Simi Looks at Development Horizon : Growth: After 25 good years as a city and a few stagnant ones recently, a surge of building for business may put an end to its ‘bedroom community’ image.
Bedroom community. The term seems harmless enough, evoking images of sleepy suburbia. But for residents of Simi Valley, a former cow town turned bustling suburb, those are fighting words.
Simi Valley marks 25 years of cityhood on Monday, and the emphasis is on city, as civic leaders say they are more determined than ever to rid their town of its image as a bedroom for Los Angeles.
The goal: to transform the eastern Ventura County city into a self-sufficient community, complete with enough jobs, shopping and cultural diversions to stop, once and for all, tax dollar “leakage” to Thousand Oaks and over the Santa Susana Pass to Los Angeles County.
“We’ve got the resources, we’ve got the income levels and we’ve got the know-how to really make the transformation,” Councilman Bill Davis said. “I don’t think you can really call Simi Valley a bedroom community anymore. I think we’re well on our way to getting beyond that.”
After years of recession-induced stagnation, a surge of activity in recent months lends credence to Davis’ claim.
In August Warner/Electra/Atlantic opened a 202,000-square-foot music distribution warehouse in an industrial park on the city’s west end.
Two new car dealerships set up shop on 1st Street and helped boost sales tax revenue 15% over the same time last year.
And Countrywide Mortgage, the nation’s largest mortgage lender and one of Simi Valley’s biggest employers, quashed rumors that it was planning to move out or lay off any of its 1,200 workers.
“We are absolutely committed to this facility,” said Rich Lewis, chief administrative officer. “We have a big stake here, and we have no plans to change that.”
Throughout the city, developers are making plans to break ground on projects stalled by the recession.
“People are going to be surprised, because they are going to see this huge flurry of development, and think we threw growth control out the window,” Stratton said. “I see things turning around dramatically within the next year.”
As the economy slowly recovers, the city is struggling to regain the momentum of the ‘80s, when large employers such as Bugle Boy, the clothing manufacturer, and Cardkey Systems, a security company, built sleek concrete-and-glass office buildings on lush, landscaped hills overlooking the city.
Indeed, the city seemed to be rushing headlong into self-sufficiency in the 1980s.
Businesses migrating from Los Angeles County were impressed with Simi Valley’s cheaper development costs, pro-business City Council, spectacular mountain views and rating as the safest city of its size, from the standpoint of crime, in the country.
They built millions of square feet of commercial and industrial development and brought in 15,000 new jobs. The city’s population surged from 77,500 in 1980 to an estimated 104,000 in 1994.
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During that time, industrial growth helped boost other development.
The Simi Valley Freeway, begun in 1968 and long seen as a key to the city’s prosperity, was completed in 1983. And plans were well on the way for a long-sought regional mall in the hills north of the freeway.
In 1989 the Ramada Inn, Simi Valley’s largest, most upscale hotel, was built on a hillside at the north end of town. Two years later the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library opened just a few miles south.
Residential projects were booming too.
In its most ambitious planned community effort to date, the city annexed 3,000 acres of land on its western flank. Soon, open grazing land gave way to the red tile roofs and beige stucco facades of the sprawling Wood Ranch housing development.
“In the 1980s the economy was generating a lot of money, and that brought a lot of good things to Simi Valley,” said Tom Mackel, a developer and business owner who has worked on projects in the city for 17 years. “There was a lot of enthusiasm, a real momentum.”
Then the recession hit and development screeched to a halt.
Blaming the economic downturn, the mall developer abandoned the project. The financially flailing Ramada was sold, became a Radisson Hotel and then fell into the hands of the Federal Resolution Trust Corp. And the Wood Ranch developers went broke.
For several years the city did not even award all 172 residential housing permits allowed annually.
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Just as development was beginning to pick up again, the Jan. 17 earthquake hit, causing more than $268 million in damage to businesses alone.
“In Simi Valley, like everywhere else, development shut down,” said Ernest V. Siracusa, president of a real estate marketing research company in Westlake Village. “Things are just now beginning to come back again.”
Now, as the economy begins to recover, Simi Valley leaders find themselves facing some classic bedroom community conundrums.
More than half of Simi Valley’s employed residents still commute to Los Angeles, adding to traffic jams and harmful pollution in the smog-plagued region. And the city’s sales tax revenue, $6.8 million in 1993, is barely half that of Thousand Oaks and lags far behind Ventura and Oxnard as well.
“What we’ve done so far is to develop a community with a good family atmosphere,” said Mayor Greg Stratton. “The next step is to bring in the kind of development that will help us run the city, without upsetting the family environment.”
The city is doing its part to encourage the kind of development it believes will enhance both Simi Valley’s economy and its family-oriented atmosphere.
The City Council recently spent $3.5 million to buy part of the property zoned for a mall in hopes of attracting a developer, and it paid $2.6 million to transform a 70-year-old Methodist church on Los Angeles Avenue into a 300-seat theater.
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To commemorate the city’s 25th anniversary, City Council members will place a plaque at the half-completed theater Monday. The center is scheduled to open in the spring.
