A Neighborly Simi Valley Paradise Develops Money Trouble : Communities: Wood Ranch lures residents with scenic views and security. But builder's financial problems jeopardize 1,500 planned homes.

By PHIL SNEIDERMAN

Aug. 1, 1993 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

For Lauren Purcell, the massive wooden portal that marks the entrance to Wood Ranch is a door into another world.

Purcell and her husband, Neal, who runs a ceiling fan business, recently moved from an older, more traditional east Simi Valley neighborhood into Wood Ranch, on the city’s western edge. They were lured by its mountain views, its carefully designed housing tracts, lush landscaping, low crime rate and prestigious location--just down the hill from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

Lauren Purcell believes she’s left the rest of the city behind.

“It doesn’t feel like Simi Valley because it’s removed, and it’s beautifully planned,” she said of her new home. “I just don’t feel like I’m living in the same area.”

She adds: “Coming in off Madera Road and onto Wood Ranch Parkway, you come under that arch and it’s a fabulous feeling, even after a hectic work day.”

With its immaculate lawns, rigid homeowner associations, round-the-clock private security patrols and steep assessment fees, Wood Ranch may not be every home buyer’s cup of tea.

Local real estate agents suggested that those who prefer a less restricted lifestyle and cookie-cutter houses should avoid this 3,000-acre planned community.

But over the past two decades, Wood Ranch’s scenic vistas, modern houses, clean streets and 18-hole tournament golf course have attracted thousands of home buyers like the Purcells.

“People out here just want a different lifestyle,” says Gina Stewart, co-owner of the One-Stop Video store in Wood Ranch.

“It’s a very safe, quiet community,” Stewart says. “Everybody goes for a walk. They take their dogs. It’s just like a fairy-tale community you’d see on TV.”

But as often happens in fairy tales, there’s trouble in paradise.

Over the past year, Olympia/Roberts Co., the chief developer of Wood Ranch, has defaulted on a $15-million loan, failed to pay for a long-awaited elementary school and run up a $250,000 debt to the city for road improvements.

A bank-ordered foreclosure auction, involving the golf course and undeveloped acreage, has been postponed numerous times, most recently on Wednesday, while the company tries to resolve its money crunch.

These events have cast a shadow over the future of Wood Ranch, which now consists of about 2,400 houses, condominiums and apartments; a partly finished community park; a small shopping center and a fire station.

Under the master outline approved by the city, about 1,500 homes, an equestrian center and several parks have yet to be built. In planned communities such as Wood Ranch, the web of streets, parks, stores and housing tracts is designed on paper long before construction begins.

Many Wood Ranch residents have heard about the financial problems that cloud the community’s future.

“That doesn’t give people warm, fuzzy feelings,” says Elaine Freeman, a Thousand Oaks-based planning consultant who has lived in Wood Ranch for five years.

“Being in the business, I’m probably more patient than other (Wood Ranch residents),” she says. “But I would have liked to have seen it built out sooner. Then the community would be finished, and people who were looking to move here would know exactly what’s there.”

But Freeman believes that no matter who ends up owning the remaining acreage in Wood Ranch, the future homes, streets and parks will show up where they were envisioned in the original layout.

“I think that because the master plan is in place, and enough people are watching it, eventually it will be finished the way it’s planned,” she says.

According to this outline, the developers someday must extend 1st Street through the southern part of Wood Ranch, providing a second way in and out of the community.

But at the moment, the only public access to Wood Ranch is through three streets that tie into Madera Road.

These limited entry points and the hills that surround Wood Ranch contribute to a sense of seclusion that many residents enjoy. It also bolsters their view that Wood Ranch is sort of a mini-city, detached from the rest of Simi Valley.

That attitude upsets a few local leaders.

“I know some people who would rather have their address be Wood Ranch, Calif.,” says Councilwoman Judy Mikels, who lives in another part of the city.

Mikels says a friend once sent her a Christmas card that used Wood Ranch as the return address.

“When I sent back my Christmas card, I wrote ‘Simi Valley--Not Wood Ranch,’ on the address,” she recalls. “It was just a fun thing.”

But the councilwoman adds: “It is a part of Simi Valley. I think it’s wonderful that the neighborhood has that feeling. But that’s what it is--a neighborhood.

“They don’t seem to mind being part of Simi Valley when they want to yell at the City Council over something.”

Mikels is impressed by the mix of housing and abundant open space in Wood Ranch, along with its well-maintained landscaping.

But she has heard a few disparaging remarks about the tight clusters of identical Spanish roofs that can be seen throughout Wood Ranch.

“One person said it looked like a sea of red tiles--the Red Sea of Simi Valley,” Mikels says.

Yet overall, Mayor Greg Stratton, who lives in Wood Ranch, is pleased with the community’s evolution.

“It has not only lived up to everything we thought it would be,” he says, “but because of the continuing improvements, the place has turned out even nicer than we expected.”

In fact, Wood Ranch has become not a single neighborhood, but a series of small neighborhoods linked by public streets and sharing amenities such as the community park and the shopping center.

Residences in Wood Ranch range from apartments to townhomes to single-family houses, with varying sizes and prices. Many of the housing tracts are surrounded by metal fences, which provide extra security but also tend to isolate residents who live in different parts of the community.

Based on U.S. census data, Wood Ranch households earn slightly more than those in Simi Valley as a whole and are better educated. More than a third of the adults living in Wood Ranch have a college degree, while the figure citywide is less than 25%.

