2 O.C. Gated Communities Are Latest to Seek Cityhood

While most cities search for identity and recognition, these three crave solitude and simplicity and look warily upon the outside world.

City officials far and wide fidget and fret about balancing the budget, but these communities have cash to spare. How to handle the homeless? These towns don’t have any. Crime is barely a blip on the screen, and council meetings are generally devoid of raucous debate.

Of California’s 471 municipalities, only these three cities lie behind security gates: Rolling Hills on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, Hidden Hills near Calabasas, and Canyon Lake in Riverside County.

Now, in south Orange County, suddenly come two prospective new members of the club.

Coto de Caza, known for the mountains and meadows that serve as a backdrop for homes that cost an average of $504,000, wants cityhood.

In a separate incorporation drive 15 miles to the northwest, voters on March 2 decide whether their Leisure World retirement community bordering Laguna Hills becomes a city.

Both places seek more control over decision-making and how their money is spent--the same kinds of issues that prompt cityhood drives in many communities.

But from a sociologist’s perspective, gated cities aren’t just any community. Gated communities seek to seclude themselves from the outside world, and city status codifies that self-imposed retreat. It makes private what is quintessentially a public entity.

Gated cityhood is “the final act of secession from the wider community and a retreat from the civic system,” argues Edward Blakely, dean of the School of Urban and Regional Planning at USC.

Even some veteran politicians with fairly traditional views are wary that upscale gated cities might deal narrowly with social problems.

“I worry about the possibility of elitism and a parochial approach to issues,” said William Steiner, an Orange County supervisor who retired from office this month. “There needs to be in communities programs to serve the disenfranchised and poor. If [we] circle the wagons to protect our quality of life, it would not be democratic or productive.”

The move toward cityhood shows how established gated communities have become in contemporary America, where about 8.5 million people reside in an estimated 20,000 gated developments.

In Orange County alone, nearly half of the 40,000 existing units in unincorporated areas are gated, say county planners. And of the 153 housing projects now selling, 68% are behind gates, according to the Meyers Group, a real estate information and consulting service.

The groundswell of gates may trouble some social scientists. But that doesn’t bother residents of the existing gated cities, who appear to be contentedly enjoying the good life.

These Areas Are Hotbeds of Social Rest

The last Rolling Hills City Council meeting lasted a benign six minutes. It’s been more than a year since a member of this community of 2,000 residents even stood up to quarrel with officials.

Farther north, in Hidden Hills, the mayor’s political life is so ho-hum that constituents have called him at home only five times in four years to complain, typically about whose tree blocks their view.

Heading east, Canyon Lake’s weekly newspaper this month ran a big retrospective of 1998 in the city of 10,000 residents. The top happening in October, for example: “Max, the border collie acquired by the [Property Owners Assn.] to patrol for unwanted coots, arrived in town.”

These gated communities have more in common than the absence of wild times. They are entities unto themselves with a somewhat unusual, yet workable, system of governance.

Minimalist staffs that include part-time city managers (there’s just not all that much to do in small cities that are nearly built out) contract for basic services such as fire and police. Powerful property owner associations tend to streets, lights and recreation.

By law, city business is public, so city offices and council chambers are located just outside the gates.

Most cities rely heavily on income from sales taxes and, especially in tourist destinations, hotel and motel bed taxes. There’s almost nothing like that in gated cities.

Canyon Lake’s $2-million budget stays afloat with property taxes, state motor vehicle fees, and very modest sales tax revenue from a little shopping center in the city (but again, outside the gates). There is an astounding $1.4-million budget reserve. Three-quarters of the budget goes for police and fire service.

The homeowner association’s current annual spending plan is much higher, $7 million, but the group maintains streets and parks, pays the Wells Fargo security force, operates the copious recreational offerings (including a 385-acre lake, campground, pool, golf course, tennis court, equestrian center and ball fields) and enforces the covenants and restrictions. Revenue comes from a $1,302 yearly fee per homeowner, a figure that hasn’t changed in three years.

For the association, the next big project is to build a 19,000-square-foot lodge to replace the aging 7,000-square-foot facility. Cost: $3 million. “We’ll pay all cash,” said Clint Warrell, the association’s general manager.

Part-time City Manager Delbert Powers says the split responsibility between the city and association, in place since it incorporated in 1991, “wouldn’t work in other areas but Canyon Lake is a very cohesive community. There isn’t much political divisiveness.”

