VALLEY BUSINESS / COVER STORY : Exodus to the Promised Land : Communities: Affluent refugees from the Valley escape crime, congestion in the Calabasas-Thousand Oaks corridor. Is the cycle of growth--and its attendant problems--starting all over again?
This is the promised land.
So thought Jeanine and Joel Price when they moved to Thousand Oaks from Northridge four years ago. The couple loved the green belts and open space of this east Ventura County community, as well as its highly rated public schools and near-absence of violent crime.
Today, the Prices live in a four-bedroom house in a neighborhood that reminds them of the San Fernando Valley 25 years ago, when they were growing up. Over the years, they had watched the Valley change and they didn’t like what they saw, said Joel, a detective with the Los Angeles Police Department. Working in the West Valley, he recalled one night being called to a murder scene and it occurred to him, “This is where my family is.”
Now the two oldest Price children attend Conejo Valley public schools and Joel worries less about his family’s safety. Thousand Oaks has the third-fewest crimes among cities with a population of 100,000 or more in the United States, according to an FBI report. “We could not be happier,” said Jeanine.
The Prices have plenty of company. For more than a decade, middle-class families have fled to the affluent communities straddling the Los Angeles-Ventura County border--including Calabasas, Westlake Village, Agoura Hills and Thousand Oaks. They come from all over the Los Angeles area and particularly the Valley, where they became disillusioned with congestion, pollution, graffiti, crime and troubled schools. Here, living in houses that cost $250,000 to multimillion-dollar estates in gated enclaves, they say they’ve found clear skies, pristine hillsides and uncrowded roads. Residents talk happily of their clean sidewalks, tough zoning laws and private security forces that patrol the streets, while notably absent are panhandlers outside of supermarkets.
Over in Calabasas, where he moved three years ago from Woodland Hills, stockbroker Eric Johnson enjoys a sense of community he hasn’t felt since growing up in Oregon. Like others, Johnson said that good schools and a low crime rate were his main reasons for moving here. Johnson now lives in a gated neighborhood and is involved with the local homeowners association. “You see your neighbors more,” he said. “And whether real or imagined, one feels safer in a gated community.”
So it’s not surprising that while the population of the San Fernando Valley has remained flat this decade--and some East Valley areas have actually lost residents--most of the Calabasas-Thousand Oaks corridor has kept growing.
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Calabasas’ population has shot up 29%, to nearly 20,000, since 1990, according to Claritas Inc., an Arlington, Va., marketing consulting firm. And it’s undeniably a middle-class flight that’s taken place. The average annual household income in Calabasas is $140,000, more than twice that of the San Fernando Valley. Overall, the Calabasas-Thousand Oaks area now has 174,000 residents, a 35% increase since 1980, Claritas reports.
What’s more, several sprawling corporate headquarters are located here, including Dole Food Co. (420 employees); biotechnology giant Amgen Inc. (2,300 employees), and GTE of California (2,000 employees). And as the population grows, other businesses take root. There are developers with residential and office projects, retailers, car dealers, caterers, expensive private schools, restaurants and a big shopping mall--The Oaks in Thousand Oaks. That city also new has a new Civic Arts Plaza, which opened last month.
A higher quality of life is the reason cited by most who move here. Newcomers Joy and Debbie Ayers, a mother and daughter who just bought a house in the new Meadowwood development in Thousand Oaks, relocated from Santa Clarita because they hope the cleaner air here will improve Joy’s breathing disorder.
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The Ayerses are one of the 115 families that have bought houses in Meadowwood since March; only about 30 houses are left. That development, where pastel-hued houses sell for $240,000 to $325,000, is carved out of a hillside in a neighborhood where the developer’s marketing brochure boasts of a community where homeowners can “see your children playing on safe, quiet streets.”
The population shift to this region is a phenomenon common to maturing urban areas, said Jack Kyser, chief economist at the Economic Development Corp. of Los Angeles County. Over the past several years, he said, the middle class has migrated away from Los Angeles in a two-step process, first to areas such as the San Fernando Valley, then to the region’s periphery. “The idea is you recapture what you lost in the urban core.”
To be sure, this supposed paradise is not without its troubles. Residents worry that continuing growth will bring to them more crime, the very evil they sought to escape. The Las Virgenes Unified School District in Calabasas, widely heralded as one of the finest local public school systems, is now beset with budget deficits and classrooms crowded with 30 to 40 kids. Meanwhile, developers and businesses complain that anti-growth forces could set the stage for future economic stagnation.
Ernest V. Siracusa, president of Westlake Village-based real estate marketing-research firm Siracusa Co., said this region is entering a phase that involves a more intensive use of land. The area, long known for its horse ranches, is no longer seeing proposals for equestrian facilities, he said. Rather, the demand is for commercial developments, restaurants and shops. “We’re beginning to see the trappings of urbanness here,” he said. “I don’t see any way to avoid that.”
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Yet, despite the growth, this region has not been immune to the economic woes that have shaken Southern California. Calabasas will soon lose a major source of tax revenue due to defense-industry consolidation. Lockheed Corp., now based here, will move its headquarters and 250 white-collar employees out of state as part of its pending merger with Martin Marietta Corp.
The housing market has also suffered, like the rest of Southern California. New house prices have plunged from an average of $500,000 at the end of 1989 to the mid-$300,000 range in Thousand Oaks and Westlake Village, according to the Siracusa Co. Ben Cole, owner of Cole Jewelers in Calabasas, said his business is only now recovering from the hangover of the free-spending 1980s, when many newcomers to the area overextended themselves.
