Wanted: Stable Homes
For several years, you could barely give a horse away in Southern California. Now, as the healthy economy brings equestrian life back to a full gallop in Orange County, horse owners are finding stables in short supply.
The number of boarding stables in the historic cowboy town of San Juan Capistrano dropped by nearly half during the past decade, from 14 to eight. Several of the county’s equestrian centers, including the Orange County Fairgrounds, have waiting lists.
“There is a tremendous need in Orange County for a well-maintained equestrian facility, and it’s forced my family out of the area,” said Aldren La Joie, a Laguna Hills resident who is looking for equestrian property in San Diego County for his 12 horses. “The community lacks accommodations for show horses. . . . Existing facilities are overcrowded.”
UC Irvine evicted 26 horses from its campus in February to make room for a $15.3-million student center. The 175-stall Live Oak Canyon Stables in Trabuco Canyon closed last year. The owners of Stoneridge Riding Club sold their Laguna Canyon stable about three years ago after they had to evacuate horses several times because of floods and fire, said Joy Lingenfelter, an animal control officer. And the Creekside Equestrian Center in San Juan Capistrano recently became a breeder’s private stable. Other stables were pushed out of business by development or money troubles.
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Tim Poussard, who operates the Huntington Crest Equestrian Center in Huntington Beach, recently renewed a two-year lease, but the property owner has long-term plans to sell to a developer.
At first, few noticed the closures because few people were looking for a place to put a horse. Seven years ago, the lackluster economy touched off a fire sale of horses through Southern California, when workers laid off from their aerospace and other jobs no longer could afford the monthly boarding fees of $200 to $400. Purebred Arabians that had sold for $40,000 during the 1980s suddenly were fetching prices as low as $1,500.
Jan Austin, an Arabian horse breeder in San Juan Capistrano, said boarding stables during that time had plenty of empty stalls or were locking horses in their stalls because their owners couldn’t afford the monthly fees.
She bought her first mare in 1990 from the bankrupt Albalisa Arabians in Orange. Although most of the 50 horses were sold to private owners, some of the choice purebreds were bought at auction by slaughterhouses, she said.
“The prices were really high in the 1980s, and then the bottom dropped out of the horse market and they couldn’t sell them,” she said.
Nancy Huffman, who opened River Trail Stables in Orange in 1989, said that starting in late 1991, horse owners were asking her to keep their steeds rather than allow them to be sold to slaughterhouses.
“No one could afford to board their horses, so they were giving them away,” she said.
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Suddenly, all that has changed.
The Los Angeles Equestrian Center in Burbank, which can board as many as 550 horses, is 95% full, said George Chatigny, events coordinator.
“The economy is good and the . . . quantity of horses boarded at this facility is up.” he said. “So is the number of horses brought here for shows.”
At the Orange County Fairgrounds Equestrian Center, manager Larry Gimple says he can’t recall ever having a full stable during the five years he has been there--until the arrival of 20 displaced horses from the closure of Creekside Equestrian Center within the last two weeks. “We just started a waiting list,” he said.
Nationwide, there are 6.9 million horses. California, with 642,000, has the second-largest population next to Texas, according to a 1996 study by the American Horse Council.
Los Angeles County veterinarian Dr. Patrick Ryan said the county’s horse population is about 50,000. The most recent figures for Orange County date back to a 1980 equine census by the California State Horseman’s Assn., when the county had 21,639 horses.
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The demand for stalls has led to plans for several new horse centers. After a series of stables shut down in the Thousand Oaks area of Ventura County during the mid-1990s, a lack of horse stables led the local park district there to make plans for an equestrian center on publicly owned land.
In San Juan Capistrano, where a quarter of all the boarded horses in Orange County reside and where riders can navigate a network of trails 29 miles long, two new stables are planned, in addition to expansion plans at four existing facilities.
The city is planning a 10-acre horse center on public land. Another stable is proposed by Sherry and Randy Malis, a couple who operate a summer horse camp for needy young people at Rio Vista Stables. They plan to build a 188-stall equestrian center this fall on property leasedfrom the owners of Capistrano Wholesale nursery.
Randy Malis said supportive property owners made the project possible. “They had generous offers for that property and went with us because they liked our kids program,” he said.
In addition to the stables he will be constructing for the Malises, builder Robert Fish said, he has been contracted to build two equestrian centers elsewhere in South County. “Nothing has been built in quite a few years,” he said.
Times staff writer Kate Folmar contributed to this report from Ventura County.
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Horses Around
An exact accounting of the number of horses in Orange County is not available. But a survey of licensed facilities shows nearly 4,500. More than a quarter of those are in San Juan Capistrano. Here is the equine distribution in Orange County among licensed facilities. It does not include the many horses boarded at private homes.
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Stables Horses Anaheim 5 449 Brea 2 140 Buena Park 2 57 Costa Mesa 1 140 Cypress 1 4 Fountain Valley 2 102 Fullerton 2 77 Huntington Beach 2 532 Lake Forest 1 200 Laguna Hills 2 110 Orange 3 535 San Juan Capistrano 8 1,299 Santa Ana 3 N/A Yorba Linda 4 209 Unincorporated areas 6 588
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Note: Dana Point, Laguna Niguel, Mission Viejo, Newport Beach, San Clemente, Seal Beach and Westminster do not allow horses to be kept within city limits. There are no stables in Garden Grove, Irvine, La Habra, Laguna Beach, La Palma, Los Alamitos, Placentia, Stanton, Tustin and Villa Park
Sources: Orange County Animal Control, individual cities, licensed facilities; Researched by SUSAN DEEMER / For The Times