Rapid Growth Spurt Brings Mixed Results : Lake Elsinore: Bedroom community draws people who want more house for less money and don’t mind the commute.

Haircuts were 99 cents when Fred Dominguez went to work as a barber in Lake Elsinore in 1954. Today, Dominguez owns the downtown shop where he started out, Lake Elsinore has grown from a tiny enclave of a few hundred to a town of 22,100 poised for even greater growth and Dominguez charges $7.75 for a basic cut.

In terms of identity, Lake Elsinore is in the midst of its third incarnation. During the 1890s and for many years after, the town was known for its mineral baths. By the 1930s, it had become a recreation destination with the lake as a focus, and people came on weekends to watch speedboat races, water ski, sail, swim and picnic.

Lake Elsinore was reborn once again as a bedroom community during the 1980s, as prices for homes in Orange, Los Angeles and San Diego counties skyrocketed. People who wanted more house for less money and didn’t mind commutes of an hour or more began moving to Lake Elsinore, and the population shot up 206% between 1979 and 1989.

The city joined a string of booming bedroom communities along Interstate 15 between Riverside/San Bernardino and Temecula.

Like many Southern California cities that grew rapidly during the 1980s, Lake Elsinore’s adolescence brought mixed results. New shopping centers and housing tracts in the rolling hills surrounding the lake and downtown brought an economic boost, jobs and population, but the new developments outside the city’s core sucked some life out of Lake Elsinore’s downtown.

In one sense, this has worked to the city’s advantage, preserving Main Street as an intimate commercial village of 1920s and 1930s storefronts, including a few empty ones the city hopes will fill with new, viable businesses as the recession turns around.

The city is poised to make the best of both worlds, with $6 million already spent on improvements downtown including new sidewalks, benches, landscaping and old-fashioned street lamps, and six new master-planned communities in the works for areas outside downtown that could bring 30,000 new homes to Lake Elsinore as the economy turns around and builders can get financing.

These new projects will add to roughly 20 new-home developments in Lake Elsinore currently selling detached houses at an average price of $153,617, according to the Meyers Group, a real estate market research company.

All of this action, as should be obvious from the name of the place, focuses on the 3,300-acre lake, and the project most vital to the city’s future is a $60-million overhaul of the lake including a new levee (completed last year) and outfall channel (to start construction in August) that will stabilize its depth through years of both drought and heavy rainfall.

“The lake is the economic engine of the community,” says city manager Ron Molendyk. “Our economy is tied with a healthy lake. We hope for some new resort/commercial development.”

For home buyers who work in Orange and Los Angeles counties, it’s not hard to see the appeal of Lake Elsinore and neighboring communities such as Canyon Lake.

“A typical 2,000-square-foot home might sell for $145,000 in Lake Elsinore,” said Steve Johnson, a Meyers Group managing partner. “In south Orange County, that same house would be $230,000, and in north Orange County and Los Angeles, $250,000.”

Tom and Bambi Shoemaker, for example, moved to Lake Elsinore from Irvine last May and don’t mind the drive to their jobs at Long Beach Bank in the city of Orange.

“We wanted to live someplace a little more relaxed, where people were nicer, and we absolutely love it out here,” Bambi Shoemaker says. “The drive gives us time to relax. We do some daily communication we can’t do at home because of the kids.”

With a 12-year-old daughter and 18-month-old son, the Shoemakers needed more room than they had at their Irvine condo, and initially tried to move nearby.

“We looked and looked and looked,” said Bambi Shoemaker, who plans to have a third child. “But for the same amount of money we spent in Lake Elsinore, we would have gotten a place so small we would have outgrown it right away.”

Instead, the Shoemakers bought a five-bedroom, 3 1/2-bathroom house in Avalon at Tuscany Hills, new homes built by Davidson Communities in the hills east of I-15. They paid $212,000 with “all kinds of upgrades” including a premium for a lot with a sweeping view of the lake and rolling hills just across the freeway.

The Shoemakers also enjoy the inland climate, markedly different than what they’re used to, including tangible changes of seasons and cooler nights.

Also new to Lake Elsinore are Jim and Ruth Taylor, who waited in line in their motor home for three weeks last summer to get the home they wanted at Summerlake at Northshore, built by Centex Homes west of I-15 in the low hills north of Lake Elsinore.

“We had been out (to Lake Elsinore) to see all the tracts, and Centex’s was more of a Mission Viejo planned community type thing,” Ruth Taylor says. “Some parts of Elsinore are old and run down, and some tracts are stuck right next to these old neighborhoods. If we were going to move, we wanted exactly what we wanted, because we would have to sacrifice with the commute.”

