Northeast Fuels Valley’s 10-Year Growth of 20% : Census: New apartments and condominiums and an influx of Latinos, Asians and blacks were factors. The south grew slower than the citywide average.

The fastest-growing neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley didn’t have enough residents 11 years ago to field a baseball team: Exactly eight people lived there.

Now, however, 2,907 people live in that Porter Ranch census tract east of Tampa Boulevard at the base of Oat Mountain, the 1990 U.S. Census found. And the population is certain to rise as hundreds more red-tile-roofed houses, selling for as much as $450,000, are built and sold.

These upscale suburban houses, built practically within an arm’s length of one another, along with a bevy of new apartments and condominiums nearby, represent one face of the population change that transformed the San Fernando Valley during the 1980s. Built in a sweeping crescent that starts in West Hills and ends in Porter Ranch, these new developments on the urban fringe converted green and brown grazing areas into vast checkerboards of tile, concrete and watered lawns. The houses built in that crescent represent more than 80% of the new single-family dwellings built in the entire city of Los Angeles during the decade, according to city planners.

Such developments contributed to an overall population increase in the Valley of 20% during the 1980s to 1,216,000, according to Jeffrey Beckerman, a city Planning Department analyst. That rate is slightly higher than the 17% citywide rate and the 19% countywide rate.

Generally the census results confirm earlier city estimates that show communities such as Sylmar, Lake View Terrace, Panorama City and Pacoima in the northeastern Valley growing far faster than the city average, and south Valley communities such as Sherman Oaks, Studio City, Tarzana and Encino growing more slowly.

The range of the rate of population change is dramatic. The population of Sylmar rose about 44% to 60,000, the Arleta-Pacoima area went up by 38% to 94,000 and the Mission Hills-Panorama City area increased 35% to 106,300 during the decade, according to the city’s preliminary calculations. At the south end of the Valley, the population of the Encino-Tarzana area was virtually unchanged at about 66,500 and the number of people living in the Sherman Oaks-Studio City area rose 12%.

Although the U.S. Census Bureau has issued exact findings for incorporated areas, breaking down the results into neighborhoods or areas within cities is still being completed. Precise calculations are difficult because the boundaries of some 1990 census tracts have been altered, fast-growing tracts have been split one or more times and some tracts are now considered to be in a different community than they were in 1980.

But it is clear that many different trends came together to cause many to complain that the 1980s saw the Valley become unrooted from its suburban and rural past.

In addition to the new fringe developments, many single-family houses were squeezed onto tiny lots subdivided from larger ones and, in large numbers near Ventura Boulevard and in the northeast Valley, apartments and condominiums replaced older houses. In addition, the Valley received significant numbers of Latinos and Asians from other countries as well as from other parts of the city.

Citywide, the number of Latinos increased by 71% while in the Valley the Latino population went up by 108%, to about 382,000. The city’s Asian-Pacific Islander population rose 74% citywide but shot up 150% in the Valley. And, although the citywide African-American population fell by 8%, it went up in the Valley by 50% to reach 48,000. The number of non-Hispanic whites living in the Valley fell by 9%.

CSUN geography professor Eugene Turner analyzed about 315 census tracts that included Glendale and Burbank and most of the San Fernando Valley and found that approximately two-thirds of them gained population, including several in Porter Ranch, Panorama City and Chatsworth that more than doubled.

The one-third that lost population included several tracts near the burgeoning Media District in Burbank and several in Chatsworth and West Hills. Most striking for its population losses, however, was a swath of the South Valley that includes approximately 20 tracts that dropped by as much as 11% in population.

“My speculation is that these are the young people who have left the nest,” Turner said, explaining the population drops.

When Lou Paley moved in 1965 to the then-new Lake Encino development near the Encino Reservoir in the Santa Monica Mountains, there was already a waiting list to join the private racquet club in the neighborhood. During the 1980s, six census tracts near the racquet club lost between 4.3% and 11.6% of their population and now he is the club’s general manager and is trying to recruit members.

“It’s like a morgue up there,” he said of the club. “Now you can get on the courts just about any time.”

A decade or more ago, young families with children frequented the club, Paley said. Now “there are very few people who belong to the club and there are no children to speak of.”

Donna Bromberg, 49, has lived on Nogales Drive in the hills above Tarzana for 23 years in a census tract that lost 9.9% of its population during the past decade. Ten years ago, she said, the dozen households up and down her street all included young children.

“All of our children were the same age. We had ballgames going and people in the street at all times,” she said. “Now all our kids are in college. Now it’s quiet. It’s not so much fun anymore.”

Even though most of the large houses are now empty of children, their occupants are loath to move. “If your home is paid up, or close to being paid up, it’s economically foolish to move out,” said Annette Cohen, who has lived near the El Caballero Country Club in Tarzana for 16 years.

Other less-affluent and older neighborhoods with large lots fared differently in the ‘80s. Sprinkled throughout the Valley are blocks that were cut up into cul-de-sacs or subdivided, where individual houses were torn down and replaced by several new ones. Planners call such new construction in-fill.

Werner Prosek, who owns a car repair business, moved eight years ago to Lemona Avenue in an area of Sepulveda where older ranch houses occupied large 30,000-square-foot lots. Prosek said the area’s birch trees and wild parrots added to its rural charm.

Now the owners of many of those ranch houses have sold to developers who tore them down and built as many new houses as possible. “It’s a nightmare,” he said. “This block used to be rural and now it’s so dense. I guess that’s progress.”

The population of the census tracts in Prosek’s neighborhood increased between 20% and 54% during the decade.

But it was apartment and condominium construction that accounted for most of the growth in housing units--and the resulting growth in population--in the Valley, planners said.

Beckerman, the Planning Department analyst, said the number of occupied apartments and condominiums in Sylmar, tucked against the San Gabriel Mountains near the intersection of the Golden State and Foothill freeways, went up by about 150% during the decade, while the number of single-family houses went up only about 10%.

The new construction erased horse pastures and helped make the Sylmar area the fastest-growing in Los Angeles during the 1980s. The number of people living in some tracts, such as the area between the Foothill Freeway and Glenoaks Boulevard, went up by 50%.

Despite such growth, new residents still consider Sylmar to be calmer than areas closer to the center of the Valley. Bogan Navella, 40, moved this year with her two children from Panorama City to an apartment in Sylmar just off Foothill Boulevard.

“It’s cheaper and there’s less trouble here,” Navella said of her new neighborhood.

GAINERS AND LOSERS IN THE SAN FERNANDO VALLEY (Changes by community *) Hidden Hills: -2% Encino-Tarzana: 0% Granada Hills: 6% Northridge: 10% Burbank: 11% Canoga Park-Woodland Hills: 12% S. Sherman Oaks-Studio City: 12% Sunland-Tujunga: 13% Reseda-West Van Nuys: 15% Chatsworth-Porter Ranch: 18% Sun Valley: 25% North Hollywood: 26% Van Nuys-N. Sherman Oaks: 27% Glendale: 29% San Fernando: 29% Westlake Village: 29% Mission Hills-Panorama City: 35% Arleta-Pacoima: 38% Sylmar: 44% * Preliminary census calculations Source: Los Angeles City Planning Dept. and U.S. Bureau of the Census