Lifestyle Options in Wide-Open Space : Chatsworth: The community is undergoing change, but still offers a rural flavor and room to raise horses.

People move to a new neighborhood for many different reasons.

The Santogrossi family moved to Chatsworth for very personal reasons--their religious faith. They are Mormons.

“One of the main reasons we moved here was our home church ward,” Dave Santogrossi said. “We wanted to live in the ward where we grew up.”

Santogrossi, 27, operates an auto security company. His wife, Michelle, 24, is the firm’s office manager, and they are the parents of an infant daughter. Last April, they bought a three-bedroom, two-bath townhome for $189,000.

Joel Rosenfeld and his wife, Joyce, were also shopping for a new home in 1990.

“We were looking for a place that had tennis courts and we felt lucky to find this house,” Rosenfeld said. Their house--with tennis court--is also in Chatsworth.

Chatsworth is in the northwestern corner of the San Fernando Valley. Nestled in the shadows of the craggy Santa Susana Mountains, the community offers a wide choice of lifestyles to its 35,000 residents.

“There’s a little bit of everything here, from tennis courts to horse property,” added Rosenfeld, who owns and operates a liquidation firm. He and Joyce moved to their Chatsworth home last August from another Valley community--West Hills.

“Chatsworth is very friendly,” he said. “We’ve got great shopping, and there’s easy access to wherever you want to go.”

Being close to the freeways, however, doesn’t mean that commuting residents can move around quickly. “The only thing I don’t like about living here is my commute to Los Angeles,” said Rosenfeld, who drives 37 miles each way.

The couple purchased their single-story, four-bedroom, two-bath home for $517,000. Besides the tennis court, there is also a swimming pool and spa. By Valley standards, the Rosenfelds’ lot is large.

The average price for an existing single-family detached home in Chatsworth is $300,000, according to Steven Noel of the Northridge office of R. R. Gable Realty.

“Chatsworth doesn’t have a lot of low-low priced housing,” Noel said. “For $175,000 you’ll get an older home, two or three bedrooms, and one to 1 1/2 baths. Maybe a fixer-upper.”

The most expensive home on the market in Chatsworth is $3 million, he said.

“Chatsworth has an extremely good condo market,” Noel said. “The average price of an (existing) single-family attached home is between $160,000 and $175,000.”

As for the market in new homes, “in September, the median price for a single-family detached home, with a median square footage of 3,977, was $757,166,” said Steve La Terra, market analyst with the Meyers Group in Encino.

The median price for a single-family attached home was $278,323, La Terra said.

The equestrian flavor and zoning in Chatsworth have been primary attractions through the years.

“We moved out here so our daughter could be in 4-H, and so we could have animals. We wanted a rural atmosphere,” said Virginia Watson, who moved to the community with her husband, Henry, in the ‘50s.

Both are retired, but Virginia still works part time as a special-education aide at the local Lawrence Junior High. Besides his career as a data processor and hers as a writer, the Watsons raised and raced thoroughbred horses.

They also raised two daughters in the two-bedroom, 1 1/2-bath house on half an acre that they bought for $17,000 in 1955.

“We always had horses until last year,” Watson said. “We both worked at the race track. That was our interest--racehorses.”

The Watsons have seen many changes in Chatsworth. “Chatsworth was a very small town when we moved here,” Watson said. “We had a four-party telephone line when we lived on Chatsworth Street. It was a very rural atmosphere. You could see eagles and condors. The deer used to come down Brown Creek.”

“Now you see cars and people, but we don’t mind it though,” she said. “Progress is nice. It happens, and we’re getting used to it.”

Although evidence that prehistoric peoples once lived in Chatsworth has been found on cave walls in the area’s rocky hills, it wasn’t until 1850 that the area became part of the United States. The land was first owned by Spain and then Mexico.

In the 1870s, significant numbers of pioneers homesteaded land there, including Ann and Neils Johnson, who are believed to be the first English-speaking settlers in Chatsworth.

Watson, a past president of the Chatsworth Historical Society, said the organization has preserved the Homestead Acre--the only homestead cottage left in the San Fernando Valley.

“We saved a piece of history,” she said, “so kids would at least know what it was like before you had electricity, before you had water brought in.”

(The public is invited to visit the cottage on the first Sunday of every month. For further information, call (818) 882-5614.)

The first map of Chatsworth Park was recorded in 1888 by the San Fernando Valley Improvement Co. After railroad schedules dropped the word “Park,” the town’s name was shortened to Chatsworth. The community is believed to have been named by an English settler in honor of Chatsworth, the Duke of Devonshire’s estate.

It remained a quiet agricultural community with large citrus orchards and other crops until after World War II. Then Chatsworth experienced a population boom and industrial growth.

In 1957, Deluxe Check became the first major national firm to establish a plant in the area. The 1960s and ‘70s brought more housing developments and commercial expansion in the form of industrial parks.

New resident Santogrossi is concerned about the changes he has seen.

“Graffiti is spreading everywhere,” he said. “On Sundays, Chatsworth Park (one of three parks in the community) is crowded, and it’s discouraging to see all the litter left behind. I think that a lot of people in the park come from other parts of the Valley and are not even Chatsworth residents.”

Added longtime resident Watson: “I know we’ve got problems in the parks with gangs and dope. The parks do have some problems with transients. But I don’t think we have any unique problems except maybe the writing on the rocks.”

Stoney Point, east of Topanga Canyon Boulevard, is a sandstone rock formation that attracts not only graffiti vandals but rock climbers from throughout Los Angeles County.

Two of those rock climbers are Brenda and Mike Waugh, five-year Chatsworth residents.

“We moved here because of the recreational facilities, particularly Stoney Point,” Mike Waugh said. “We’re into rock climbing. I also like the quiet and the view of the Santa Susana Mountains.”

Waugh, 33, is a county fireman and works in his own neighborhood. Brenda, 38, is a teacher in the Newhall School District and commutes 40 miles round trip to the Santa Clarita Valley. The couple have a 5-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son.

They purchased their two-story, 2,000-square-foot house in 1985 for $150,000. The home has four bedrooms and 2 1/2 baths.

Waugh fears that Chatsworth will become overdeveloped. “I don’t want it to become too crowded,” he said. “I like the wide open spaces. I don’t like seeing the horse property disappear--the horse people are nice.”

Horses are a common sight in Chatsworth. The town offers miles of equestrian trails and horse boarding facilities. Horse crossing signs are as common there as school crossing signs are in other communities.

Driving in Chatsworth on Topanga Canyon Boulevard is like going back to the days of the Wild West. The rugged, sienna rocks and boulders have provided a scenic backdrop for movies, television shows and commercials.

“The Guns of Navarone” and such television shows as “Bonanza” and “Lassie” were filmed in the scenic Chatsworth area at locations such as the Iverson Movie Ranch, the Spahn Ranch and Stoney Point. The Spahn Ranch attracted more notoriety when Charles Manson’s “family” used it before fire destroyed it in 1970.

AT A GLANCE

Population

1990 estimate: 54,846

1980-90 change: 22.7%

Median age: 34.4 years

Annual income

Per capita: $22,108

Median household: $55,796

Household distribution

Less than $15,000: 8%

$15,000 - $30,000: 14.3%

$30,000 - $50,000: 22.2%

$50,000 - $75,000: 24.3%

$75,000 +: 31.5%