Not Strawberry Fields Forever : Oxnard: Although not the farm town it once was and with traffic increasing, a country atmosphere still reigns in the wide open spaces.

By KATHY PRICE

June 2, 1991 12 AM PT

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Driving to Patty and Chris Kingsley’s north Oxnard home is like going back in time.

The two-lane highway cuts through endless acres of dark-green crops--mostly strawberries this time of year. Groves of citrus trees stretch across the land. An occasional farmhouse and rows of towering eucalyptus trees pierce the blue sky.

After entering the new development where the Kingsleys live, one is struck by the spotless sidewalks, grease-free driveways, young parkway trees and the bright green of new lawns.

But all this comes at a price, which the couple is willing to pay.

“We’d have more money if we’d stayed where we were (in neighboring Ventura),” Patty Kingsley said. “But we’re really happy we did move. We love driving through the fields on the way home. We feel a little more rural.”

The Kingsleys, both teachers in Ventura, were married less than two years ago and moved with Patty’s two daughters to the new Summerfield development by Standard Pacific in December, 1989.

Their 2,800-square-foot home has four bedrooms with a bonus playroom upstairs for the kids. The new house, which cost $354,000, worked out so well that Chris Kingsley’s mother decided to move from Michigan to Oxnard and buy a home in the same development.

The Kingsleys are just one of the many families flocking to the wide open spaces of the Oxnard Plains, which includes the fast-growing city of Oxnard--the population, now 142,216, has doubled since 1970--and surrounding county land from the Conejo Grade to the Santa Clara River.

While newcomers are charmed by Oxnard’s country feeling, longtime residents say it used to be even more rural.

“Oxnard was just a little bitty farm town,” said Cecil Watson, 48, who has lived here since age 4. He recalls seeing a sign in the early 1950s that said “Oxnard. Pop. 13,750.”

“That always stuck in my mind. I can also clearly remember seeing signs that said Pop. 37,000, 74,000 and 104,000. Now it’s not nearly the small, quaint community. The traffic flow is hard. You can’t get around too good nowadays.”

Watson and his wife, Maria, bought their then new, five-bedroom home in 1974 for $32,950.

Although Pearl Vaca also has lived in Oxnard since she was a child, she and her husband, Santiago, just recently entered the world of home ownership.

Three years ago, after many years of renting, the couple bought a condominium. They and their three daughters--now ages 21, 16 and 11--liked the home at first, but eventually some adjoining units were inhabited by three and four families, and the area got too crowded for the Vacas.

A few months ago, the family decided “to take one step forward,” Pearl Vaca said, and they bought a house. Now their daughters, who rarely ventured outside in the old neighborhood, like to play with their new puppy on the back porch.

“You have more room (in a house),” Pearl Vaca said. “My husband planted fruit trees. I like to work in the garden. I planted flowers. I like colorful things. Even though you have problems, you can go out there and say, ‘God really makes something beautiful.’ ”

The Vacas struggle to pay their $1,300 mortgage payment but they got what they wanted. “It’s expensive,” Pearl Vaca said, “but you have to pay the price.”

Home prices in Oxnard range from $138,000 to more than $1 million, with a median price of $343,000. An Oxnard Shores oceanfront house once owned by singing duo Sonny and Cher was listed for $1.2 million.

There are many houses in Oxnard listed from $170,000 to $190,000. Condo prices range from $103,000 for a low-end conversion unit to nearly $1 million for a 4,055-square-foot unit on the waterfront. The median condo price is $251,000.

But there’s more to Oxnard than houses. The next time a millionaire pulls up in a Rolls-Royce and asks you for Grey Poupon mustard, send him to Oxnard, where a Nabisco plant produces every dollop of Grey Poupon sold in the United States.

The only deep-water port between Los Angeles and San Francisco is Port Hueneme, a tiny city completely surrounded by Oxnard that is also home to two naval stations that employ about 20,000 military and civilian workers, many of whom live in Oxnard.

Oxnard is also the new home to many popular retailers and of two high-rise buildings, 15 and 21 stories tall.

Among Oxnard’s high-rent districts are seven miles of beaches that were once the playground of Hollywood stars, and the area around Channel Islands Harbor, which has four yacht clubs and nine marinas.

But nonetheless, Oxnard is often perceived as a one-horse town.

“What you see from the 101 Freeway is a lot of fields,” said Bob Sietz of the Oxnard Chamber of Commerce Visitors’ Bureau. “But Oxnard is not a one-industry community. It’s . . . more than most people realize.”

