AT HOME : Town Relies on Sense of Community : Gardena: Residents applaud the positive growth and appreciate the financially stable, affordable middle-class community with a balanced ethnic mix.

Thora Smith Pursche, 88, came to Gardena as a bride in 1924 and has lived in the same little bungalow ever since.

The farmlands of the South Bay city and the sweet aroma of its strawberry fields are now gone and Pursche’s home can barely be seen among the car dealerships, banks and office buildings of busy Redondo Beach Boulevard.

Developers have made tempting offers for this last remaining single-family dwelling along the “golden mile” of Gardena’s prime commercial real estate. But Pursche’s riches, she maintains, are still to be found in simple tasks around her garden and in the bounty of her back-yard orchard.

Pursche and other longtime residents of Gardena are disturbed by some of the changes in their city, in particular the number of single-family homes that have been replaced by apartment houses, creating increased traffic and parking problems.

But they also applaud the positive growth. Gardenans see themselves as living in a financially stable, mostly residential, affordable middle-class community with a well-balanced ethnic mix.

The Ruizes and Ybarras, Bakers and Blanchards, Nakaokas and Nakajimas are part of this racially diverse population of about 50,000 that is primarily Caucasian, black, Latino and Japanese, with growing numbers of Koreans, Vietnamese, Filipinos, Hawaiians and Samoans.

“When we have a Cinco de Mayo or Oriental festival, a Martin Luther King Jr. parade, a fund-raiser for the homeless or citywide sports events, everyone joins in and is supportive,” said Rosa Montano, a 34-year-old bridal coordinator of Mexican heritage who is involved in community activities.

But for the most part, she added, “People here tend to mingle with their own. They feel more comfortable in their bilingual environments where cultural traditions are expressed openly.”

Bill and June Gerber, both in their 70s, settled in the upscale Hollypark area of Gardena when it was first being developed in 1955 in the northwestern part of town. They purchased a 1,400-square-foot two-bedroom, two-bath home for $18,OOO, with 4% loan interest payment.

“We like it here,” Bill Gerber said. “Gardena is a sound community with a low crime rate. The climate is about the best anywhere, with prevailing westerly winds and a temperature that is 15 degrees less than Los Angeles. And we have easy access to four freeways,” Gerber said, adding that 95% of Hollypark’s 1,800 homes are now occupied by black families.

“They are good neighbors,” said the retired industrial engineer. “We all get along just fine.”

James and Kai Parker, one of many black families who moved to Hollypark in the ‘60s and ‘70s, paid $28,000 for their five-bedroom home on a large corner lot.

“We feel lucky to have such a large home where we can gather our family and friends,” Kai Parker said.

“We knew very little about Gardena when we moved here, but in driving through the area, I was impressed with the well-kept parks, the church down the block, the high school nearby and the proximity of El Camino College.

“We had two sons and felt it was a great place to raise a family,” said Kai Parker, now a grandmother and employed as special projects coordinator for Pasadena City College.

“I would say that 80% to 90% of Gardena’s residents moved here because of what this community has to offer to families. We have a pluralistic environment where there’s a lot of respect for one another’s differences and a lot of support in helping maintain the dignity and beauty of the city.”

Gardena’s boundaries are roughly 190th Street to the south, El Segundo Boulevard to the north, Crenshaw Boulevard to the west and Vermont Avenue to the east, with a few unincorporated peninsulas woven in, which still remain somewhat neglected.

“We hope someday to have them become a part of the city,” said City Planner Roy Kato. “There would be more police control and more benefits to those areas.”

Kato noted that while housing is still affordable in Gardena, it is not as easily available as before.

“To fill that demand, investors have been buying up every available single-family home on an R-2 lot and building apartments and condo units,” he said.

“Even some of the major nurseries that once flourished in Gardena have been bought up for commercial and residential development. But we are working on a plan to limit development that encroaches on single-family neighborhoods.”

Rachel Ruiz Adam, who was born in Gardena and heads the Old Timers group (made up mostly of Latinos whose families pioneered the area), bemoans the fact that “the town has gotten bigger and we’ve lost some of the neighborliness I grew up with.

“When we were country hicks, we had fewer problems,” she said, adding that her parents arrived in the area from Mexico in 1919, and her 94-year-old mother still lives in the community. “But Gardena is still a wonderful place to live, and the police here are super.”

Crime statistics for Gardena in a 10-month period through October showed a 26% decrease in violent crimes compared to the same period in the previous year, Police Chief Richard K. Propster said.

“I lived for a while in Redondo Beach,” said native Gardenan Tom Olson, “but returned to Gardena because it’s more centrally located for the work I do.”

Olson, 44, a route salesman for Pioneer Bakery, just closed escrow on his first home in Gardena, located just two blocks from where his parents live.

