Val Verde at the Crossroads : Development: County planners are studying how to manage growth in the tiny Santa Clarita Valley community that began as a resort for blacks.

Odis Sneed’s rooster no longer crows at sunrise in Val Verde, and the silence speaks volumes about the way the village is changing.

Sneed, who has kept roosters for three decades in the community five miles west of the Golden State Freeway in the Santa Clarita Valley, recently got rid of the bird after his new neighbors complained about the incessant crowing.

He is not worried that some of the hamlet’s country atmosphere disappeared with the last cock-a-doodle-do.

“Times change, and you have to change with it,” said Sneed, 69, who moved from Watts to Val Verde 30 years ago.

Sneed can afford to be philosophical because he has profited by selling some of his land to developers, who are intent on transforming the village of 1,689 people into a mecca for commuters seeking affordable housing and a semi-rural atmosphere.

In the past five years, developers have built more than a quarter of the area’s 531 houses on 50-by-100-foot lots that were subdivided when blacks created a summer resort in Val Verde in the 1920s. Ersatz Tudor houses and postage-stamp-size lawns now share narrow streets with modest bungalows. The village still has no traffic lights and only one general store.

Local civic leaders and county planners say the building boom has spruced up the hamlet, which lost some of its early luster when blacks found other vacation spots and poor farm workers moved into the cabins.

But they are also concerned that if growth continues unchecked, it will bring problems as well as improvements. County planners say developers could build at least 150 houses on small lots without having to seek permission. The planning department just began a study to determine how to guard the village from the urban growth of nearby communities.

“We want to make sure the lifestyle is protected,” said Lee Stark, the county planner in charge of the study. “When lots are as small as they are in Val Verde, and one after another are developed, it threatens the community’s rural charm.”

One possible solution is to restrict the size of houses that can be built on small lots in hopes of encouraging developers to consolidate their parcels, a policy that may become necessary because Val Verde relies on septic tanks for sewage disposal, Stark said.

The recommendations will be presented to the county Board of Supervisors next summer, he said.

Stark said creating a strategy to manage growth is particularly important now because of the potential impact of the Valencia Commerce Center, a huge industrial park being built just a few miles east of Val Verde near the Golden State Freeway.

When the center is completed in 1993, it is expected to create 20,000 jobs.

That is expected to make it even easier for developers to market Val Verde as an alternative to the Antelope Valley, where houses also cost less than $200,000.

Already, the prospect of the Valencia Commerce Center has attracted some home buyers to Val Verde.

“Maybe I’ll be lucky enough to get a job there,” said Bobbi Newton, 37, who just moved to Val Verde and commutes to her job in Granada Hills.

She and her husband, Fred, bought a three-bedroom house for $160,000 this summer in Crestwood Estates.

Located on the outskirts of town, the brand-new, tightly clustered houses look slightly incongruous surrounded by sweeping expanses of hillsides and fields.

Two years ago, the couple rejected the village when they began searching for property that a truck driver and a marketing specialist could afford.

“There used to be a lot of shacks and lean-tos here, but the area has changed a lot,” Bobbi Newton said.

Many of the small summer cottages in the community were never intended as permanent dwellings and became dilapidated over the years once they were occupied full time, said Laura Lynn, a county building inspector.

“When I moved here 25 years ago, my husband brought me to a shack with dirt floors, no electricity and no running water,” said Penelope January, 42, a county maintenance worker at Val Verde Park. “I cried for two weeks straight.”

In 1980, the housing stock had deteriorated to the point where county inspectors considered more than half of the 250 houses substandard.

But since then many residents, including January, have obtained home-improvement loans or have sold their property.

Today, Lynn says she has only about 30 active cases in Val Verde, and most of them concern junk dumped in empty lots, not houses with inadequate plumbing or exposed wiring.

“The change in this place is just incredible--I wish I had bought property here years ago,” Lynn said.

The community may even get its first mini-mall this year.

“It’s a cute little canyon, and it needs retail real bad,” said Marty Slatsky, a West Hills developer who wants to build a fast-food restaurant and video store on property he bought this summer on San Martinez Road.

The building boom that attracted Slatsky and others to Val Verde gained momentum in early 1985, after Boskovich Farms moved out of the county and laid off hundreds of farm workers who lived in Val Verde, said Fernando Pages, a resident-developer who has built 22 houses in the village.

“So many people moved out it was like a ghost town here,” Pages said. “The layoffs really drew attention to the area.”

Val Verde became a developer’s dream, said Bob Farmer, who bought his first lot for $7,500 shortly before others discovered the area.

Similar parcels now sell for $45,000, he said.

But some real estate agents still find it difficult to sell houses in Val Verde because of its reputation as the slum of the Santa Clarita Valley, Farmer said.

The stigma may linger from the days when the community was not in tip-top physical shape.

But Farmer said he also suspects that racial prejudice plays a part in keeping people away.

Caucasians are still in the minority in the village, whose 1,689 residents are about 35% white, 53% Hispanic and 10% black, according to the 1990 census.

When the 1980 census was conducted, Val Verde was not singled out, but county planners and residents estimate that whites made up only about 10% to 15% of the population.

Val Verde civic leaders acknowledge that there is poverty in the community, but they angrily deny that Val Verde was ever a ghetto.

Census information on income levels will not be available until next year, but county planners say many residents earn low wages performing unskilled labor in Santa Clarita or at construction sites in Val Verde.

“Just because people aren’t driving Mercedes-Benzes doesn’t mean it’s a slum,” said Neema Chipembere, recreation supervisor of the 58-acre Val Verde Park, which provides the only entertainment in town for youngsters. “There aren’t any crack houses here, and the streets are safe.”

Although members of a Latino gang have long resided in Val Verde, the gang is inactive and the local crime rate is extremely low, said Lt. Don Rodriguez of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

“People move here and say it’s like growing up in Kansas or Iowa,” said Edwin Seth Brown, 39, a free-lance artist and president of the Val Verde Civic Assn. who has been a resident for 21 years. “Neighbors watch one another’s homes and salute you when you walk by.”

Indeed, Val Verde is a friendly place, where residents stroll the narrow streets and visit with each other in their front yards under the shady trees.

Fruit is sold from a panel truck, whose driver alerts residents by jingling a bell.

In the spring, the hills are a vivid green, and it is possible to walk to Piru Lake along a four-mile fire road that snakes through the hills.

But rustic as it still seems, Val Verde has been changed by development, and not all the locals are happy about it.

“You used to be able to ride horses anywhere in Val Verde, but you can’t anymore,” said January, the county maintenance worker.

“When we first moved here in 1975, there weren’t all these houses, and you could see the whole town,” said Heliodoro Gudino, whose family picked onions for a living before nearby farms were closed to make way for development.

“We used to have parties every weekend, but now the new people call the cops. You can’t even play the radio loud during the day or ride your go-carts on the street because there are too many cars.”

Val Verde is likely to keep changing as it grows.

Although some newcomers are enchanted with the community the way it is, others say they are disturbed by some aspects of living there.

For instance, Liz and Bill Roche--newcomers who describe themselves as “yuppies with a capital Y”--said they wish some of their fellow residents would stop burning their trash and pay to have it hauled away instead.

There are other minor irritations, such as having to travel 10 miles to do their grocery shopping.

But the couple say they are glad that they moved out of their Valencia apartment to Val Verde this summer.

“All you have to do is be here once at night,” Liz Roche said, “and look up at the stars to be sold.”