A Community Spirit Lives in Villa Vista

For a while it looked as if another neighborhood could fall victim to urban blight, with older residents leaving, an increase in traffic and the threat of new apartments.

But instead, the Villa Vista neighborhood is thriving.

Younger residents with the energy to salvage deteriorating housing and interested in restoring a sense of community have infused new life into two long blocks in the heart of Pasadena.

‘Complete Turnaround’

“People are sitting on their front porches more, they say ‘Hi’ to each other and they seem to have pretty much the same view and vision” of a neighborhood, Nicholas Rodriguez said from his front porch at 537 Chester Ave.

“I see this as a complete turnaround,” Rodriguez said. “I have a great feeling about it.”

Villa Vista includes Chester and Michigan Avenues, bounded by Orange Grove Boulevard on the north and Villa Street on the south.

Most of the 80 houses on the two blocks are California bungalows, an architectural style popular between 1910 and 1920, with no two alike. They are shaded by big, old trees and there are almost always children playing on some of the front lawns.

Increasingly in the past decade the houses have been occupied by young families, representing several ethnic groups.

Although the residents have always had a common interest in preserving their neighborhood, many are two-income families and have had little opportunity to get to know their neighbors.

They had their first real opportunity on Sept. 29, when they met on one of the front lawns to form the Villa Vista Neighborhood Assn., the newest of about 75 neighborhood associations in Pasadena.

Encouraged to Organize

“What made this one unique was the number of young working couples,” said Toni Stuart, neighborhood services coordinator for Pasadena, who encouraged the residents to organize. “And there were as many children as there were adults at that first meeting.

“These are young families with two incomes, and they were delighted to get a chance to know each other,” Stuart said. “They seem to enjoy the diversity of their racial mix.”

The residents are white, black, Latino, Asian, Iranian, Indian and Filipino. Many of them say their neighborhood is special because although the houses have suffered from old age, most have been preserved. There are four apartment buildings on the two blocks, and some of the houses are duplexes or have rental units in back.

Few of the houses appear to be modernized or to have been remodeled. Although many need paint and repairs, the area looks as if it has changed little in 50 years. Several residents said they are slowly rehabilitating their homes themselves to save money, but will make no major changes.

The two blocks are surrounded by what was once a much larger residential area that was severed by the Foothill (210) Freeway in the 1970s, and changed with zoning to allow multiple housing.

As older occupants left the Villa Vista area in the last decade, young working couples such as Rodriguez and his wife, Eva Ferreira, bought the homes. He is an attorney and member of the Pasadena Planning Commission and she is a banker. They bought their 2-story house seven years ago, before having two children.

Villa Vista has become a better neighborhood because of the steady increase in young families, Rodriguez said.

“I grew up on Holliston Avenue just three blocks away, and we lost any sense of neighborhood,” he said. “The freeway, and then the transiency that comes with apartments--we had no sense of who are neighbors were. We had high crime and of course a lot of fear was brought on by that.”

Different Tales

Across the street, Larry and Rita McMurry and their two teen-age children have lived in their bungalow for 12 years. He is a wholesale electrical salesman and president of the Villa Vista Neighborhood Assn. She works for a finance firm.

Rita McMurry grew up one block away in the house where her mother, Willa Mae Brockman, still lives.

While Rita McMurry calls Villa Vista “the best place to live,” Brockman said her home on Michigan, just outside the Villa Vista neighborhood and a block closer to the freeway, has suffered.

“I knew some people for 30 years, and they were good about keeping up their property,” she said. But most have left and their homes were razed for apartments. “Now people come and go and I never meet them. It’s not so great here,” Brockman said.

The oldest Villa Vista resident is Lillian Kath, 79, who has lived in the same house on Michigan Avenue since 1955.

“We used to be like one big happy family,” she recalled. But when a condominium was built across the street and apartments appeared down the street several years ago, “there were more and more strangers. And then the freeway changed things so.”

But her block has stabilized in recent years and Kath said, “I’m very well pleased with the way things are in this neighborhood, especially compared to others.”

In contrast to the surrounding area, where houses are fenced and windows barred, on Villa Vista’s two blocks only two houses have bars and only one is fenced in front. There are no signs of graffiti.

Residents said one of the main reasons for forming the Villa Vista Neighborhood Assn. was because so many of them met at city hearings. They had the same mission--to press for a zoning change that would preserve the neighborhood for single-family homes. The area had been zoned for 32 dwelling units to an acre, and they succeeded in getting the area “downzoned” to only six to an acre.

“They won a major victory,” said Stuart, the neighborhood services coordinator. “It is unusual to jump from 32 to six.”

Downzoning Approved

The Pasadena Board of City Directors approved the zone change last summer, and it took effect soon after the association’s first meeting on the McMurrys’ lawn.

“We had started seeing some decay,” said McMurry, who had sought the downzoning and was elected president at the first neighborhood meeting. “We were kind of being neglected by the city and wondering why.”

Since then, Villa Vista residents have asked for and received street lighting repairs and more efficient street sweeping. They have begun an effort to get speed bumps installed along Chester Avenue to discourage fast traffic.

Jack and Ruth-Ann Lozier, who have two toddlers, called the neighborhood “very mellow” and said they moved there recently because “it is a safe, comfortable place to raise a family.”

Sofia Hernandez, surrounded by children at her bungalow on Chester Avenue, said in broken English that she moved into her rented house last month because the neighborhood is “good for little ones.”

Paul Torio, a painter who lives on Michigan Avenue with his wife and several children, also spoke in halting English. “A good, good place,” he said several times with a big smile.