A wall punctuated by three guard entrances surrounds Canyon Lake, but some say the barrier is mostly to keep nonresidents from using the lake and other recreational facilities rather than fear of crime.

In fact, Powers boasts his city posted the lowest crime rate in Riverside County last year. “The outside world hasn’t grown around us yet,” he said.

Privacy is even more jealously guarded in Rolling Hills and Hidden Hills, which have preserved their rural character in the midst of the giant Los Angeles metropolis.

“We don’t give interviews about our community,” snapped the head of the Rolling Hills Community Assn. Offered City Manager Craig Nealis: “They’re very private.”

It rated a modest news story in 1997 when Worth magazine demoted Rolling Hills (where the median price for a home was then placed at $1.1 million) from first to third as the nation’s richest city.

Mayor Frank Hill is sensitive to the stereotype of a snooty community, and points out that he’s a retired fireman who moved to Rolling Hills 10 years ago. The city incorporated in 1957.

“This is a community of modest homes,” he said. “We don’t have the glitz and glitter some areas have.”

But with its 700 homes dotted throughout 20 miles of equestrian trails, and with foxes, raccoons and birds foraging among the trees, even Hill admits: “We are unique. That doesn’t mean we’re better than anybody else, it just means we’re different.”

Rolling Hills does without many traditional municipal services. It has no parks, sidewalks, curbs or street lights, which, of course, is how residents want it. There is no leash law; dogs are free to roam. There is, however, a tennis center and two riding rings. The city is surrounded by woods rather than walls.

Although there is no commerce and therefore no sales tax revenue, the city’s $908,000 general fund amply gets by on property taxes, motor vehicle license fees, building permit fees and a return on investments.

With such “minimal demands” as contracting for basic services, “we have never had any debt,” said Nealis.

Yet even nirvana has its warts.

In Canyon Lake, there is conflict as boaters, water skiers and others vie for use of the lake. In Hidden Hills, where the median home price is nearly $800,000, some older residents of original ranch-style homes are sickened to see affluent newcomers revamping homes into capacious mansions.

“People didn’t come here because it’s gated,” Hidden Hills Mayor Stuart Siegel said of the city’s 1,700 residents. “You’re going to find that the ability to live in a rural area and still be in Los Angeles is the biggest issue.”

But he doesn’t entirely discount the gates as representing status and security to some.

“There is no question you’ll have a guy driving a Porsche with big gold chains saying ‘I want people to know just how rich I am,’ ” he said. “There are a lot of people who have experienced crime and they’re worried about it. Living in a gated community satisfies that sense of security.”

For Hidden Hills, which incorporated in 1961, security is far easier to get than affordable housing. It’s tough for communities with high-priced homes, gated or ungated, to meet state guidelines for providing lower-cost housing.

Siegel acknowledges the city is hard pressed to achieve affordable housing goals. Part of the reason is the city doesn’t have enough land on which to build less expensive units.

“We’re probably going to have to come up with another solution,” he said. He thinks Hidden Hills might be able to somehow pool resources with neighboring Calabasas to reach state housing objectives.

That’s less a problem in Canyon Lake, with its wider income mix (homes range from the $100,000s to more than $1 million).

Like Mayor Hill, Siegel recoils from the notion that gated cities are somehow elitist. Many older residents who bought their homes decades ago “aren’t particularly affluent except in the value of their homes.”

Assertions among some academicians that gated cities are somehow undemocratic strike Siegel as a “sort of quasi-Socialist mentality.”

Actually, the concept of gates and walls isn’t radical or new. They’ve been around since before Christ, when Roman soldiers occupying England settled down in the countryside and built defenses. Heavily fortified walled cities dotted the medieval European landscape.

In contemporary form, gated retirement communities began appearing in the 1960s, and over the next decades, guard kiosks and mechanical traffic barriers became priced for the upper and even middle class.

Now comes Leisure World and Coto de Caza. Maybe.

Coto Is ‘Reward for a Life of Hard Work’

Coto’s approximately 10,000 residents tend to regard themselves as ordinary people of varying incomes who labored long and finally made enough money to live the dream of tranquil, sculpted and safer neighborhoods.

Robert Dotson, who was so poor growing up in Louisiana that he could see the ground through a hole in the floor, puts it this way: “Throughout my life I’ve been climbing the ladder, trying to make it. This is my reward for a life of hard work.”

