California Sprawl Spreads South Into Baja

A Southern California emigre, John Turkoc, sits at a beach-side bar, drinking a Pacifico beer while watching a Sunday afternoon football game, and explains Baja Economics 101.

Figuring the price of a long-term lease for land, taxes and construction, Turkoc, an archeologist, estimates his beachfront house in Mexico’s Baja California costs less than a third of a comparable home on the U.S. side of the border, 30 miles to the north.

“It’s like a poor man’s La Jolla,” he says.

Thousands of other Americans have done the same math--so many that northern Baja, a rugged desert landscape framed by a jagged coastline, is fast becoming another extension of Southern California sprawl.

An estimated 25,000 Americans live along the 180-mile stretch from Tijuana to San Quintin, and experts predict the number could reach 160,000 in a decade.

“I love it. I wouldn’t live anywhere else,” says Jackie Stoner, a retiree from San Diego County who lives in Baja Malibu, one of the American enclaves along the Pacific coast.

But the transformation has come at a cost.

The influx has brought haphazard development that some say threatens the fragile Baja environment. Others fear a cultural onslaught of English and dollars and the conflict they might bring. For example, about 300 U.S. citizens living in Punta Banda are being threatened with eviction after a Mexican court ruled that their leases were not legal.

“Yes, this kind of tourism brings in money, but there are two sides to the coin,” said Nora Bringas Rabago, a researcher at Baja’s Colegio de la Frontera Norte.

Tourism is big business in Baja, generating $1.25 billion last year and bringing nearly 8 million visitors. Mexico has encouraged foreigners to settle there by allowing them to purchase the equivalent of long-term leases of coastal land.

Americans who live in communities such as Baja Malibu say they feel safe in Baja and prefer the laid-back lifestyle. More important, they can afford prime real estate.

“If you went to Malibu in the United States, how much would it cost you to live by the ocean? A million? A million and a half?” asked Jim Polson, a retired salesman who moved to Baja Malibu from Los Angeles three years ago. “Here it starts at $60,000. Why would you want to live in the U.S.?”

The arid state, part of a 1,000-mile-long peninsula that extends south of California, is politically and geographically isolated from the rest of Mexico. It was settled by the government as a buffer against an expansionist United States only in the late 19th century.

Baja got its first tourism boost during Prohibition, from 1920 to 1933, when Southern Californians flocked to Tijuana and Ensenada to drink and gamble. But that dropped off after Prohibition ended, and the region became a backwater popular for off-roading, surfing and sportfishing.

In the last 10 years, though, a development boom got underway, dotting the landscape with condos, golf courses and housing developments.

“The [Americans] are moving down here, and they are doing everything they can to make it look like Laguna Beach,” said T. Michael Bircumshaw, an American expatriate who publishes the Baja Sun, an English-language monthly newspaper.

A glance through the Baja Sun reveals signs of the influx. Squeezed among the real estate and insurance ads are notices for meetings of the Daughters of the American Revolution, Alcoholics Anonymous and an American citizens club--all indications that the new residents from the north are making themselves at home.

Bringas, whose research at the Baja college focuses on urban and environmental studies, is frustrated that a majority of the American expatriates in Baja seem to make little effort to learn Spanish or get involved with their Mexican neighbors.

Another concern is the rising prices that have put the cost of a beach home, restaurant or hotel room out of the reach of most Mexican residents of Baja, who earn an average of $4,000 per year. A further complaint is that hotels and condo complexes block access to the beach to all but their customers and residents.

But the chief concern of Bringas and others seems to be the environment.

Baja’s development is haphazard, ignoring the region’s lack of water and sewage treatment, said Larry Herzog, a San Diego State University urban studies professor.

Still, he is hopeful.

“It’s not too late even for northern Baja,” he said. “They can still learn from the worst things we’ve done on our side of the border.”