Yolanda Brown began to realize Oxnard’s charms during the 18 months when she commuted to her Defense Department job in Oxnard from her home in Panorama City.

“I noticed that the people are friendlier here. They are more family-oriented,” said Brown, the mother of three young children. “The weather is better, it’s cooler. You have the breeze 90% of the time.”

Her husband, Steve Mayo, agreed, and last year the couple became first-time homeowners. Because the sellers needed to make a quick sale, the couple were able to buy a three-bedroom plus family room house in South Oxnard for $182,000.

They like their home’s floor plan--with the family room near the kitchen and the bedrooms at the opposite end--and they like their new neighborhood.

“We’ve met our neighbors,” Brown said. “They have been over here with everything they thought we might need. We weren’t used to that in the Valley.”

Neighbors were few and far between 150 years ago when eight soldiers petitioned California’s Mexican governor, Juan B. Alvarado, for permission to settle with their families along the Santa Clara River. The Spanish-language record of 1840 shows that their surnames were Cota, Valenzuela, Gonzales, Pico, Valdez, Feliz and Maria. They were granted 44,833 acres called Rancho El Rio de Santa Clara O La Colonia--what is now the city of Oxnard.

After the Mexican-American war and a drought that devastated many of the Mexican cattle ranchers, title to the land eventually shifted to Anglo owners, many of whom were Oxnard’s pioneers. The city got its name from two brothers named Oxnard who in 1898 built the American Beet Sugar Co., which would become the second largest such factory in the world.

That and other agricultural businesses drew to the area the ancestors of the Mexican and Asian workers who dominate Oxnard’s population today.

The sugar beet factory was bought in 1959 by developer Martin V. Smith, and that land now contains a large industrial park. But the factory was not forgotten. In fact, it was spread all over the city. Smith saved the factory’s 8 million bricks and incorporated them into almost all successive projects, including a shopping center, an office fireplace in one of the high-rise buildings and the patio walkway at Fisherman’s Wharf at Channel Islands Harbor.

Oxnard’s recent fast growth is due in part to a pro-growth City Council and the availability of water supplied by the State Water Project, something lacking in Ventura and Santa Barbara to the north. By offering tax incentives to businesses, Oxnard has recently lured several auto dealers out of Ventura and into its new auto park.

But not all are overjoyed by the city’s efforts. Oxnard has financial problems that some say are the result of too many incentives to business. The city counters by claiming that it must grease the wheel to attract future tax dollars and by pointing out the many ways the city has lost revenues due to a poor economy.

One area in which Oxnard has had much success is crime fighting.

“Historically, crime peaked in 1980,” David Keith of the Oxnard Police Department said. “Since then, crime is down considerably. In numbers, it’s down 20%. When you factor in growth, it’s down one-third.”

Burglaries in Oxnard, for example, were down to 1,543 in 1990 from 2,585 in 1980.

Keith credits the decline partly to his department’s crime prevention program, which has aired weekly since 1985--in English and Spanish--on cable television. The program tells viewers where the burglaries are, who police think is doing them (if they have a suspect), how the intruders got in and how to prevent a similar burglary.

The first department in the country to produce such a program, Oxnard police officials have received more than 150 calls from other agencies that want to start their own programs.

Although Oxnard now has big-city problems, longtime residents are not forsaking the town.

“I have no plans to leave the area,” said Gail Schrum, who has lived in Oxnard since 1959, when she was 16. Her mother, sister and two of her children live in Oxnard. She bought her house near the marina in 1974 for $35,000 and figures it’s now worth $250,000.

And as Schrum’s house has grown more valuable over the past 17 years, her commute has grown longer.

“What’s most affected me is the congestion, the traffic,” she said. “It takes a tremendous amount of time to cross the Oxnard Plain. The strawberry fields have been eaten alive with houses, which is unfortunate.”

She likes her proximity to Los Angeles, where she and her husband, Jerry, go to theater productions and to concerts at the Hollywood Bowl. It’s that exposure to the big city that provides her perspective on Oxnard.

“It’s a lovely area,” she said. “I’m comparing it to 20 years ago. But compared to the congestion of L.A., it’s nothing.”

AT A GLANCE

Population

1990 estimate: 142,216

1980-90 change: +31.4%

Median age: 30 years

Annual income

Per capita: 11,878

Median household: 31,720

Household distribution

Less than $15,000: 19.4%

$15,000 - $30,000: 18.9%