Melissa Bergler admits that she felt “a bit stupid” when she first drove through Coto’s gate. Still, she says, “I’m also pretty confident that when my daughter is playing in the frontyard, no stranger is going to accidentally scoop her up.”

Coto de Caza and Leisure World incorporation supporters want better services and greater political influence, things many in those communities believe they can get by becoming a city.

Coto de Caza residents were shocked on Halloween night in 1994 when 100 or more marauding youths beat up two adults. A few months ago, a teen party got physical and an unarmed private security guard ended up hospitalized. Motorists speeding on the streets are a continual problem. So cityhood boosters desire better police service and heavier funding for youth sports.

In Leisure World, most of the 20,000 inhabitants are riled by plans to convert El Toro Marine Corps Air Station into an international airport, thus sending commercial jetliners streaking over their homes.

They seek city status to fight the airport and parry any future attempts by a neighboring municipality to annex Leisure World.

“We want local control over local issues,” said Bob Ring of Leisure World, which stands to become the largest gated city--and the oldest. The average age here is 77, compared with 35 in Coto de Caza. “We want a say about what kind of services we receive and how the tax dollar is spent.”

Carving out a city means breaking away from a county government whose five-member Board of Supervisors, elected from districts, makes decisions for the unincorporated areas like Coto and Leisure World. One supervisor represents South County.

It also requires getting permission from the Local Agency Formation Commission, which has its concerns.

Terming it a “theoretical discussion,” a LAFCO staff report on Leisure World’s application stated: “Gated communities carry with them the potential for withdrawal from large-scale public discussions.”

There’s a “burgeoning demand” for gated communities, said the report, “which can also be seen as a reaction to changes in our society.”

Still, LAFCO has given Leisure World the go-ahead for a cityhood vote. Coto de Caza’s campaign is at an earlier stage of the process. Of the estimated 20 incorporation drives underway in California, Coto de Caza and Leisure World are the only gated candidates.

Some fear that becoming a city would spoil the idyllic lifestyle they came for or raise their costs. “For a lot of people, cityhood would take away that quiet rural feel,” said Coto resident Christine Giraldin. “We’re country, we’re unincorporated. We like it that way.” The community already is split over a proposal to build a public elementary school within its walls; allowing it would require letting in any visitor who wants to see the school.

Over in Leisure World, anti-incorporation activist Helen Ensweiler believes if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it. “We already have everything,” she said. “We’ve got good transportation, a library and many other recreational things.”

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Living Behind Gates

If Coto de Caza and Leisure World become gated, incorporated cities, they will join a very short list of similar cities in California. The incorporation of Coto de Caza wouldn’t surprise those urban observers who view such steps as elitist communities withdrawing from their surroundings. How Coto de Caza differs from the rest of Orange County:

Total county

Median household income*: $45,922

Median home sale price: 236,000

Coto de Caza

Median household income*: $105,061

Median home sale price: 504,000

TOTAL COUNTY

Ethnicity

White: 59%

Latino: 27%

Asian: 12%

Other: 2%

*

Education

College grad.: 24%

College /associate degree: 34%

High school grad.: 21%

Less than high school: 21%

Coto de Caza

Ethnicity

White: 90%

Latino: 5%

Asian: 4%

Other: 1%

*

Education*

College grad.: 50%

College /associate degree: 34%

High school grad.: 11%

Less than high school: 5%

*

The state’s gated cities are all in Southern California. Here’s how they compare to Leisure World and Coto de Caza:

Gates Cities:

ROLLING HILLS

Incorporated: 1957

Area: Three square miles

Population: 2,000

*

HIDDEN HILLS

Incorporated: 1961

Area: Two square miles

Population: 1,700

*

CANYON LAKE

Incorporated: 1991

Area: 4.5 square miles

Population: 10,000

Gated City Candidates

COTO DE CAZA

Area: 2,104 acres

Population: 10,000**

Dwelling unites: 2,020

*

LEISURE WORLD

Area: 2,095 acres***

Population: 20,000**

Dwelling unites: 13,000

Vote: Residents will vote March 2 on whether to incorporate

*

* 1990 Census

** Estimated

*** Approximately four square miles

Sources: Census Bureau, Locas Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO); Researched by RAY TESSLER / Los Angeles Times