30 Years of Planning Pays

For Ellen Berlin, falling in love with a man, not with a community, caused her to move to Valencia.

She met Jim Berry on a blind date more than two years ago, and they married several months later. At the time, she and her 7-year-old son were living with her parents in Sherman Oaks, and Jim, who has two teenage children, owned his home in Valencia. Berlin said that the decision about where to live was easy but that getting used to a new community was hard.

“At first I thought, ‘How can I leave the Valley? I have all my friends and family there. Everything I do is in the Valley,” Berlin said. “Now when I visit, I think, ‘It’s so overcrowded and smoggy.’ I can’t wait to get back to Valencia.”

Berry, an air conditioning service mechanic, fell in love with Valencia at first sight 22 years ago when he went to look at model homes with his first wife.

“It was green, with a lot of open land. I could tell the pace was slower, and the people were friendly,” he said, adding that the planned community was another plus. “You have to keep your home in good condition--painted, weed-free--or someone from the homeowner’s association will tell you to clean up your house.”

As a result, his neighborhood looks well-kept two decades after Berry paid $40,000 for a 1,600-square-foot home with three bedrooms and two baths. Over the years he has had a pool and Jacuzzi installed and added another bedroom to accommodate his new family.

Situated 30 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles off Interstate 5 and 15 miles north of the San Fernando Valley, Valencia is a master-planned community that celebrated its 30th anniversary in 1995. One of several communities in the Santa Clarita Valley, Valencia is surrounded by mountains and has a desert-like climate. (Four of the valley communities--Valencia, Canyon Country, Newhall and Saugus--make up the city of Santa Clarita. Unincorporated areas are Agua Dulce, Val Verde, Castaic and Stevenson Ranch.)

Valencia is bounded by Lyons Avenue to the south, San Fernando Road to the east and undeveloped land to the north. The western boundary is vacant land next to the Magic Mountain amusement park, which is also in Valencia.

Many couples and families are drawn to Valencia for its new and affordable housing, low crime rate and such amenities as neighborhood club houses and parks.

Another popular feature is Valencia’s paseos--12 miles of landscaped walkways through neighborhoods, parks and the Town Center Mall. Bridges or tunnels at intersections allow walkers to traverse the entire length and never cross a street.

Like Berry, retired Deputy Sheriff Jerry Donnelly also fell in love with Valencia at first sight. One of the first homeowners in the community, he liked it when there was only a promise of what it would be.

“I read in the newspaper that the Newhall Land and Farming Co. was going to develop this Valencia. . . . This sounded neat to me and my wife,” Donnelly said. “But when we moved in, there was nothing but our tract of homes, onion fields and dirt.”

There have been many changes since Donnelly bought his house 30 years ago for $24,000. Since then, he’s remarried and moved several blocks from his first house. He has also watched Valencia develop into a community.

“The changes are tremendous and all for the best,” he said. “The biggest is the Valencia Town Center mall. Everybody waited a long time for that.”

Home prices in Valencia vary by neighborhood, said Donna Russell, a real estate agent with the Re/Max office in Valencia. The lowest-priced resale house is in the Sunrise tract, is about 900 square feet and starts at $138,000.

She said most of the median-priced homes are in the heart of Valencia and start at $202,000 for a 1,600-square-foot house.

One of the higher-priced neighborhoods is the Windemere tract in northeast Valencia. These homes, about 3,000 square feet, start at $539,000.

There is a small neighborhood of custom homes called Vista Point that overlooks the golf course; homes there are listed at about $750,000.

Valencia also has 12 new-home neighborhoods under development by nine builders: Beazer, Braemar, Del Webb, Epac, Greystone, Pardee, Polygon, RGC and West Venture.

Prices of new homes range from $90,000 for an 800-square-foot townhouse to $420,000 for a 3,200-square-foot detached house.

Newhall Land is also building two projects. One is a 2,400-foot-long “Main Street” on Town Center Drive that will have retail shops and restaurants. The other is a lake to be surrounded by a park.

What is now Valencia was once part of the Rancho San Francisco land grant. In 1875, Henry Mayo Newhall purchased the 48,000-acre tract, now known as the Newhall Ranch, for $90,000 to raise cattle and grow crops. When he died in 1883, he left the property to his wife and five sons. A variety of problems during the 1920s caused the family to sell some of their land, but by the late 1930s, the Newhall Land and Farming Co. was profitable again.

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In 1965, Newhall Land sold the right-of-way for Interstate 5 to the state of California, and development of Valencia began. The company hired architect Victor Gruen to design the master plan for the community, which Newhall land director Scott Newhall named after a town in Spain.

Rich and Lisa Cogswell, like many other residents, were attracted to Valencia by the opportunity to buy an affordable new home. They bought a three-bedroom, two-bath house for $230,000 eight years ago. Lisa Cogswell said that she initially had a hard time adjusting to living in a small community and found herself driving to Valley to go shopping or to restaurants.

Once she had children, she started to take advantage of what her neighborhood had to offer. Now that her boys are 2 and 4, she said, she rarely leaves Valencia.

“We have two community pools with recreation rooms and a tennis court within walking distance from our home that we are always going to,” she said. “There is always something happening at the clubhouse--parties, cookouts, swimming lessons for the kids.”

The couple owns an entertainment industry business working with film footage. Lisa, who works from the house while her husband drives to the office in La Crescenta, said his commute was never a problem until the Northridge earthquake, a 6.7 temblor on Jan. 17, 1994, that killed 57 people.

“The 5 and the 14 [freeways] were closed because the interchange between them collapsed,” Lisa recalled.

“After a few days they opened up the old road that runs parallel to the freeway. But my husband’s drive to work was two to three hours.” Their house had only minor damage, but the family moved out for several weeks to be closer to the office and ease cleanup of the house.

Sgt. Richard Lichten of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Santa Clarita station lives in Valencia with his family. “This is one of the safest places to live,” he said, adding that many of the officers from his station also live there. In 1995, the FBI ranked Santa Clarita the fifth-safest community in the United States.

“I feel very comfortable having my family live here and have my son attend the local school,” Lichten said.

What he likes best about Valencia, Lichten said, is that it is a master-planned community. “I am more than willing to write out a check once a month for the homeowner’s dues because I know my neighbor isn’t going to paint his house purple or park on his lawn,” he said.