Traditional Homes and Ready Freeway Access : Bixby Knolls: Sleepy part of Long Beach has many older homes that are attracting younger families.

For some residents, the Bixby Knolls neighborhood of Long Beach means you can go home again. “It kind of reminds me of where I grew up in Baltimore . . . it has an East Coast feel to it,” said Frank Slaveter, 47, a Nissan Motor Corp. of U.S.A. engineer.

When interest rates started dropping, Frank and his wife, Kathi, 46, a secretary at Cal State Los Angeles, decided it was the time to “trade up.” The Slaveters, who owned a home in a different part of Long Beach, started their search in Palos Verdes, but found it too expensive.

“Then,” Frank Slaveter recalled, “we thought, why not look in our own back yard?” They bought a three-bedroom, two-bath home with a formal dining room on a third of an acre on a quiet, tree-lined Bixby Knolls street for $395,000.

Besides its traditional-style, older homes and leaf-canopied streets, Bixby Knolls, tucked into the northwest section of Long Beach, offers quick access to the 405, 91 and 710 freeways.

“I can virtually work any market I chose” said real estate consultant Steve Sullivan. “Since I don’t have to travel at busy traffic times, I can be in Orange County, downtown L.A. or on the Westside--all in about half an hour.”

Sullivan, 33, and wife, Randy, 31, moved to Bixby Knolls from Manhattan Beach three years ago to buy their first home. Randy, a dental hygienist, grew up in Long Beach and suggested that they house-hunt in her hometown. After searching for a couple of months, Randy spotted a house one day and brought Steve to look at it.

“The moment I walked into the house I loved it,” Steve Sullivan said, “the large lot, hardwood floors and the old maples and firs lining the street.” The Sullivans; whose first child, Taylor, was born in December, 1991, paid $289,000 for their 1,550-square foot, three-bedroom, two-bath house.

Home prices in Bixby Knolls range from about $250,000 to just over $600,000, says Barbara Shoag, a realtor with Robert Weil Associates. She and her husband, Leon, have been selling in the area for the past decade.

“A home with at least three bedrooms, a formal dining room, maybe a fireplace would be in the $300,000 to $400,000 range,” Shoag said. The area’s most expensive home--a large old Spanish style that included maid’s quarters--sold this year for $615,000.

When Don and Rosemary Ashley bought their two-story Bixby Knolls home 29 years ago, Rosemary said, they were mainly looking for “a bigger kitchen.” With seven children, she said, that always seemed to be the most important room.

On Don Ashley’s salary as a high school principal, it was a stretch, but they paid $45,000 in 1964 to get that big kitchen, plus four bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths and a spacious back yard with a cemented badminton court.

Today, the two-story colonial, like most homes on their block, is worth about 10 times its 1964 selling price. Until he retired more than two years ago, Ashley was superintendent of elementary schools for the Long Beach Unified School District.

Maureen Hawkins--one of the Ashleys’ seven children--recently returned to Bixby Knolls. The 40-year-old Delta Air Lines marketing representative and her husband, Mark, 38, an account executive for Control Data Corp., found “the perfect family place” less than a quarter-mile from where Maureen grew up.

The trees may be smaller and the houses not so grand as where the Ashleys live, but the homes go for about $100,000 less. In April, 1991, the Hawkinses and their sons, Kyle and Brett, moved into their four-bedroom, three-bath home across from one of the city’s best elementary schools for $315,000.

A quirky mix of ethnicities and income levels, Bixby Knolls is among the oldest, and in some ways the oddest, sections of the city.

Contrasts abound: A giant doughnut atop the Mrs. Chapman’s Drive-In looms just across the street from elegant wrought-iron gates of the walled La Linda neighborhood. Friday evenings, bearded Lubavitcher Jews stroll to the neighborhood synagogue past the Chinese restaurant with its neon boast of “Karaoke Bar.” A community of orange-robed Buddhists lives quietly, but colorfully, tending several varieties of roses in the yard of their modest stucco home.

