Town Retains Vestiges of Rural Past : Villa Park: Once the scene of cattle drives, this small Orange County city's homes are on spacious lots, there are lots of trails and no street lights.

By COLLEEN NICKERSON ADAMS

Nov. 26, 1989 12 AM PT

<i> Nickerson Adams is a Huntington Beach free-lance writer</i>

A few weeks after moving to Orange County in 1959, a Villa Park resident was late for an appointment in Tustin because he got into a traffic jam on Santiago Boulevard. Not cars. Cows.

A few hundred yards off Katella Avenue, cowboys from the Irvine Ranch were driving several dozen head of cattle from one side of Santiago to the other. Apparently the grass was greener where million-dollar homes would grow three decades later.

“Ranches” haven’t completely disappeared from Villa Park, although now they are limited to an acre or so and “cowboys” to the several miles of trails that wind throughout the city. Now built to 95% capacity of its planned development, Villa Park still manages to maintain a rather rural ambience.

There are no street lights, no parks, no gas stations, no churches, and only an occasional stoplight or sidewalk. And that’s the way the 7,000 residents of the 2.1-square-mile city like it.

“Oh, the street lights throw people at first,” said Lesslie Giacobbi) of Seven Gables Real Estate, who has lived in the city since 1978. “They’re all up in arms, ready to take the city to task. And then they realize that lights would ruin the country atmosphere.”

For all it may lack in urban amenities, life in Villa Park is hardly roughing it.

The homes range from comfortable to the absolutely massive, and they are set on lots of a minimum of one-half acre throughout most of the city. The standard back-yard swimming pool is often augmented by stables, corrals, guest houses or tennis courts.

Homes are a mix of ubiquitous rambling one-story ranch styles, and in the newer sections, imposing French Country styles are shoulder to shoulder with Cape Cod and Mediterranean facades.

“It certainly is diverse, not the cookie-cutter look you might find in other communities,” Giacobbi said.

And all this atmosphere doesn’t come cheap. According to Giacobbi, the median home price is $682,000, several hundred thousand above most Orange County neighborhoods.

“It is difficult to compare Villa Park to other cities because there are no condominiums or town homes, only single-family detached homes on very large lots,” Giacobbi said.

At the low end of the market, buyers can find a home in the “buffer zone” of 10,000-square-foot lots near the city’s southwest border for $335,000. For that money, a purchaser may get a 20-year-old, five-bedroom, three-bath house with a little more than 2,000 square feet.

By contrast, a buyer in the more prestigious northern part of Villa Park could spend close to $4 million on a new 10,000-square-foot mansion with a view stretching to the ocean and Catalina Island.

Another alternative that is increasing in popularity is tearing down older, smaller homes (that are often on the largest lots) and subdividing the property for two or more homes. A tiny house on one acre with a view could go for $600,000.

Recent efforts by developers to rezone to a higher density some of the buildable parcels left in Villa Park was met with vocal opposition by homeowners. In fact, zoning was the catalyst in the city’s incorporation a little more than a quarter-century ago.

With the housing boom of the late 1950s, the city of Orange began annexing parcels of the Villa Park area and allowing much denser building than the area’s traditional 1.5 homes per acre minimum. Voters approved incorporation in 1962, making it Orange County’s 24th and smallest city.

Instead of discouraging growth as residents had hoped, the zoning appealed to developers who began tearing down orchards of oranges and avocados to build tracts of homes. Some older residents didn’t adapt to the newcomers easily.

“I remember one City Council meeting in particular, when we were discussing the building of the city hall, one gentleman called us carpetbaggers,” said Catherine Wells, a resident since 1968.

For all its wealth (the median household income is nearly $10,000 higher than the county average) Villa Park maintains a relatively low profile. Situated in northern Orange County, Villa Park is completely surrounded by the city of Orange.

“People have usually heard of us, they’re just not sure exactly where we are,” laughed Craig Ota, who moved to Villa Park with his wife, Margaret, and three daughters in 1976.

Once people find Villa Park they seem to stay there quite a while. “Many residents are doing major remodeling, sometimes involving hundreds of thousands of dollars, instead of moving, especially since it would be hard to ‘over-improve’ for this area,” Giacobbi said.

Margaret Ota estimates that nearly half of their neighbors who moved in at the same time she did are still there. After looking around at other communities, particularly south Orange County, the Otas decided to forgo moving for remodeling.

“Why move? We would be paying more money for less house and less land,” she said.

Also driving home prices up is Villa Park’s centralized location. For all its rural charm, the city is just five minutes from the Newport-Costa Mesa Freeway. “You have to watch the clock and avoid the peak times, but it’s usually pretty easy to get around,” Craig Ota said.

Which is a good thing, since Villa Park has no movie theaters or restaurants. In fact, the city’s only shopping center features a grocery store, a variety of small shops, city hall and a library.

“It is interesting to note, however, that our shopping center has four banks,” Giacobbi said.

Aside from the obvious expense of buying a home there, residents find little to complain about in their community. The crime rate is the lowest in the county, according to the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, with just 35 burglaries so far this year.

The Otas say Villa Park is a close-knit neighborhood, where people work together to maintain the small-town ambience. And they rave about the country flavor the city has managed to preserve, and the bobcats, raccoons and rabbits that occasionally wander their property.

“It would be nice to have a golf or tennis club nearby, but now the land is worth so much, it’s out of the question,” Craig Ota said.

The Otas, who previously lived in Huntington Beach, bought in a small tract of customized homes in the hilly, northern part of the city. Ota, a dentist, estimates that their 4,000-square-foot home on about 1 1/2 acres has tripled in value since they purchased it.

Catherine Wells and her family bought a house on Jacotal Street in 1968 because they liked the large lots and the “wall-to-wall kids.”

“With four schools within walking distance of the house, it was a dream come true for a station wagon refugee,” Wells said.

Wells, who serves as the city’s historian, reminisces about the days you could drive through Villa Park and enjoy the sweet fragrance of acres of orange trees, which was the area’s major crop for almost 60 years. It was the citrus growers who molded Villa Park into a vital community and organized its incorporation.

Does the city’s growth and the impending development of the wide open spaces east of Villa Park bother her? “That’s progress,” she said.

Ron Accornero of North Hills Realty was so taken with Villa Park 10 years ago that he changed careers to stay there. “It was a gradual thing, but one of the reasons I left the air-freight business and went into real estate was so that I could live here,” Accornero said. He raves about the large setbacks from the street, a minimum of 30 feet, and the privacy large lots afford. But what keeps him in Villa Park, he says, are the people.

“When my wife passed away three months ago, people were so caring,” he said. “The outpouring of cards and flowers really touched me. My neighbors are still bringing food over. You can’t buy friendship or community spirit like that.”

AT A GLANCE

Population

1989 estimate: 6,961

1980-89 change: -2.5%

Median age: 30.8 years

Racial/ethnic mix

White (non-Latino) 88.0%

Latino: 5.3%

Black: 0.3%

Other: 6.4%

Annual income

Per capita: $26,223