“If you’ve got a $5,000 (a month) mortgage, two cars and kids in school, you’re very careful with your money,” he said. In another sign of hard times, Agoura Hills is grappling with an anticipated $700,000 deficit in its fiscal 1995 budget.
Nonetheless, as painful as the recession was, it hurt a little less in this area, and a recovery is under way more rapidly than in the Valley. One indicator is that the number of foreclosures in the Calabasas-Thousand Oaks region, which doubled from 1991 to 1992, is now increasing at about half that pace, according to TRW Redi Property Data. And house prices have been inching back up in recent months while continuing to decline in the Valley.
Another sign of a rebound is that many local retailers report strong sales. Barbara Teuscher, general manager of The Oaks shopping mall, said sales are averaging a healthy $340 per square foot this year, up 20% over 1993. About half that gain is due to diverted traffic from earthquake-damaged Valley malls, she said. But Teuscher thinks the rise is also due to popular new upscale shops such as Ann Taylor, Eddie Bauer and Williams Sonoma.
In Westlake Village, Judith Buck, co-owner of Willows, a shop featuring expensive home accessories and gifts, said her business has done well in the nearly three years since she opened because locals tend to spend lavishly on their homes.
“It’s a more casual environment, but there’s tons of money here,” she said. “There are a lot of people who decorate to the hilt.”
Auto dealers, too, have been enjoying good times. Sales have grown 70% over the past three years at the Thousand Oaks Auto Mall, said Bob Charney, president of Mosaic Advertising, the mall’s agency, while overall in Southern California car sales have only begun rebounding this year. Charney noted that luxury car sales--such as the Rolls-Royces and Bentleys sold by Nesen Motor Car Co. in the mall--have been “flourishing.”
Also benefiting are local private schools, which have seen rising numbers of applicants, even through the recession. “The parents in the communities we draw from have high aspirations for their children,” said Robert Dworkoski, headmaster at Viewpoint, a private kindergarten through 12th grade school in Calabasas with computer labs, a low student-to-teacher ratio, strict anti-drug policy and an annual tuition of more than $7,000.
And many businesses are still drawn to this area because of lower municipal taxes than in Los Angeles, less traffic and an expanding home-grown employee base. Litton Data Systems moved 1,000 workers to Agoura Hills from Van Nuys two years ago. The Thousand Oaks City Council earlier this year approved Amgen’s plan to expand its headquarters. Medical products concern Baxter Healthcare Corp. is starting its first biotechnology facility in Thousand Oaks. It expects to have 100 employees there by early 1995 and an expanding payroll. Calabasas Mayor Karyn Foley said a movie studio has been making inquiries about locating facilities in the area.
With the prospect of economic growth ahead, several developers are proceeding with housing projects. Baldwin Co. has built 438 houses priced from $230,000 to $300,000 in its guard-gated Eagle Ridge community in Thousand Oaks. About 60 houses have sold since the company began marketing the development in September.
A pricier Baldwin development in the hills of Calabasas calls for as many as 500 homes over a decade, starting with 23 houses under construction, priced at about $600,000 each. Among the first buyers of Baldwin’s Calabasas houses are an entertainment attorney and his wife, now living in Woodland Hills, who want their children to attend Las Virgenes public schools, said Patrick Finnerty, Baldwin’s director of sales for Los Angeles and Ventura counties.
Despite slow-growth policies in these communities that meant waiting years before getting the necessary permits to build, Baldwin believes the area is “an excellent place to build homes,” said Finnerty. “All the reasons people are moving to Thousand Oaks are the very reasons it’s so difficult to build in Thousand Oaks.”
But with this exodus come the inevitable clashes over growth.
Nowhere is that controversy more heated than in Calabasas, where Calabasas Park Centre, a 1.5-million-square-foot office and retail project, was approved by Los Angeles County before Calabasas incorporated in 1991. Two years ago, developers Kilroy Industries and Ahmanson Commercial Development sought city approval to increase the ratio of retail stores in the project. “We figured this would go pretty easy” because retailing generates more taxes than office development, said Mark Ossola, Calabasas Park Centre project director. Instead, the proposal brought howls of protest from homeowners groups. “You would think we were putting in an adult bookstore,” Ossola said.
He said that many local residents want the movie theaters, restaurants, Ralph’s supermarket, Payless drug store, health club and small shops that would be part of the development. But others simply don’t want anything to change. “They moved out of Woodland Hills,” Ossola said. “Now they don’t want that coming into their town.”
Today, Calabasas Park Centre is still an empty field and the developers are negotiating with the City Council. Bitterness over the project has reached a fever pitch as residents such as Michael Fichera, an attorney and president of the Calabasas Park Homeowners Assn., lobby for a scaling back of the plans. Fichera contends that an eight-screen movie theater that’s part of the new proposal would draw crowds from far outside city boundaries, and the entire complex would choke nearby streets. “We don’t want to strangle the very essence of what our community is,” he said. But Ossola said the developers won’t walk away because they have invested $65 million so far, including nearly $11 million they spent widening the Parkway Calabasas interchange off the Ventura Freeway.
Meanwhile, in Thousand Oaks, scattered reports of school violence and gang activity worry local residents.
Joel Price, the LAPD detective, recalled recently finding a gang name scrawled on his car by his house. “We’re not terribly concerned with growth in terms of housing projects,” said his wife, Jeanine. “My big concern is crime . . . that 20 years from now, it will be like the Valley has become.”