“The theater is really a symbol of the city’s commitment to the overall development of the community,” Davis said. “It shows how far we’ve come.”
Developers first came to Simi Valley in the late 1950s, slapping tract houses on cheap land and selling the suburban dream to Los Angeles residents seeking escape from smog, congestion and high housing costs.
Refugees from the city arrived in droves, and tract housing quickly gobbled up land once covered with oak trees, walnut groves, hayfields and citrus orchards.
Between 1960 and 1963, development in Simi Valley made up about a quarter of all growth in Ventura County, according to census information. By the end of the decade, development in the city accounted for 43% of the county’s growth.
But as the housing market boomed, the infrastructure fell behind.
Classrooms were crowded, police and fire protection skimpy and roads narrow and in disrepair. Traffic accidents on Los Angeles Avenue were so frequent that residents called it Blood Alley.
“In the early days, there was a lot of poverty, and the farmers were forced to sell to developers who just didn’t care,” said city historian Patricia Havens, who is writing a book about the city’s past.
“It did not help our image either that the streets of Simi Valley were lined with billboards that said you could move in for a dollar,” Havens said. “Many of the people who moved in at that time were not interested in building a community. They were speculators or just passing through.”
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It was the phenomenal growth that prompted residents to seek cityhood, recalled David Strathearn, whose family in 1964 sold its 13,000-acre cattle ranch on the west end of the valley to investors.
“We were growing so fast we needed to pay attention to our schools, our roads, our police, so many things,” said Strathearn, 68. “We needed to get development under control. The people who ran the county tended to think it ended at the foot of the Conejo Grade. We were shut out. It was time to take matters into our own hands.”
As early as 1961 Strathearn and other homeowners began working on an incorporation study. The report was completed in 1963, but supporters were unable to overcome the opposition from developers, who abhorred the notion of stricter controls.
“For so many years Simi Valley was the county’s dumping ground,” said Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley), who served as a councilman and then mayor of the city from 1979 to 1986. “When someone wanted to build something, the county might not allow them to do it in certain places, but if they wanted to build in Simi Valley, the response was always ‘Who cares? Go right ahead.’ ”
Cityhood supporters launched a second effort in 1965. Support for incorporation was strong--a record 55 candidates filed for candidacy for the City Council--but opposition was stronger, and the measure was defeated.
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It was not until 1969 that backers of incorporation managed to muster enough support to get the incorporation measure passed. To do so, they gerrymandered the city map, excluding neighborhoods that had overwhelmingly opposed cityhood, including Santa Susana at the east end of the valley, Tapo Canyon to the north and Sinaloa, an upscale neighborhood on the west end of the valley.
But cityhood was just part of the process that put Simi Valley on the map.
Perhaps even more important was the completion of the Simi Valley Freeway. The 15-year project literally paved the way for thousands of Simi Valley residents commuting to Los Angeles each day.
“Of course the freeway had a huge impact,” Mackel said. “Developers came here knowing that once the freeway was done, real estate prices would shoot up, and that’s just what happened.”
The value of existing housing has increased tenfold, and many new homes are priced well over $200,000.
In addition to the ease of travel the freeway provides, the city’s low crime rate, strong sense of community, and a development-friendly City Council make it a prime location for upscale development, said Gary Goriam, vice president of acquisitions and sales for Dale Poe, an Agoura-based developer.
The company is planning to break ground soon on Sequoia Heights, an upscale development of 350 homes on 277 acres in south-central Simi Valley.
“Simi Valley is the perfect place to build this type of upper-end housing,” Goriam said. “You get bigger lots and open space, which gives it a rural feel that people are willing to pay a little extra for.”
That is good news for the image of a city once disparaged as a redneck backwater, but it is bad news for less-affluent residents.
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The city that was once home to more police officers than any other town of its size in the country has become too expensive for many people.
“Simi Valley used to be a place where people moved because they couldn’t afford other places,” Gallegly said. “Now many people who want to live here can’t afford it.”
For resident Karleen Volz, 29, the problem is especially vexing.
A third-generation Simi Valley resident, her parents, Ernie and Emma, sold their 25-acre citrus ranch when Volz was just 4 years old and moved to a newly built tract house nearby.
As Volz grew, so did the city. She watched the construction of a City Hall, library, senior center and courthouse where her parents’ Valencia and navel oranges once grew.
“This city is really my home,” Volz said. “I grew up with all the changes.”
Now Volz, who lives with her parents, commutes 24 miles each day to her job as a technician for a Chatsworth company that makes heart-monitoring equipment.
“I can’t really afford an apartment in Simi Valley; it’s out of my range,” she said. “I’m saving up for a house, but I’m afraid Simi Valley is going to be too pricey for me.”
City leaders say they are addressing the relatively high cost of housing by offering financial assistance and low-interest loans to needy residents and by offering incentives to developers who include affordable housing in new projects.
High-priced housing is not the only complaint some residents have.
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Debra Saroyan, a sales manager for Warner/Electra/Atlantic moved to Simi Valley 1 1/2 years ago in anticipation of her company’s relocation to the city.
