Open Spaces Draw First-Time Buyers : Sylmar: This is still horse country, and homes are reasonably priced. Residents don't want their way of life threatened by too much development.

By PENELOPE McMILLAN

Feb. 10, 1991 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

When a 6.5 earthquake struck in the early hours of Feb. 9, 1971, it toppled two hospitals, collapsed bridges, twisted railroad tracks, killed 58 people--and made a rural enclave in the San Fernando Valley named Sylmar famous.

For several years after, negative memories of the “Sylmar quake” left the diamond-shaped community at the northern edge of Los Angeles lagging behind other fast-developing areas in the region.

But the slower growth lasted just long enough that Sylmar’s undeveloped stretches of land and horse ranches are now the very qualities its residents most treasure, and which make Sylmar unique.

Sylmar is one of the few communities left in the city with areas zoned for farm animals, that still has some unpaved roads and is perhaps the last with a vegetable crop still growing along one of the main streets.

“There’s open space, there are large properties--and space between the houses. The houses aren’t all right on top of each other,” said Karen Duvall.

She and her husband Ed bought their two-acre property, bordered by cedars, pines and flowering oleander bushes, in 1976, when they were looking for a place to raise Morgan horses for show competitions. The two-story wood-frame and cinder block home they built into a hill now overlooks a barn, riding ring and pastures.

A 23-square-mile community north of the junction of the Golden State and San Diego freeways, Sylmar is bounded on two sides by San Gabriel Mountains foothills, which are visible from almost any vantage point in the community.

“The mountains are so close you feel like you could go out and touch them on a clear day,” said Gretchen Guerrero, a real estate agent for Park Regency Inc., who also lives in Sylmar.

“The appeal of Sylmar lies in its surviving rural atmosphere, along with the area’s accessibility,” according to Rich Weiler, owner of realty Professionals Inc.. Major freeways such as the Golden State, Hollywood, San Diego, the 118 and Foothill freeways all virtually border the community.

“You’re still close to everything,” Weiler said. “Downtown is 25 minutes, so is Hollywood or Westwood.”

“First-time buyers are attracted to the area because of its affordability,” Guerrero said. “You’ll see a lot of first-timers, young families just starting out here, because you can still get a three-bedroom, two-bath house in the $160,000s.”

Prices are lower than in surrounding communities. For homes, prices range from about $140,000 to $200,000 in most areas except the foothills or horse properties, which tend to sell from $275,000 to $350,000 or more. Prices of condominiums and townhouses range from $95,000 to $184,000.

Rowan Moore and Jim Morris, in fact, were first-time buyers from Boyle Heights who moved to Sylmar 18 months ago. They readily admit they had originally hoped to buy in Shadow Hills, a pricey section of Sunland, until they realized that area was beyond their $150,000 budget.

When they began researching other areas of the Valley, Morris, a 36-year-old artist, recalled with wry amusement, “Real estate agents would treat us like: ‘You can’t do that for that money.’ Then we discovered Sylmar.”

For $148,000, they ended up in a 1,200-square-foot wood-frame, two-bedroom, one-bath house on a lot 50 feet wide by 150 feet deep--a common lot size for homes in Sylmar that were built in the 1940s. The first thing Morris did was build a white picket fence, to underscore the country feeling.

“It’s a totally different environment,” Moore, a 26-year-old graphic designer, said. Their house, in fact, borders one of Sylmar’s unpaved roads, a few blocks from the Angeles National Forest. Often, the sand street has more traffic from children on bicycles or people on horseback than cars.

“Living here has made my existence in the city really bearable,” Moore said. “Working in Hollywood, at the corner of Sunset and La Brea, is so ugly and my job is pretty hectic. When I come back out here, it makes life really pleasant.”

Longer-term residents like Rose Matuz, 65, who first moved to Sylmar with her husband, Jess, in 1961, said they came because “We were living in San Fernando, and it was very crowded. Sylmar had rural countryside, agriculture and orchards.”

Matuz, a nurse, and her husband, a retired landscape contractor, now live in a three-bedroom stucco home on Garrick Avenue that has recently become a local attraction because of a colorful mural painted on the front of the house. The mural, depicting a 16th-Century Mexican miracle involving the Virgin Mary, was created last spring by Sylmar artist Federico Blanco, who has done similar works on the walls of churches, stores and private homes in Sylmar and nearby areas.

