SPECIAL REPORT * Except for visits to large regional attractions, demographers say . . . : Residents Staying Closer to Home

The drive from their Camarillo home to Inglewood can take 90 minutes depending on traffic and whether they choose the oceanside or inland route. But time and distance have not discouraged hockey fans Rhonda and Tom Power from venturing to at least 40 Kings games a year at the Great Western Forum.

Even the Kings’ planned move next year to the new Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles won’t deter the Powers--although they fear that the new location may add an extra half-hour to their journey for thrills on ice.

“I don’t think people mind traveling if it’s for something that means a lot to them,” said Rhonda, 43, mother of three children who usually join the hockey treks. “Hockey is something my whole family loves. They know in order to see it, they have to put up with the drive.”

Still, in a pattern that demographers and transportation experts say is increasingly common in Southern California, the Power family stays close to home for nearly everything else: shopping, movies, restaurants. In the past few years, outlet malls and multiplex cinemas have opened in their Ventura County neighborhood, reducing their number of trips into the San Fernando Valley or even nearby Thousand Oaks.

This tug between life as a neighborhood-hugger or freeway-flier is receiving much attention these days as Southern California bounces out of a recession and girds for renewed population growth. Enormous investments are at stake, as is a sense of geographic identity.

Developers of the hundreds of new movie theaters, coffeehouses, performing arts centers, chain bookstores and retail strips say they are catering to a psychological barrier that makes people reluctant to drive more than 20 minutes for anything but work, meaning most shopping, recreation and entertainment.

At the same time, more ambitious and singular institutions such as the new sports arena, the Ontario Mills outlet mall and the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach are betting millions of dollars that they are exciting enough to attract visitors and shoppers from across the entire, sprawling region.

This increasing competition between the local and the regional is nothing less than a “a war for people’s brains and dollars,” said Rick Cole, an executive of the Local Government Commission, a nonprofit organization that promotes better city planning.

Southern Californians no longer conform, if they ever did, to the parodied stereotype of auto worshipers willing to drive anywhere at the drop of a discount sales brochure on their doormat.

In fact, recent federal studies show that drive times in Southern California are surprisingly similar to the national averages. Motorists in Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside counties drive on average 11.5 minutes for a shopping trip, 16 minutes for recreation and 13 minutes for family or personal business. (Southern Californians have slightly longer work commutes with an average of 24 minutes, the Federal Highway Administration reports.)

So builders, businesses and cultural institutions are worrying more and more about convenience, particularly as consumers complain about their lack of free time.

“It is an issue now that Los Angeles is experiencing a lot of large development projects,” said Larry Kosmont, a Los Angeles real estate consultant. “L.A.’s density has increased, and the circle of drive time is getting tighter. You can’t get as far in 15 minutes as you used to. So builders are bringing things closer to home.”

The Trader Joe’s specialty food chain used to space stores at least 10 miles apart for fear of hurting each other’s business. “That’s proved absolutely not to be the case,” said Patricia St. John, marketing vice president for the chain, which has grown from 34 Southern California stores five years ago to 51 now.

She cited the success of a Los Angeles store that opened a year and a half ago at La Brea Avenue and 3rd Street, just about a mile from another Trader Joe’s in West Hollywood that has remained strong as well. “What we have found is that the more convenient we make it, the more people like it,” St. John said.

The entertainment industry has learned that lesson. The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus tours the Southern California region this summer as if it were a state, stopping in Anaheim, Long Beach, Inglewood and Los Angeles.

At one point next month, different road companies of the Broadway musical “Chicago” will simultaneously play at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa and the Shubert Theater in Century City; in no other region of the country would productions play so close to each other at the same time, said “Chicago” spokeswoman Laurie Korcuska.

‘Something Special’

Sales-tax-hungry cities want to tap that stay-at-home tendency too. Hoping to mimic the success of Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica and Old Town Pasadena, communities throughout the region are trying to wake up their old downtowns or, as in the case of the Town Center Drive in Valencia, create new ones with trendy shops and multiscreen movie complexes. “It adds to the quality of life to be able to go to something in your backyard,” said Marlee Lauffer, an official for Valencia’s developer, the Newhall Land & Farming Co.

To compete, big regional attractions that require a longer drive must deliver an escape from the daily routine--like the art and architecture of the Getty Center and the giant medical robot at the new California Science Center.

“People are less willing to go distances for the same old thing,” said the Local Government Commission’s Cole. “So to draw people to a destination at least once, you have to have something special.”

