A Rural Refuge in the Valley

Andy Leeds was living in Connecticut when he got word earlier this year that his father, back home in California, was ill.

Leeds, 41, had grown up in Studio City, and the idea of returning to Los Angeles, even temporarily, was not appealing, but he and his wife, Laura, responded to the call and came west to be closer to his folks.

Then a funny thing happened. “Once we got back,” he said, “we decided we would stay.”

What changed his mind was a return visit to Hidden Hills, a west San Fernando Valley community where he and his wife had lived as newlyweds in the early 1980s, before they moved for business reasons to Hawaii and then to Connecticut.

“We really loved Hidden Hills when we lived there the first time, and now that we have a daughter and another child on the way, I can’t think of a better place to raise kids,” said Leeds, a travel agent for entertainers, mainly rock stars, when they go on tours.

Hidden Hills is a 600-home community of about 1,700 residents north of the Ventura Freeway and west of Woodland Hills.

Hidden Hills’ woodsy atmosphere, families of cottontails and open spaces provide a sanctuary from hectic life in Los Angeles, Leeds said, and the bucolic life behind the community’s gates reminds him and his wife of their home in Connecticut.

“In Connecticut, there were also a lot of trees and wildlife in our backyard,” he said. “We had a place on a couple of acres that we gutted and rebuilt.”

They are doing the same thing in Hidden Hills. In June, they bought a ranch-style house on slightly more than an acre for $850,000. They gutted the 2,700-square-foot house, built in 1963, and are expanding it to 3,400 square feet, adding a family room, kitchen and exercise room.

“We haven’t moved in yet,” he said. “It’s completely torn apart.”

Such is life in Hidden Hills, where a number of major remodels are underway, and houses are being razed and rebuilt, often larger and grander, but still with the room afforded by lots of at least an acre.

Most of the home sites in Hidden Hills have been developed because the community dates to the 1950s. It was founded by landscape architect and developer A.E. Hanson, who designed the grounds of many early stars’ estates, including late actor Harold Lloyd’s Greenacres in Beverly Hills.

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In 1961, when there was talk of extending Burbank Boulevard through the center of Hidden Hills, residents fought to maintain their countrified lifestyle by incorporating the community as a city--one without commercial buildings.

Even the Hidden Hills City Hall is outside the community’s gates. It was built inside the Burbank Boulevard gate, and then later the gate was moved so that City Hall would be accessible to the public. The city contracts out for its principal services, such as fire protection and law enforcement, and trash is picked up by private companies chosen by the property owners.

Hidden Hills’ residents cherish their privacy and their security. The community’s three gates have round-the-clock guards and video cameras that record the license-plate number of every car entering.

The desire for privacy was a big factor when its first residents--police officers, firefighters and teachers--bought there for $18,650 a lot.

And it’s more important now that the few vacant lots available are priced from $850,000 to $2 million, and the residents--lawyers, doctors, business executives, and celebrities like Beau Bridges, Howie Mandell, Sinbad and Priscilla Presley--have made Hidden Hills one of the wealthiest cities in the state.

In May, Worth magazine ranked Hidden Hills 17th in the nation in terms of real estate prices. The city’s median home price was reported at $790,000.

The highest sale this year was for slightly more than $4 million, said Kay Cole, vice president of Coldwell Banker-Jon Douglas Co., Woodland Hills. Of about 40 homes sold during the last 12 months, she estimated that half have sold for more than $1 million each, and that several were tear-downs or major remodels that went at prices from $850,000 to $1.4 million.

Asking prices range from $799,000, for a 3,700-square-foot, early ranch-style house on 1 1/2 acres along a street adjacent to the freeway, to just under $7 million for a newly built, 10,000-square-foot country manor with an equestrian center on 2 1/2 acres.

Fees are assessed on each home, based on the purchase price. The fees help maintain the roads, more than 40 miles of horse trails, and community facilities.

There are more tennis courts and fewer horses now than there were even just a few years ago.

There are more upscale homes than ranch-style houses now too, and the newcomers’ community potluck, a longtime annual event, has been catered in recent times.

But Hidden Hills thrives on such community activities, and although many residents have their own pools and tennis courts, there are four community courts; a community pool; two community riding rings; and a 75-seat community theater with drama programs for children 10 and younger, junior high and high school students, and adults.

“Our children have taken part in the theater, and they have used the community pool and have taken a community pottery class,” said Sharon Grassini, who moved to Hidden Hills in March with her husband, Larry, and their family.

She is a part-time marriage, family and child counselor. He is an attorney specializing in civil trial work. The couple, in their early 50s, have five children, including three still at home. The family also has two horses and a goat.

The Grassinis bought a five-bedroom house with a tennis court and a horse barn on 1 1/2 acres. They moved from an eight-bedroom home on 2 1/2 acres in Bell Canyon, north of Hidden Hills.

“We downsized,” she said. “We wanted a smaller yard and flat streets so we could walk, jog and ride bikes. Where we lived before was too hilly.”

There are hills in Hidden Hills, but the main streets are flat, especially in contrast with the area where the Grassinis formerly lived.

The Grassinis did not want to divulge the purchase price of their Hidden Hills home, but they got more for their money than they had expected. They got what Sharon Grassini described as “such a community feeling that we didn’t know until we got here what we had been missing.” Her children made friends through the theater program, and their neighbors brought the Grassinis dinner when they moved in. In their former neighborhood, she said, “we hardly talked to our neighbors.”

Tom Carnaham, the Realtor who represented the Grassinis in buying their home, lived in Hidden Hills as a child from 1956 to 1967. He was enticed to move back about a year ago because of his memories of its neighborliness and security.

Lt. Jim Glazer of the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department’s Lost Hills Station described the crime rate in Hidden Hills as “very, very small.” From January to mid-October of this year, he said, he counted nine crimes, “almost exclusively property-related, as thefts from unlocked vehicles or garages.”

“Once in a while there are burglaries, but they’re internal problems, done by kids who live there,” said Shawn Brownell, community relations deputy for the area.

Carnaham, 44, had been living off Malibu Canyon with his wife, Nancy, and their daughters, Kate, 10, and Kinsley, 16. “You could have horses out there, but it was nothing like Hidden Hills in terms of its double-wide, nicely groomed trails and its security,” he said.

He fondly recalls riding his horse to school as a child, and he was happy to accompany daughter Kate when she recently did the same thing.

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The public schools serving Hidden Hills, from elementary through high school, are part of the Las Virgenes School District, which has been rated among the best in the state for academic excellence. This fueled home buying in Hidden Hills during the 1970s, when some Angelenos moved to avoid school busing.

The quality of the schools was another lure for the Carnahams, who, like the Grassinis, were scaling down with their move to Hidden Hills.

The Carnahams had been living in a 4,000-square-foot house, which they had built nine years earlier. They bought a 2,600-square-foot Hidden Hills home, which had been built in 1961.

“We scraped the cottage cheese [finish] off the ceilings, redid the baths and the floors, and we’re now finishing building the pool and pool house,” he said. He plans to add a second story.

Future house plans are not a priority to Andy Leeds, who is simply trying to get his home completed enough to occupy.

“We had to change every door and window because the house had never been remodeled and it looked dated,” he said. “But we are making a nice kitchen because we love to cook.”

There are no deer in their backyard as there were in Connecticut, so he will eventually plant a garden with vegetables that only humans, and perhaps an occasional rabbit, might eat.