Low Home Costs Bring New Boom to Palmdale : But Huge Population Influx Puts Strain on Public Facilities
Each workday morning at 6:15, Jay Bushrow, 25, climbs into his Ford Bronco outside his Palmdale home, fires up the engine and heads toward the Antelope Valley Freeway and his job, 65 miles away in Hollywood.
His southbound drive takes him from the western edge of the parched Mojave Desert, across rugged Escondido Summit, through the flatlands and rolling hills of the Santa Clarita and San Fernando valleys. It ends on Sunset Boulevard in a Southern California Gas Co. office at the Fox Television Center.
On a good day, Bushrow says, the drive takes an hour and 15 minutes; when roads are clogged, it can easily take two hours. At 5:30 p.m., he gets back in his Bronco for the long trip back to the new three-bedroom, two-bath home he purchased for $94,000 last fall.
Flocking to Palmdale
“The drive kind of wears on you, but it’s worth it because I can own my own home,” says Bushrow, a customer-service representative for the gas company. “If I wanted to stay in Los Angeles, the best I could have gotten was a one-bedroom condo in a declining neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley.”
Buyers like Bushrow, lured largely by home prices about half the state’s average, are flocking to this city at the northern edge of Los Angeles County by the thousands.
Last year, the population of this once sleepy desert town soared a phenomenal 40%, to 33,000, making it the fastest growing city in California.
By one estimate, Palmdale’s population grew another 20% in the first seven months of this year. Even the recent rise in interest rates has done little to slow things down, as the dozens of moving vans rumbling down the city’s streets and the bulldozers creeping across its dusty desert floor each day will attest.
It is clearly boom time again in Palmdale, a city that is used to the boom-and-bust cycle. But while new-home buyers love the housing opportunities here and developers are making millions, the rapid growth is straining public services and--some say--threatening the small-town way of life some long-time residents cherish.
Old-timers here point to Palmdale Boulevard, the city’s main thoroughfare that was once little more than a strip of pavement reaching across the desert. Now it’s lined by fast-food restaurants and new shopping malls with video stores, supermarkets and home-improvement centers.
“And just look at all that traffic,” griped a cashier as she looked out the window of a frozen-yogurt store in the new Gateway Shopping Center. “I used to be able to go from one end of town to the other in five minutes. Now it takes 20--especially when all the dump trucks and bulldozers are out there.”
Traffic problems are also growing worse on the Antelope Valley Freeway. An estimated 38,000 Antelope Valley residents make the southbound trek toward Los Angeles each morning, and stop-and-go traffic is becoming more commonplace.
Improvements to the city’s infrastructure--roads, sewers, parks and the like--aren’t keeping pace with the meteoric rise in the number of its residents.
Pressure on Schools
The rapid growth is also making it tough for the local school district. Since permanent schools can’t be constructed fast enough, the district has begun putting up prefabricated “insta-schools,” shipped out in two pieces and assembled on the site.
Thirteen new schools--some of them temporary facilities, others permanent--are planned or are under construction.
A similar crunch is being felt at Antelope Valley College in Lancaster, the only college in the 1,600-square-mile valley.
“We had to hold 17 classes at Palmdale High School last year because we just couldn’t provide the space on campus,” says Allan W. Kurki, the college’s president. “We don’t expect to be cramped for the next year or so--we expect to be cramped for a decade.”
The Palmdale City Council, in the enviable position of having a budget surplus because of the town’s fast-growing revenue base, is taking steps to solve some of the more serious problems.
Joshua Trees Uprooted
It recently adopted a $25-million budget that earmarks $4 million to improve streets, enlarge its civic center, and build three new parks. Outlays for law enforcement--the largest single slice of the budget pie--were raised 21%.
Still, some nature buffs and outdoor enthusiasts say the city isn’t doing enough to protect Mother Nature from the onslaught of developers. Hundreds of old Joshua trees--which grow only in a handful of areas in the world--are fast disappearing under the one-ton blades of bulldozers. So are snakes and a host of other desert creatures.
Equestrians complain that many of their trails have been swallowed up and paved over by builders.
“We used to just get on our horses and ride for hours,” remembers Gloria Gossard, a 60-year-old horsewoman and free-lance writer who began riding in the area in the 1940s. “Now, the trails are disappearing. And if you don’t have some place to ride your horses, you might as well give them up.”
The city has incorporated a system of trails in a proposed “beautification project,” Gossard says, but no money has been allocated for the plan. “If we’re lucky, we’ll get some money next year,” she adds. “I don’t know what will happen to our trails between now and then.”
‘Benefits of Growth’
Despite Palmdale’s growing pains, city leaders have yet to feel much pressure from slow- or no-growth advocates. “Most people here realize all the benefits of growth--more cultural and recreational facilities, better shopping and more jobs,” says Mel Baker, director of the Antelope Valley Board of Trade.