Ontario Mills, the flashy outlet and entertainment center that opened in November 1996 in San Bernardino County, attracts day-trippers from Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside counties with promises of bargains not always found in local malls and enough video games to stun a blase teenager. According to license plate surveys, 53% of the shoppers travel more than 20 miles to the mega-mall. Its theme park environment--think lots of neon--and a size equivalent to 36 football fields have pressured owners of smaller malls to spruce up their own facilities.

Beneath the giant hot dog sculptures dangling from the food court ceiling, Pomona resident James Henderson ate lunch at Ontario Mills recently with his wife, Velma, and their three sons, ages 9, 7 and 3. They were making a day of it, hoping to find some bargains at the J.C. Penney’s outlet. For deals on children’s clothes and shoes, they’ll also drive west to the Slauson Swap Meet and the Del Amo Fashion Center in Torrance.

Short, Local Trips

“You’ll drive for a deal rather than pay a high price,” said Henderson, a school custodian. “Everybody will drive for a deal.”

But his willingness to travel far afield is increasingly rare, experts say.

“Contrary to popular conception, the vast majority of trips are local” in the Los Angeles region, said Brian Taylor, associate director of UCLA’s Institute of Transportation Studies. “Most people are making relatively short trips in the area they live in.”

He added: “People in Los Angeles are shockingly similar to people in Kansas City, New York, Paris and Beijing. They respond in a pretty rational way in trading off the time and expense [of driving] from the benefit they get from it.”

That is the challenge confronting the new sports arena.

The Powers of Camarillo support the move from Inglewood to downtown. But another Kings fan from the South Bay unhappily anticipates that hassles and time will be added to what is now an easy, 20-minute drive from his home to Inglewood. For most nonwork activities and chores, his family rarely travels west of the 405 or north of LAX.

“I guess I’m the typical L.A. person who doesn’t like to drive on my time off since I do so much driving for business,” said the man, who asked not to be identified for fear of offending the team. So he said he will try the first season downtown in 1999: “We will wait and see.”

The Kings marketing office tracks season-ticket buyers on a regional map with dots at the location of mailing addresses. The map now shows tight clusters of dots close to the 405 Freeway from Palos Verde to the Westside. The dots thin out considerably to the north and east.

When the Staples Center opens in October 1999, the goal is to keep most of the westerly pins and to replace any losses with patrons who are closer to downtown, said John Cimperman, the Kings’ vice president for marketing and communications. Those potential audiences include people who live in the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys and downtown workers who may be able to walk or take quick shuttle buses to games.

Focus on Convenience

Surveys conducted by the Kings show that an extra 15 or 20 minutes driving is not as important to sports fans as convenient parking and a safe environment, both of which he said the Staples Center will provide. Plus the arena itself, with elaborate video screens, many restaurants, improved bathrooms and extra concourses, should draw people back, Cimperman said.

“It’s all about reducing hurdles to come to the game,” he said.

The Hollywood Bowl offers reassuring proof that Southern Californians will endure long drives for special pleasures. Reisha and Arthur Rosten of Newport Beach drive an hour to the Bowl. “It’s a real treat,” she said of the music performed in the open-air by the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

But those five trips a season, along with other journeys north to visit relatives and see plays in Los Angeles, are increasingly rare for the couple, who are in their early 50s. More and more stores, restaurants, movies and cultural venues have opened in Newport and surrounding Orange County communities recently.

“Every year that goes by, there is less reason to leave the neighborhood. We have everything you could possibly want except for the Hollywood Bowl,” Reisha Rosten said.

Businesses and services long have chased housing developments into the suburbs, said USC urban planning and economics professor Peter Gordon. “Entrepreneurs are forever looking at how they can cut this guy’s trip by setting up something next to him or her,” he said. But it is very noticeable now in Southern California because of the renewed, strong economy, he said.

Jeff Brown, executive director of the 21-year-old La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts, has to deal with both sides of the issue. He draws audiences from around the region for comedies, dramas and musicals. But his 1,264-seat center pitches strongly to audiences who live in La Mirada, Whittier, Fullerton and Anaheim and may not want to travel to downtown Los Angeles or to the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa.

“I imagine most communities want something nearby,” he said, citing the concert halls and theaters built in Cerritos, Thousand Oaks and other locations in the past few years.

La Mirada resident Myllie Taylor loves the theater in her hometown and often attends. But, at 72, she remains something of a freeway-flier, visiting relatives and friends from Santa Barbara to Orange County, shopping in Newport or the Beverly Center, attending plays in Century City or downtown Los Angeles.

“Getting in a car and driving 45 minutes to have a good lunch doesn’t faze me,” said Taylor, who works part time as a travel agent.

Yet lately, she has noticed more cinemas, more restaurants, more shops closer to La Mirada. “More and more,” she remarked, “people are finding the finer things closer to home.”