While Saroyan, 38, appreciates Simi Valley’s friendly, small-town feeling, she has one major gripe.
“Shopping sucks,” she said. “Is Mervyn’s the best this city can do? What is the problem?”
The problem, city leaders say, is the economy.
Just as the city was firming up a mall deal in 1989, the economy started slipping, and the developer got cold feet.
“We were probably six months from breaking ground,” Stratton said. “The good news is we didn’t end up with a half-finished mall sitting up on the hill while the economy shook itself out.”
In recent months the city has renewed its efforts to entice a mall developer.
But while the mall project has received widespread community support, some developers doubt whether Simi Valley can attract enough shoppers to support a full-fledged regional shopping center.
They also question the wisdom of further glutting the area’s mall-filled market, when residents can take a quick trip to Thousand Oaks or Northridge to get their dose of the mall experience.
“What is Simi Valley going to offer that shoppers can’t get somewhere else?” developer Siracusa said. “There aren’t enough people living in Simi Valley to support a mall, and there’s no reason for people from other cities to make the trip when they already have their own malls.”
Still, the credo of the City Council regarding a mall remains, “If you build it, they will come.”
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Last December, the council agreed to buy a 32-acre parcel of the property zoned for the mall, with the hope that city ownership would ease the development process.
A glossy pamphlet produced by the city pitches the mall site as “The Developer’s Dream Come True,” promising a “spectacular hillside site” and “handsome financial incentives.”
The impetus for the city’s great push for a mall? Sales tax. Unlike most cities, Simi Valley does not levy a property tax, so revenue generated from sales tax is especially important, making up about 28% of the city’s general fund.
Additional sales tax generated by a mall could be spent on more police, more parks, more services, a better-looking city.
“I look at our community and I think we do OK,” Stratton said. “We manage to provide the basic services as well as any other city in Ventura County, and we do it with a heck of a lot less money. Just think what we could do if we had a mall.”
Though the challenges now facing Simi Valley may seem daunting, longtime residents and city leaders say they are proud of their city’s progress since its founding a quarter century ago.
“I can tell you one thing: Based on where we started, I am absolutely delighted with how things have turned out in the city,” Havens said. “There’s always room to improve, but I think we’re headed in the right direction.”
Development in Simi Valley
Total at Developed or Existing build-out approved Residential 33,687 units 46,351 units 74% Retail 487 acres 770 acres 63% Office 79 acres 134 acres 59% Industrial* 3,026 acres 4,099 acres 74% Public spaces 4,974 acres 6,088 acres 81%
* including 2,521 acres at Rocketdyne
Source: Simi Valley Planning Department as of October, 1993
Simi Valley at a Glance
FAMILIES
Simi Valley Countywide Median age 31.7 32.6 Median household income $60,067 $50,771 Living in poverty 3.6% 7.3% Racial makeup 78% white
EMPLOYMENT
Simi Valley Countywide Managers and professionals 30% 29.2% Average commute 32 minutes 25 minutes Commute to another county 51.2% 25%
HOUSING
Simi Valley Countywide Owner-occupied 76.4% 65.5% Crowded 5.5% 10.5% Median housing value $233,000 $245,300
CRIME
Low crime: City is ranked safest of its size in the country; crime rate is second lowest of Ventura County’s 10 cities.
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Crime rate, crimes per 1,000
Simi Valley: 27.8
Countywide: 38.3
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Population, 1950-1994
1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 1994 Simi Valley 3,011 7,721 56,464 77,500 100,217 104,686 Ventura County 114,647 199,138 376,430 529,174 669,016 708,168
Sources: U. S. Census, Ventura County Statistical Abstract by Stephen D. Cummings, Simi Valley Planning Department
Planned Simi Valley Developments
- Within city limits:
1. Wood Ranch
Acres: 3,000
Proposed Uses: Residential*, commercial, open space
2. Simi Village
Acres: 70
Proposed Uses: Residential, commercial
3. West end industrial area
Acres: 885
Proposed Uses: Industrial*, open space
4. North of freeway
Acres: 125
Proposed Uses: Regional mall
5. Whiteface / Big Sky Ranch
Acres: 3,100
Proposed Uses: Residential, open space
6. Douglas Ranch / Mt. Sinai
Acres: 355
Proposed Uses: Cemetery, residential
7. Parker Ranch
Acres: 600
Proposed Uses: Residential, open space
8. Sequoia Heights
Acres: 277
Proposed Uses: Residential, open space
- Outside city limits, expected to be annexed:
A. Blakely / Swartz Ranch
Acres: 47
Proposed Uses: Senior residential, commercial
B. Alamos, Brea Canyons
Acres: 2,200
Proposed Uses: Industrial, cemetery, open space
C. North 1st Street
Acres: 200
Proposed Uses: Residential, open space
D. Marr Ranch
Acres: 2,788
Proposed Uses: Residential, open space
E. Gillibrand Canyon
Acres: 3,200
Proposed Uses: Open space
F. Runkle Canyon
Acres: 1,600
Proposed Uses: Residential, open space
* Partially built
Source: Simi Valley General Plan