Bixby Knolls can be a good starting place for young families who prefer the older homes and the rather staid pace of this corner of Long Beach. But the old-fashioned charm of the neighborhood has its drawbacks. While the past decade has seen annual per capita income rise by nearly $2,000 and the median age drop several years to well under 40, sleepy Bixby Knolls has been slow to catch up to its own potential.

It’s still easier to buy orthopedic shoes than Nikes in the neighborhood, and you can pick up a prosthetic limb with less trouble than it would take to track down a crusty baguette or trendy Thai food.

Atlantic Avenue, the main commercial strip in Bixby Knolls, is dominated by a rather dowdy shopping center dating back to the area’s post-World War II heyday. The Von’s grocery store is cramped and usually crowded with older residents who like the convenience of a store within walking distance.

Century 21 realtor Kathi Kowal tells the story of a client who had moved into one of the area’s more expensive homes several months earlier. “She came to a Christmas party of mine and said, ‘I love it here, I really do. But tell me honestly, where do you shop?’ ” Kowal laughed as she recalled the woman’s puzzlement but said, “. . . sometimes it’s more frustrating than comical.”

“The area needs a face lift,” conceded Kimi Mann, executive director of the Parking and Business Improvement Area, an agency formed by city ordinance in 1989 to assist in cleaning up and modernizing the neighborhood.

Residents should see at least cosmetic improvement soon: The PBIA plans a tree-planting project along one block of Atlantic Avenue and is working with local business owners to encourage other improvements. But significant changes to the character and quality of local stores and businesses are up to the individual entrepreneurs, Mann said.

The Long Beach Airport has become a hot topic in Bixby Knolls over the past two decades--ever since it began to emerge as a convenient alternative to Los Angeles International Airport.

Although the recession has combined with city restrictions to reduce the number of flights, much of the neighborhood is directly under the path of some 20 commercial flights daily. And while the noise sometimes competes with television programs and can halt outdoor conversations mid-sentence, many residents shrug it off.

Longtime resident Rosemary Ashley says she and her husband have become accustomed to it. “Now we don’t really notice it; it isn’t annoying to us,” she said.

Across Long Beach Boulevard, the western boundary of present day Bixby Knolls, is Rancho Los Cerritos, the historical heart of the area. The rancho’s adobe was built by John Temple in 1844 as the headquarters of his 2,700-acre cattle ranch.

The Gold Rush helped Temple’s cattle business boom throughout the 1850s, but the following decade brought the old Southern California nemeses of drought and flood, and thousands of cattle died. In 1866, Temple sold the rancho and its land to the Bixby family.

The Bixbys switched to sheep and sheared them twice yearly at the old Temple adobe. When the wool trade declined in the late 1870s, Bixby sold off portions of his holdings. In 1884, 4,000 acres in the southwest corner of the vast original land grant became the city of Long Beach.

The area that is now Bixby Knolls supported thriving bean, barley and alfalfa fields throughout the 1930s, until real estate became more valuable than the cows, sheep or beans had ever been.

World War II brought many defense workers--and the Navy--to Long Beach, and Bixby Knolls still has block upon block of rental apartments dating from that era.

The Bixby Knolls time warp has not insulated the neighborhood from some common urban ills. The business district has been hit hard by graffiti. Frank Slaveter notices it daily as he returns from work.

“It seems to get cleaned up pretty quick, but there’s new stuff every day,” he said. “It’s really gotten to be a very serious problem here.”

Long Beach Police Cmdr. Kimball Shelley said Bixby Knolls is a relatively low crime area and notes that major crimes have dipped in the past months.

Maureen Hawkins said that when she and her husband first set out to find “the perfect family home” they began looking as far away as Laguna Niguel. But she said it occurred to them that they owed something to Bixby Knolls. “If everyone leaves looking for the dream neighborhood, this area will lose stability and really deteriorate,” she said.

So she came home.

At a Glance Population

1991 estimate: 28,035

1980-91 change: +6%

Median age: 37.5 years

Annual income

Per capita: 18,441

Median household: 34,206

Household distribution

Less than $15,000: 21%

$15,000 - $25,000: 16.2%

$25,000 - $50,000: 31.9%

$50,000 - $75,000: 16.3%

$75,000 + 14.6%