Ruth Taylor stays home with the kids while her husband drives 200 miles or more each day throughout southern California in his medical sales job. Being based in Lake Elsinore instead of Mission Viejo adds at least 50 miles each day to his driving, but the Taylors believe the payoff is worth it.

For $198,000, they got 1,914 square feet on a 1/3-acre lot, the largest in Summerlake, with views of Lake Elsinore and distant mountains that provide skiing only 90 minutes away.

“It’s so quiet, people are so much nicer, less stressed,” Ruth Taylor says. “I can walk the kids to the park right around the corner, and I can walk my son to preschool. The schools are all within walking distance, except the high school.”

About 12,000 kids attend Lake Elsinore Unified School District’s eight elementary schools, two middle schools (7th and 8th grades), two high schools and Ortega High School, a continuation high school.

“We don’t have double sessions or crowded classrooms,” says Vick Knight, a member of the Elsinore Unified School District’s board. “We’ve been able to keep pace with growth. Our test scores are above average and we have the highest high school graduation rate in Riverside County.”

Along with many pluses, though, Lake Elsinore has a few shortcomings, residents say.

“The thing I miss is the variety of shopping,” Ruth Taylor says. “There are no regional malls, although we do have an outlet mall (Lake Elsinore Outlet Center). We don’t have a movie theater, but there are plans to build some.”

City leaders are trying to guide the community gracefully through its maturation. A growing, ethnically diverse population has brought the usual city tensions, most evident in occasional graffiti the city usually paints over within 24 hours. A graffiti abatement program has been recognized for its effectiveness by the California League of Cities.

“We want to get people back in our community, but there’s a stigma that we’re full of lowlifes and druggies,” says Lake Elsinore realtor Dave Montoya. “We’re not, but we do have some problems. We need more police. We only have about 18 officers for 22,000 people, and the general plan calls for 1.5 per thousand. Our auto theft rate is about 40 a month, and we’re only 38 square miles.”

Lila Merrifield Knight, who retired in February as the town’s assistant librarian, agrees that rapid growth has not been all for the best. Her great grandfather came to Lake Elsinore in 1884 to open a mineral bath and drug store. She was born in Lake Elsinore in 1928 and has spent most of her life there.

“Quality of life? The chamber and the people in charge aren’t going to like it, but in a way we had a lot more to do back then,” says Knight, who lives in the downtown house she inherited from her mother. “We had theaters, roller skating rinks, dance halls, and we don’t have them now. You see kids around you assume are in gangs, and I don’t walk to and from work like I used to.”

Meanwhile, Molendyk and city leaders are counting on extensive new development to provide more new jobs and make life more convenient.

Ground-breakings are expected this year on Rancon Development’s 23-acre commercial project at I-15 and Collier Road, to include a supermarket, restaurant, fast food and theaters, and on a shopping center being developed by Oak Grove Equities at I-15 and Railroad Canyon Road, to be anchored by a Wal-Mart store.

All the activity around Lake Elsinore spills over to neighboring towns such as Canyon Lake, a gated community of 13,000 just 3.5 miles to the east.

There are no tracts in Canyon Lake, and very few speculative homes. Instead, buyers purchase lots and build individual houses, which gives the community a pleasing variety. Lots start around $40,000 and go as high as $499,000 for a 150-by-150-foot lakefront lot, mobile homes start around $80,000 plus monthly fees, and single-family homes range from the low $100,000s to well over $1 million.

The first homes at Canyon Lake were built during the late 1960s. Ten years ago, 2,876 of 4,800 lots at Canyon Lake remained vacant, but less than 1,000 are left now, according to realtor Betsy Weil. Recreation is practically Canyon Lake’s middle name, with 18 holes of golf, water sports and more than 40 hobby clubs covering everything from angling (the lake is stocked with catfish and bass) to aerobics, classic boats and pinochle.

Back at the hair salon in downtown Lake Elsinore, Dominguez, the longtime local and city council member, is optimistic the area will evolve into a larger but still hospitable home for his grown children, Cecilia and Daniel, who help run the shop.

“Things change, but I still think we’re pretty much growing the way we’d like to,” Dominguez says. “After all, Los Angeles is a jungle, and people still want to get out of there.”

At a Glance Population

1992 estimate: 20,889

1980-90 change: +173.0%

Median age: 28.8 years

Annual income

Per capita: 13,865

Median household: 35,212

Household distribution

Less than $30,000: 42.8%

$30,000 - $60,000: 35.3%

$60,000 - $100,000: 18.3%

$100,000 - $150,000: 2.9%

$150,000 + 0.8%