“There was a slow-growth movement up here about two years ago. A bunch of people moved here from L. A. and said, ‘let’s stop the growth; we moved here because Palmdale isn’t crowded, and that’s the way we want it to stay.’ ”
The movement quickly fizzled, he said. And just last year, two slow-growth proponents who ran for seats on the Palmdale City Council were trounced at the polls.
Free of serious attacks from slow-growth advocates, city leaders have more time to concentrate on what they feel is a matter of top priority--diversifying the city’s economy.
Aerospace drives Palmdale’s economy, as well as most other parts of the Antelope Valley. There are 85,000 workers in the valley. A combined 12,000 people are employed by Rockwell International, Lockheed and Northrop. at the sprawling Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, and another 13,000 work at the Edwards Air Force Base in nearby Lancaster.
Most of those workers live in Palmdale or Lancaster, although some drive in from other areas.
Another 1,000 work at Mojave Airport, and thousands of others derive their living by providing goods and services to the aerospace companies and their employees.
Downturns in the aerospace industry have snuffed out similar Palmdale housing booms in the past. Less than 20 years ago, when the nation’s defense priorities shifted from manned aircraft to missiles, thousands of local residents lost their jobs and moved away because there virtually was no other business in town.
Shocked developers were left with a collective 4,000 homes in mid-construction--a glut that took years to erase.
Seek Diversification
Although city leaders don’t like to talk about it, some quietly fret that the local economy will once again fizzle if Congress or the next administration makes deep cuts in military outlays.
Palmdale business leaders and the Antelope Valley Board of Trade are attempting to attract other types of industry, targeting companies involved in high-technology, aerospace-support and light industry.
Palmdale recently beat out Lompoc in a lobbying war for the right to build a replacement for the space shuttle Challenger. The program will be managed by a Rockwell division in Downey, where some fabrication will be carried out, but final assembly will be done at the company’s Palmdale facility, which could result in the creation of 1,500 jobs.
There is also renewed hope for a Palmdale airport that could handle large commercial aircraft--a facility that was first proposed in the 1960s.
The Los Angeles City Department of Airports owns 18,000 acres in Palmdale, and a spokesman said the department plans to eventually develop a commercial airport there about the size of Ontario International. Meanwhile, he said, the department is negotiating with the Air Force for permission to use its Plant 42 runway for commercial aircraft.
Different Talents
Most longtime Palmdale residents aren’t holding their breath; plans to build the airport have come up and then disappeared over the years almost as fast as a desert dust-devil.
Baker thinks the area’s rapidly growing population will make diversifying easier. “All these people moving up here have lots of different talents--they’re giving us the diversified labor pool that we didn’t have a few years ago. Employers can come here and find workers, no matter what business they’re in. They couldn’t do that a few years ago.”
All those workers are also spending lots of money, and shopping center developers have taken note.
Several new open-air complexes have recently been completed along Palmdale Boulevard, and others are planned or are already under construction. Convenience stores and the inevitable mini-malls are cropping up on Palmdale side streets where not long ago only tumbleweeds abounded.
One developer has even proposed a sprawling regional mall--about the size of 17 supermarkets--for the fast-growing city. But a similarly sized project is planned for Lancaster. The population base isn’t large enough to support two such facilities, and the competing development firms agree that only one mall will be built.
Elected officials in Palmdale and Lancaster have been working to ensure that their city will get the mall. Such a complex would generate millions of dollars in annual sales tax revenue and would provide other types of income.
Although home prices in Palmdale remain well below statewide averages, the city’s fast growth is fueling steady price increases. A year ago, many new homes in the city could be purchased for less than $70,000. Now, prices generally start in the mid-$80,000s and many tracts have nothing lower than $100,000.
Competition among home builders is growing more intense. The developer of Palmdale’s Rancho Vista--the Antelope Valley’s largest master-planned community with 7,000 homes planned--has included a group of larger houses selling for about $150,000 because it’s the one market niche that isn’t overcrowded by builders.
Fees Passed Along
“We already get 20% of the $100,000 market, but we have 100% of the upper-price market because nobody else is doing it,” says Gregg Anderson, principal of Rancho Vista Development Co.
Anderson and his fellow builders play an important part in Palmdale’s future. The city doesn’t tack its own property tax onto the one passed out annually by the county, so much of the money for new schools, roads and recreational facilities is supplied by builders and developers through fees levied on their projects.
Unlike builders in most other parts of the state, Palmdale developers don’t complain much about the fees--at least not yet--in part because they can pass along the cost to home buyers and still offer a house that’s priced well below the state average of $140,000.
Palmdale city leaders credit much of their town’s growth to what they say is a “spirit of cooperation” among themselves, developers and local residents. But they admit the strength of that alliance will be tested in the years ahead: The city is expected to grow at least 15% a year through 1989, and its population at the end of the century could be twice what it is today.
“More growth will bring more challenges,” Baker says. “If we work together, everything will be fine. If we don’t, Palmdale will be just another town in the desert.”
