood to downtown Los Angeles, has a transit-oriented project either in planning or under construction. The Metro Gold Line, stretching from downtown northeast to Sierra Madre, has at least two, with developers proposing more. Homes and condos in these developments are commanding prices ranging from the high $300,000s to close to $1 million.

Much of Southern California was built during the early decades of the 20th century around streetcar stations of the now-defunct Red Car and Yellow Car lines. In a way, the transit villages are a return to the “streetcar suburbs,” or small communities created by the streetcar. Much of the present outline of Los Angeles, including the beach cities, Van Nuys, Riverside and San Bernardino, sprung up around streetcar routes

In later decades, the rise of the freeway system had a profound effect on growth, according to Cliff Goldstein, a partner at J.H. Snyder. “The availability of cheap land allowed developers to move further and further out,” he said.

But there are limits even to the legendary sprawl of Los Angeles. “With the maturing of our region, we have reached the end of the suburban paradigm,” he said. “We need to start concentrating development along transit corridors.... That is the natural evolution of Southern California.”

One question is how quickly home buyers will embrace transit living. While the market for the housing is likely not as large as that for traditional suburban homes, Goldstein said, “there is a small group of people who are electing to sacrifice the large homestead for the smaller house and convenient transportation.”

Architects and planners view the developments as a way to introduce a car-free way of life by providing for most daily needs -- shopping, restaurants, child-care, office space and, in at least two cases, new schools -- within walking distance of home.

There are several projects under construction in the Los Angeles area. Urban Partners of Los Angeles is building a collection of lofts, courtyard housing and high-rise towers at the Del Mar station of the Metro Gold Line in Pasadena. They are also building a 380-apartment village at the Vermont-Wilshire station of the Metro Red Line near where a 800-student middle school is planned. J.H. Snyder is building NoHo Commons, a 1,716-unit project with entertainment and retail space, near the North Hollywood Red Line station on a site that will include a new high school.

In suburban communities, John Laing Homes recently finished the 219-unit Waters End single-family home project in Carlsbad and is building the 376-unit Tustin Field near a Metrolink station, while the Olson Co. is building the 156-unit Village Walk three blocks from the Metrolink station in Claremont. A Metrolink station in the San Fernando Valley has spawned the Village Green development.

“This is where the housing world is going,” said Mitchell Bradford, a vice president of acquisitions at John Laing Homes.

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Urban life in the suburbs

For city planners, transit villages are a way to build ridership for commuter rail and buses, as well as creating housing units in chronically under-housed Southern California. As existing rail lines expand -- the Red Line into East Los Angeles, the Gold Line into the San Gabriel Valley and the proposed CenterLine commuter rail in Orange County -- transit villages are likely to follow, redefining the urban pattern as they go.

Many home buyers are “looking for opportunities to experience urban living without having to be dependent on the automobile,” said Michael Dieden, president of Creative Housing Associates of Los Angeles, which is developing a South Pasadena project in a venture with Lambert Development of New York. “Living near transit allows them to do that.”

Michael Holden and Janis Eiler are a case in point. They found themselves charmed by the Mission-Meridian development in South Pasadena and decided late last year to reserve a small bungalow, even though it would not be finished until June.

Although the move actually takes Holden farther from his job downtown -- he lives in Chinatown and works as an auditor for the Los Angeles Unified School District -- Holden said that he and Eiler liked the convenience of choosing between the attractions of two major urban centers. “We fell in love with the idea of being 12 minutes away from downtown Los Angeles and seven minutes away from Old Pasadena,” he said.

Holden and Eiler were apparently not the only people to whom the notion of living near the train had appeal. The 67-unit Mission-Meridian project sold out in two weeks after the sales office opened last fall, with more than 200 backup offers, at prices ranging from $400,000 to the $800,000s. The homes range in size from a 763-square-foot, one-bedroom, one-bath unit to a 2,400-square-foot, single-family home with three bedrooms and three baths.

Although many transit villages contain some housing for low-income families, the price of housing in the villages is pegged to the local market, which is often high. In the upscale suburban Carlsbad, the Vus paid a little more than $600,000 for their three-bedroom, two-bath home, and prices rise to just under $1 million.

Even at those prices, there are trade-offs for home buyers. For Anne and Hung Vu, the density of their new neighborhood is roughly twice that of their previous block in suburban Carlsbad, while their home is smaller and sits on a smaller lot than their previous residence. “Our backyard is one-quarter the size of our old place,” Anne Vu said.

Still, she thinks living near transit is worth sacrificing the suburban spread. “For our lifestyle, it was a no-brainer,” said Vu, who plans to stop working when a second child is born.

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Facing hurdles

Even in strong housing markets, however, building transit villages can be difficult to develop. The Metro Blue Line, between downtown Los Angeles and Long Beach, and the Green Line, which parallels Interstate 105, have few, if any, proposals.

The cost of urban land in existing high-density urban areas is high. Construction is also more costly than on other projects: Building near large-scale train lines like the Red Line means that developers must use extra-strong structural designs to dampen vibration from trains and use extra-thick windows in special frames to muffle noise.

To encourage developers to build transit villages, the city of Los Angeles offers a 35% density bonus as well as reduced parking requirements for projects within 1,500 feet of transit stops.

Even with incentives, developers often need public subsidies to make projects “pencil out.” Urban Partners is receiving $75.1 million in bonds for its Koreatown transit village, while Dieden, developer of Mission-Meridian in South Pasadena, has received a total of $5 million in financial assistance from Los Angeles’ Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Caltrans and the city of South Pasadena.

Planning and negotiating the terms of the South Pasadena transit village, in fact, took five years, Dieden said. And his proposal for a similar village in Oakland recently fell through after two years of negotiating with city officials there, he added. “That’s why I have gray hair.”

Architect Stefanos Polyzoides, a principal of Moule & Polyzoides in Pasadena, which has designed transit villages in Pasadena and South Pasadena, however, said that “intelligent planning” is essential to the success of transit villages.

Without design requirements in place, he said, “we are going to get unfettered densities, at the expense of quality design, walkability and the harmonious development of all the things that make city living worthwhile.”

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Morris Newman can be contacted at Morris_Newman@sbcglobal.net.