Desert Residents Hope Prison Will Flourish Where Homes Failed

Standing amid the 207 square miles of desert scrub that make up California’s third-largest city in land mass, it’s hard to imagine its original aspirations.

Lonely street signs mark paved roads that end abruptly in the middle of the Mojave. There are no houses, no playing children, no barking dogs, no mailboxes. A major supermarket is nowhere in sight. The nearest hospital is 20 miles away. In fact, California City--population 8,800--didn’t get its first chain drugstore until last year.

Instead, lined up in rows, with an occasional Joshua tree, are completed prison cellblocks. City officials hope that when the cells are bolted together and filled, the town’s history of thwarted dreams will stop haunting its present.

The town’s pioneers, some of whom still live here, were lured to California City in the boom years after World War II by advertising that screamed, “Don’t miss the exploding Antelope Valley!” Civic boosters promised that, by 1980, more than 100 million visitors a year would arrive in this land of opportunity via a giant international airport.

“Almost every month they had more grandiose new plans, “ said Glenn Stevenson, who retired here in 1962 with his wife, who is now deceased. “But most of the original scheme fell through and never materialized.”

It was 1956 when a Czechoslovakia native, Nathan K. Mendelsohn, first eyed the High Desert ranchland that was to become California City. Mendelsohn once taught sociology at Columbia University.

By 1958, his “master-planned community” was promising cul-de-sacs, parks, a medical village, even a California State University campus.

New residents--primarily from urban Los Angeles, 100 miles south--flocked to the area in search of open space and high-yield investment.

At first there were no phones, so residents communicated via CB radio. They would broadcast their grocery lists to whoever was headed to the nearest supermarket, 20 miles away.

“It was a wonderful time,” Stevenson said. “Everybody knew everybody on a first-name basis.”

But although many of the residents enjoyed their tranquil life in an isolated town, they were frustrated that plans for growth never became reality.

“We just couldn’t get an industrial base to come in,” Stevenson said. “You just can’t run a city this size on residential development.”

So the flamboyant Mendelsohn--often seen cruising around town in his Jaguar, wearing a suit and hat--offered people property for $1 if they would just open a business in California City.

Mendelsohn “believed that this was going to be the next Palm Springs and he was going to own it,” said Larry Adams, California City’s mayor. “He assumed he was going to do very, very well and the city was going to prosper. And it didn’t.”

Mendelsohn sold his California City Development Co. in 1964 and the town turned to other pipe dreamers:

* The hydroponic tomato ranch turned into a front for a marijuana plantation.

* The herb farm went belly-up after the plants were eaten by rabbits and finished off by a sandstorm.

* The “miracle” water well pumped funds from City Hall, but nothing else.

“Those kinds of things happen all the time here,” Adams said. “It’s been a scam town.”

But the dreamers keep coming.

Septuagenarians Robert Wilson and John Brown envision turning California City into another Las Vegas, complete with glitzy casinos, fine dining and A-list entertainment. The only problem is that it would take an unlikely vote of all Californians to allow Las Vegas-style gambling here.

There was similar skepticism when the Corrections Corp. of America agreed to build a 2,500-bed privately operated prison in town.

But this could be the plan that finally works for California City.

David Myers, president of CCA’s West Coast region, said the prison will create about 500 jobs, most of them correctional-officer positions. He said the company will hire local residents and train them.

The 10-building prison is expected to be finished by summer. When it is up and running, the medium-security facility is expected to bring in about $350,000 a year for California City.

True, CCA has yet to line up any inmates. The company is battling the state’s powerful prison-guard union, which is trying to prevent the nonunion CCA prison from taking any state inmates away from unionized prisons.

But Myers said that if the California City prison cannot house California inmates, the company intends to house federal criminals or those from other states.

“Most people watching this play out see it as the ‘Field of Dreams’ scenario,” said Bill Mabie, chief aide to state Sen. Richard Polanco, who is the current chairman of the Joint Committee on Prison Construction and Operations.

“If you build it, they will come,” he said. “There is not a shortage of inmates; there is a shortage of cells.”

California City received another boost recently when the global power company AES announced plans to build a 500-megawatt station in the area.

If approved by the California Energy Commission, construction would begin in 2000, said Gary Poe, the company’s business development manager.

Prisons and power stations are not usually welcome anywhere near the backyards of America. But here in California City, where property values have plummeted in the ‘90s, they are a godsend..

“We’ve had a desperate eight years,” said Mayor Adams, whose own home has lost 30% of its value.

“The property values in California City have been pretty depressed,” said Gary Marsh, vice president of Mike Strong Inc., the local contractor helping to build the CCA prison.

“With the start of the prison, property values have started to improve a little,” he said. “There will be a need for people to live here.”