The Latino culture is strong in Sylmar, which according to census figures, had a 58% white and 36% Latino population in 1980. While statistics from the 1990 census are not yet available, many believe the community remains largely white and Latino.

The Latino population could now be larger, city analysts say, since Latino enrollment in local public schools rose 25% over the last decade.

Matuz said she remains in Sylmar because “It’s still more like country” than surrounding areas. But other longtime residents fear that the rural atmosphere is disappearing, and the community has become more activist in recent years to preserve it.

“This is city now,” lamented Bill Hitt, a 55-year-old resident who first moved to Sylmar when he was 7-years-old.

Hitt and his wife, Gail, live in the same rambling 10-room ranch house his parents built when they raised garlic and corn in Sylmar in the 1940s. He remembers hunting for rabbits and doves on nearby land. But a supermarket and post office now sit on that former farmland.

In recent years, with memories of the earthquake faded, development has begun to catch up with Sylmar. The City Planning Department has declared the community the fastest growing area in Los Angeles, with an estimated 32% increase in population, from 41,922 in 1980 to 54,779 in 1989.

Most of the development involves housing, both single-family homes as well as condominiums and apartments. Craig Dick Construction is building 21 four- and five-bedroom “equestrian estates” to sell for between $340,000 and $415,000.

Watt Homes is building an 800-home development of manufactured houses called Santiago Estates, with the first 303-unit phase selling for between $96,900 and $119,900, plus $400 to $500-a-month in lot rents. Kaufman & Broad plans a subdivision of 310 homes in southwest Sylmar.

In the past, both commercial and residential development has been haphazard, so that condominiums ended up next to to horse ranches, or industrial warehouses next to homes.

“Things have gone up with no real thought of the community as a whole,” said Margaret Whittington, a paralegal who has lived in Sylmar for 12 years.

She heads the Sylmar Citizens Planning Advisory Committee, which community leaders hope will bring more coordinated future planning. City officials appointed the group in 1989 to study Sylmar for a two-year period and then recommend revisions to the city’s community plan for the area.

Among other concerns in Sylmar are crime and graffiti.

The area leads the northeast valley communities such as Sunland, Tujunga, Lake View Terrace and Pacoima in residential burglaries and burglary or thefts from motor vehicles, according to the Los Angeles Police Department’s Foothill Division.

And in October, 1989, law enforcement officials discovered 20 tons cocaine in a Sylmar warehouse--the largest coke seizure in history.

An increase in graffiti, however, has been successfully attacked by Sylmar Graffiti Busters. The group, launched three years ago, was the first community graffiti-removal group formed in the city, and its volunteers see that defaced walls and fences are quickly repainted.

Sylmar got its beginnings from a group of olive growers, who planted olive orchards there in the 1890s. The name, according to historical accounts, means “sea of trees,” and was intended by the growers to convey an image of gray-green olive tree tops swaying in the wind. Around the turn of the century, the growers established a “Sylmar” brand of olive oil.

By 1940, the population was still little more than 4,000, and the foothills had more citrus groves and chrysanthemum farms than houses. Sylmar’s major steps toward growth came after freeway construction made the community easier to reach--the 1963 completion of the junction of the Golden State and San Diego freeways, and the 1981 completion of the junction between the 210 and the 118 freeways.

Since 1974, Sylmar has been home to “San Sylmar,” an elaborate museum of antique cars, clocks and musical instruments created by an executive of Merle Norman Cosmetics, which has a manufacturing plant there. In one section designed like a ballroom, with marble floors and crystal chandeliers, classic cars built by Rolls-Royce, Duesenberg or Bugatti are on display. In another more than 1,000 ornaments that once adorned car hoods are on view.

In 1991, Mission College, a two-year community college, will be relocating to Sylmar from San Fernando, with an anticipated student body of 8,000.

Many Sylmarites hope the area can keep the pastoral feeling that survives.

AT A GLANCE Population

1990 estimateL: 23,644

1980-90 change: 37.8%

Median age: 30.8 years

Annual income

Per capita: 14,612

Median household: 45,287

Household distribution

Less than $15,000: 13.5%

$15,000 - $30,000: 17.6%