Some people, like Gary E. Martin, move into an apartment in Wood Ranch, then begin saving money toward buying a house in the same community.

“It’s good to have a variety of people living here,” says Martin, an electrical maintenance worker at Pepperdine University.

But Martin, who has two youngsters, adds: “I wish they had more activities for children. If they had more neighborhood and recreational activities to bring people together, that would be good.”

Many residents have left other parts of Simi Valley or other cities to buy homes in Wood Ranch.

Alice Foster, a writer, who until recently lived in the affluent Indian Hills community in west Simi Valley, says she didn’t initially plan to house hunt in Wood Ranch. “I was angry that they had taken this nice ranch and turned it into a planned community,” she recalls.

But a visit turned her around.

“The moment I drove in through the gates onto Wood Ranch Parkway and saw the golf course and the park with its softball field, and the lake, I started falling in love,” she says.

Foster moved into the Valley View Estates section of Wood Ranch last November after obtaining “an extremely good deal” on a repossessed house.

Eighteen months earlier, she says, the house was listed at $575,000. Foster says she paid $358,000 for the dwelling.

The tumbling real estate market has cut deeply into the value of Wood Ranch houses purchased at the height of the market, about four years ago, real estate agents say.

“I think Wood Ranch is a real bargain today,” says Carlyn Paterson, president of the Simi Valley-Moorpark Assn. of Realtors.

Prices range from two-bedroom condominiums costing as little as $130,000 to spacious four- and five-bedroom houses selling for $600,000.

Some buyers settle on Wood Ranch because it resembles upscale planned neighborhoods in nearby Thousand Oaks. But it is not quite as expensive.

“Wood Ranch has appeal to some people who are looking in the Conejo Valley but can’t afford it, especially when it comes to new homes,” says Tim Burks, a real estate agent who has sold many dwellings in Wood Ranch over the past four years.

But Burks says he cautions buyers that living in Wood Ranch often costs more than the price of a house. Special assessments for such amenities as roads and storm sewers can add $90 to $100 to the monthly mortgage bills, and homeowners association fees can add another $65 to $80 per month, Burks says.

Some of these fees go toward the continuing cost of transforming a vast chunk of rural real estate into a modern suburban community.

Dating back to the 1800s, the land that is now Wood Ranch was always separated by geography from the town that today is Simi Valley, says Patricia Havens, the city historian.

Prior to 1941, Charles B. McCoy, a Simi Valley businessman, and his children owned the ranch, which was originally called Canada Verde, Spanish for green canyon, Havens says.

In 1941, the land was purchased by Adrian and Emma Wood, who were related to the Taylor family, involved in the oil business in Ventura, Havens says. The family changed the name of the site to Taylor Ranch.

The new owners raised cattle and leased some acreage for barley farming.

“During the entire time the Woods owned it, it probably was not a profitable venture because they didn’t need it to be one,” Havens says. “But it was sort of a showplace ranch. It was a very pretty place.”

By 1980, the family had sold 3,900 acres to developers, who prepared an ambitious building plan and got the ranch annexed into the city of Simi Valley.

In September, 1980, Olympia/Roberts, a partnership involving a major real estate firm based in Canada and developer Robert Levenstein, bought the property.

“We thought it was extraordinarily well-located,” Levenstein recalls. “We thought it was an excellent plan in a city that was bound to grow in a fine way.”

What the builders did not anticipate was a series of slumps in housing sales. “We thought we would be done long before now,” Levenstein says of Wood Ranch. “But there were so many bad housing years.”

Olympia & York, the parent firm that provided much of the funding, ran into serious financial problems in recent years. Last summer, Levenstein severed his ties with Olympia/Roberts.

“We were disappointed in their not meeting obligations,” he says.

One of those obligations was to provide $6 million to build an elementary school in Wood Ranch this summer. The developer has handed over the land but not the construction money, and the project is stalled.

Olympia/Roberts is negotiating with the city, the Simi Valley Unified School District and Wells Fargo Bank in a bid to resolve its debts and get the school back on track.

“The bank and Olympia/Roberts are working toward reaching an agreement as to how this property is going to be owned and developed in the future,” says Barry Lawrence, an attorney for the developer. “It’s not hostile at this time at all.”

Still, some residents are impatient.

“This was going to be a self-contained community,” says Lisa McKnight, a Bank of California vice president who has lived in Wood Ranch for almost three years. “So not having the elementary school completed, I think that’s a big negative.”

She is also concerned about the 25-acre community park, which is less than half-finished. Long-range plans call for construction of a community center, tennis courts, a pool and a picnic shelter on the remaining land.

But Don Hunt, assistant general manager of the Rancho Simi Recreation and Park District, says his agency must wait until many more Wood Ranch homes are built, generating fees to pay for the park improvements.

Despite the uncertainty about how soon Wood Ranch will be completed, Don Snider, a retired businessman who moved to the community from Thousand Oaks last year, is optimistic.

“I’ve been in this area for 25 years,” he says. “I saw Wood Ranch when it actually was a ranch. I think, so far, so good. It was going to be developed one way or another. I think they’ve done a good job.”

Wood Ranch at a Glance Population: 6,448

Racial breakdown:

White: 88.7%

Latino: 5.1%

Asian: 3.9%

Black: 1.6%

Other: 0.7%

Education (residents 25 & older):

High school graduate: 25.6%

College degree: 37.8%

Median household income: $56,308

Households living in poverty: 4.4%