Home Builders Looking Inward
When Juan and Polly Hernandez went looking for a newly built home on a budget this year, they could have moved to the Inland Empire, where subdivisions seemed to spring up by the hour.
Instead, they’re on a waiting list for a home closer to their jobs -- a three-bedroom Inglewood home that will be on top of an old oil field, next to the Hollywood Park racetrack and under the flight path for LAX.
“You’d be amazed what you can get used to,” Polly Hernandez said.
As Southern California’s sprawling suburbs hit their outer limits, home builders are increasingly turning inward to the urban core and squeezing development into once-overlooked morsels of land -- oil fields, aging strip malls, industrial complexes and parking lots in heavily developed areas.
And although moving outward remains the dominant trend, more families such as the Hernandezes are choosing a city life -- with all its challenges -- over longer commutes from the suburbs.
So-called infill development could dramatically transform the landscape in the decades to come, experts say, renewing older communities and further crowding Southern California’s dense population.
The revival is part of a trend that is breathing new life into urban communities nationwide, such as in former steel mill neighborhoods in Pittsburgh, Baltimore’s waterfront and old industrial areas around the Chicago Loop. The lofts and apartments proliferating in downtown Los Angeles are turning the area into something it hasn’t been for decades: a residential neighborhood.
But what sets Southern California apart is that many infill projects are going up on vacant or underbuilt property left behind during a half-century of explosive growth by developers accustomed to having plentiful land on the horizon.
Now, as the inhabited region stretches to once unimaginable proportions, builders are scrambling to take a second look at missed opportunities.
So, too, are home buyers.
Empty-nesters and young professionals have fueled an apartment and condominium boom in Pasadena, helping to remake Old Pasadena into a vibrant hub of commerce and homes. Long Beach is following with a similar formula: A string of oceanfront high-rise apartments and condominiums has recently been added to complement the city’s restored downtown.
Anaheim is wooing developers to remake 807 acres of warehouses, low-rise office buildings and parking lots around Angel Stadium into an urban center with more than 9,000 homes. Construction is underway, and several more projects, including high-rise residential buildings, are awaiting city approval.
Infill also is transforming cities one block at a time. Torrance, the South Bay’s largest city with seemingly little room to grow, has added 1,271 homes in the last five years, mostly on small tracts of undeveloped land or by demolishing existing houses and building higher-density town homes.
In Orange County, the number of homes built outside master-planned subdivisions has more than doubled since 2000. This year, about a quarter of new homes are being built in the county’s infill areas, according to Hanley Wood Market Intelligence, a real estate research firm.
“There is only so much land to go around,” said Joe Carreras, a planner for the Southern California Assn. of Governments. “We are still expanding outward, but a lot of that land is off limits for development because they are sensitive habitat or state-owned land.”
The California Business, Transportation and Housing Agency in the coming weeks plans to release a report about infill development that will include a survey of potential infill sites statewide to aid builders in finding available land. Locally, the Southern California Assn. of Governments has teamed up with UCLA to develop an infill lot-tracking system in Los Angeles County to help builders identify parcels by aerial photographs, assessor’s data, interactive mapping and census information.
All builders face the challenge of “securing ample land supply for future home construction,” said Steve Kabel, president of John Laing Home’s South Coast Division.
John Laing, one of the state’s largest home builders, does more work with suburban tracts than urban renewal. But infill development accounts for 80% of the company’s business in Orange County and 40% in Los Angeles County, Kabel said.
In Inglewood, John Laing is building the first 122 homes to go up in the 375-home Renaissance development. It is the largest housing project in more than two decades for a city that once was a model of postwar growth. The development will have more than twice the number of all units built in Inglewood since 2000.
“People are always talking about affordable housing, but nobody talks about bringing high-end homes to older communities,” said Javier Mariscal, an infill consultant for John Laing. “Those who want to move up have to move out.”
To encourage infill development, some Southern California cities, including Los Angeles, have changed their zoning ordinances to allow residential development in commercial areas.
Yet the state’s strict environmental laws make such projects a bigger challenge than suburban tracts, developers say. Because infill puts new construction near existing development, some projects have run into resistance from neighbors fearful of increased density.
In Orange, a proposed infill project of 177 homes on a 110-acre piece of land used as a sand and gravel field ran into opposition from neighbors. The opponents threatened to force a referendum on the project, and the council rescinded its approval two years ago.
The land sits vacant, and developer Fieldstone Communities Inc. says it does not have any immediate plans for it.
Although many homeowners say they appreciate the convenience of living in cities, they also accept the trade-offs.
When newlyweds Arthur and Rachel Fritz looked to move out of their rental in Los Angeles’ mid-Wilshire district, they gave the suburbs a passing thought. They ultimately decided to forgo a long commute.
They bought a three-bedroom condominium in Madison Walk, an infill project in Pasadena’s Playhouse district built by the Olson Co., which specializes in such development. The Seal Beach company is building 1,200 homes, more than six times the number it built a decade ago.
“We are within walking distance of everything -- movie theaters, restaurants, shops,” Arthur Fritz said. “And we are just one freeway away from L.A., just one freeway from Burbank.”
Still, the couple, who are both 34 and have a year-old daughter, are thinking about their next home. They would like something closer to better schools, a larger backyard, a place “where your neighbor is not a Department of Water and Power building,” Arthur Fritz said.
Rachel Fritz said she would like to get away from the grittier side of city life -- the panhandlers and a fear of car break-ins.
“In some parts of L.A. , I wouldn’t feel safe,” she said. “In the suburbs, I’d probably not be concerned about safety. Pasadena falls somewhere in the middle. But eventually we’ll get a more traditional suburban house.”
That more traditional suburban house is still the biggest draw for Southland residents.
Demographic researcher Joel Kotkin, author of “The City: A Global History,” says there’s a reason so many people are willing to commute.
“As long as people continue to move into Southern California, at least some of them will always want a single-family house with a backyard,” he said, “ and that is in the suburbs.”
