Loving Kife on the Edge

With their second child on the way, Dan and Jill Rosen first looked for a bigger home for their growing family among the affluent enclaves of eastern Ventura County’s Conejo Valley.

But the Rosens put thoughts of Ventura County aside after stumbling upon the home of their dreams in Porter Ranch, a growing community in the northwestern San Fernando Valley.

The Rosens, both 37, found that they could get much more for their money in Porter Ranch than in Thousand Oaks. The couple paid in the mid-$500,000s for a 3,600-square-foot home with spacious rooms and high ceilings.

“I originally thought I wanted to be out in the Westlake-Thousand Oaks area,” Jill said. “But we just couldn’t find anything that compared to the safe feeling of being in a gated community in Porter Ranch and in a house that we absolutely loved.”

Because Porter Ranch is situated along the Valley’s northern edge, it’s off the beaten path of the Valley floor, creating an “out of the way” feeling that the Rosens love.

At the same time, the couple’s new home is just a seven-minute commute from Dan’s job at a financial investment firm in Chatsworth.

“Since I live so close to my office, when my kids get older I’ll be able to take time out to see them play sports and attend their recitals,” Dan said. “I’ll get to watch them grow up.”

Nestled among the rolling foothills of the Santa Susana Mountains, Porter Ranch is a predominantly residential community in the upper end of Northridge. Its clean streets and low crime rate have made it an attractive place for retirees and families with young children to buy a home.

And it has also become a destination point for a growing number of Asian American families, observers say. Another feature unique to Porter Ranch is that many of the community’s homes have been built by two companies that plan to build thousands more homes in the area.

The boundaries of Porter Ranch vary, depending on whom you ask. The unofficial borders, according to city demographers, could be the Ronald Reagan Freeway to the south, the Santa Susana Mountains to the north, Aliso Canyon wash to the east and the city’s border to the west.

As of 1996, there were an estimated 16,300 people living in that area.

But those boundaries are unlikely to sit well with longtime residents who contend that the community begins at Devonshire Street, where statues of two mounted horsemen were erected after the original subdivision was built in the early 1960s.

One thing is certain, however, and that’s that most of the community’s growth in recent years has taken place north of the Ronald Reagan Freeway. And Porter Ranch’s fresh housing stock, according to Harriet Cohen of Todd C. Olson Estate Brokerage, is its biggest appeal.

“It’s what brings the people,” said Cohen, who represented the Rosens in their purchase. “They like new homes.”

Homes in Porter Ranch sell for a wide range of prices, Cohen said, with the median home price about $375,000. At the low end, smaller homes start at about $230,000, while luxury homes sell for $900,000.

The mix of prices in Porter Ranch turned out to be a blessing for residents Tom and Lisa Moon. For six years the couple lived in a 1,700-square-foot home in one of the community’s older neighborhoods, west of Wilbur Avenue.

So when Lisa became pregnant with the couple’s second child, they faced a problem with an easy solution: finding a more spacious home to buy in another Porter Ranch neighborhood.

Their search led them to a 2,600-square-foot home with four bedrooms, three bathrooms and a swimming pool. The Moons paid in the low $300,000s for their home, which is in the same gated community where the Rosens bought.

The additional space allows Tom, a 33-year-old mortgage broker, to telecommute between a home office and his main office in Sunland.

“He works late, and I’m always going to the park or to the library with the kids, so I wanted to live somewhere safe,” Lisa, 27, said.

Though the Moons enjoy their new neighborhood, Lisa notes that it differs from their previous one, where she had forged close bonds with her neighbors.

“There are some other stay-at-home moms like me, but the rest of the people seem to work long hours,” Lisa said. “In the summertime it’s not uncommon to see people walking and bicycling at 8 p.m., which is when many of them get home from work.”

Her husband, Tom, added: “Porter Ranch is not a community of old money with a lot of doctors and lawyers. There are more young professionals here who are starting out, working hard and making good on the American dream.”

That’s not to say that residents hesitate to get involved if a need arises, according to Los Angeles police Officer Rick Gibby, a senior lead officer assigned to the Porter Ranch/Granada Hills area.

“Porter Ranch has a really good Neighborhood Watch program,” Gibby said. “They can muster 1,500 people for a meeting, which they did a few years ago when follow-home robberies were a problem. Following the meeting the robberies ceased.”

Besides safety, another draw for the Rosens and the Moons is that their children will attend Castlebay Lane Elementary, a Los Angeles public school with good test scores, an excellent attendance record and plenty of parent involvement.

Many residents also find the community’s rural feel appealing. It’s not unusual for the Moons, for example, to hear coyotes howling at night or to spot road runners and rabbits zipping around by day. Tom even became a media darling a few years ago when camera crews converged on the family’s old home after he spotted a mountain lion prowling around his backyard.

Many of the homes that have been built among the hills offer breathtaking views of the surrounding mountains as well as the west Valley below. Residents also marvel at the fresh air and blue skies.

“We love it up here,” resident Shirley Wilcox said. “There’s no smog, and during the summertime it’s cooler here than on the floor of the Valley.”

Shirley and her husband, Harry, moved to the northern end of Porter Ranch in 1976 to be closer to one of their three go-cart businesses, which they have since sold. At the time, the couple paid $87,000 for their home, which they later remodeled.

At 2,600 square feet, the Wilcox home includes three bedrooms, a formal dining room, a dinette, a music room and a swimming pool.

It’s common, Harry Wilcox said, for Realtors to stop by and ask if he wants to sell his home, which he estimates is now worth more than $350,000.

“I tell them no,” Harry said. “After all, where would we go that’s better than this?”

Porter Ranch’s natural amenities come at a price, however. Winds whip roughly through the community for about three months of the year.

Last month a wind-driven brush fired scorched about 600 acres near the community, reminding residents of a 1988 blaze that destroyed 13 homes. Porter Ranch, according to some residents, was also hit hard during the Northridge earthquake.

And longtime residents have had to adjust to the growth the area has experienced over the years. In one gated community, for example, the number of homes has jumped from roughly 300 to 1,200 over the last decade. And thousands of more homes are expected to be built in the coming years.

Porter Ranch was named for George Keating Porter, a major San Fernando Valley landowner who raised cattle, sheep and grain on 56,000-acre ranch that extended from the San Fernando Mission to Chatsworth and to the top of the Santa Susana Mountains.

A tough businessman, Porter had a hand in seizing part of the land from a small band of Mexicans and Native Americans who held legitimate title to it.

Roughly a century later, another powerful businessman, Nathan Shapell, a prominent Beverly Hills developer and partner Liberty Building Co., purchased a portion of Porter’s original ranch.

Though the partnership has not built all of the houses in Porter Ranch, it is responsible for many of them. So far, Shapell’s S & S Construction Co. and Liberty Building Co. have constructed roughly 3,150 homes in the area.

In 1990, the two companies won city approval to develop thousands of homes and millions of feet of commercial space on 1,300 more acres in Porter Ranch. The move angered Valley residents who feared that the region would be unable to handle the traffic and pollution the project would generate.

Plans currently call for the two companies to build 4,000 more homes as the market permits. So far, the only construction to occur on the 1,300 acres has been the 600,000-square-foot Porter Ranch Town Center, which includes a Best Buy, a Toys R Us and spaces for a Wal-Mart and Sports Chalet.

The discount stores have become a sore spot among some residents who had hoped for swankier shops. The choice of stores, however, doesn’t bother Harry Wilcox.

“They’ll make it nice,” Wilcox said. “I’m sure of it.”