“I can still remember the strawberry fields being worked by the Japanese farmers, right across from Roosevelt Elementary, where I went to grammar school,” he said.

“My parents purchased their home in Gardena in 1952 and paid $10,500. I paid $165,000 for my fixer. But, in today’s market, that’s a bargain. Home prices in my neighborhood, in the northwestern part of town, are running upwards of $200,000,” Olson said.

The beginnings of Gardena as a community, apart from the great ranchos of the Dominguez, Amestoy, Ducazau and Rosecrans families, dates to the 1880s, said Tom Parks, who heads the local Chamber of Commerce and delves into Gardena history in his regular column for the Gardena Valley News.

“The town started with a general store at the corner of Figueroa Street and 161st Street. By 1889, the Redondo Railway required the moving of the central part of town to what is now Vermont Avenue and Gardena Boulevard,” Parks said.

“In 1930 the rural communities of Gardena, Moneta and Strawberry Park and Western City were incorporated as the City of Gardena that now contains about 5.39 square miles,” said Parks, who chose Gardena for his home base after touring for years as a lead singer with the Ray Anthony orchestra.

Gardena has been identified as a home for card clubs since the 1940s, he said, but club activity has been on the decline. When the City Council was persuaded that poker was a game of skill and not of chance, six poker parlors settled in town and, in the ‘60s, the city was collecting about $3 million in fees from the clubs.

In the last 10 years, card clubs have emerged in neighboring county areas. “Now only the Eldorado and the Normandie are operating,” said Parks, a one-time partner in the defunct Rainbow Club.

“Today, the money power has shifted from the clubs to the financial community. And there’s a lot of stable money here,” said Bill Johnson, a realtor in the area for the past 25 years and twice president of the Gardena Board of Realtors. Gardena has 19 major banks and four or five savings and loan associations holding about $1 billion in deposits.

“The city has retained a high Japanese flavor, established when they began settling in the Moneta area at a time when few communities were ready to accept a strong ethnic presence,” Johnson said.

Many of the Japanese who had lived in Gardena before World War II returned to the community, following their wartime internment, Johnson said, and have remained a strong stabilizing force.

Most of the clients of Don and Hisaye Nakajima, longtime residents and realtors, are Asian couples and singles.

“Many Japanese nationals on temporary assignments from their firms in Japan have been looking for properties in neighboring Torrance,” said Hisaye Nakajima. “But in Torrance the prices for comparable properties are much higher, and some end up buying in Gardena.”

Nakajima came to Gardena in 1939 and after a period of internment during World War II resettled in the community. “We bought our home here in 1955 for $15,500 and did some remodeling to it,” she said. “It’s now worth about $270,000.

“A lot of people, especially first-time home buyers, are purchasing condos and townhouses because they are more reasonable. Here, three-bedroom condos currently sell in the range of $150,000 to $190,000 for units sized at 1,200 to 1,600 square feet. Rentals for two-bedroom apartments average $650 to $750,” she said.

New residents Jim and Maureen Milligan recently purchased a 1,700-square-foot home with four bedrooms and 1 3/4 baths. They paid $240,000--a good buy even for Gardena, Milligan said. “Today most two-bedroom houses in Gardena sell upward of $200,000 and around $350,000 for three- and four-bedrooms homes.”

Gardena’s central location was a plus factor in the Milligans’ decision in where to settle, and they liked that the home purchase was owner-financed. Jim works as a pool and spa specialist and Maureen is an equitation training officer for the Santa Monica Police Department.

Perhaps the highest praise for the city of Gardena came from Shirley Moromisato, a volunteer at the local library, who said she wouldn’t trade it for her native Hawaii.

“I came from a tropical paradise to a sprawling metropolitan area more than 30 years ago. I needed a change of scene,” she said. “I liked it here so much I don’t ever want to live any place else. My children were born in Gardena, and we have strong ties in the South Bay.

“Hawaii will always remain a great place to visit. But what I found in Gardena is a community that’s just the right size, where everyone is interested in keeping it a good place for families to live. Also, being part of a large Asian population that still preserves the best of its cultural traditions gives me a real sense of belonging.”

AT A GLANCE Population

1989 estimate: 51,717

1980-89 change: +14.5%

Median age: 33.0 years

Racial/ethnic mix

Asians, other: 29.2%

White (non-Latino): 25.5%

Latino: 24.2%

Black: 21.1%

Annual income

Per capita: $13,616

Median household: $33,070

Household distribution

Less than $15,000: 20.6%

$15,000 - $30,000: 24.1%

$30,000 - $50,000: 31.0%

$50,000 - $75,000: 17.0%

$75,000 + 7.2%

Home price

Nov. ’89 average: $188,340