Three years ago, as Corinne Calderon approached...

Three years ago, as Corinne Calderon approached middle-school age, her parents started looking for a private school near their home in Woodland Hills.

“Our experiences in grammar school were good,” Corinne’s mom, Teresa, said of the local school district. “But we saw problems coming up in middle school.”

However, Teresa Calderon, 39, and her husband, Steve, 40, were shocked at the prices of private schools and realized their financial pain would double when Corinne’s brother, Chase, now 10, also reached middle school.

“This is crazy,” they thought. “We know we’ll have to pay for college. Why start paying now? We have to move.”

The Calderons considered Santa Barbara, where they have a summer home, but decided it was too far from the Los Angeles and Orange County clients of Steve Calderon, a communications consultant.

On their trips along the 101 Freeway, however, the couple had often thought that Westlake Village, which straddles the Los Angeles County-Ventura County line, looked appealing.

Thirty-eight miles from downtown Los Angeles, the predominantly white community of 28,000 includes a 150-acre lake with an island, the Westlake Yacht Club (but no yachts, mainly electric boats) and two tony private golf courses and a public course.

Costco has recently built a store there, as have Bristol Farms, Barnes and Noble and Vons.

After doing some research, Teresa discovered the most important fact for her: the area’s schools are impressive.

In the Conejo Valley School District, on the Ventura side of Westlake Village, 31% of the students are enrolled in honors and advanced placement classes. At Westlake High School, 94% of the students graduate and go onto college--60% to four-year colleges, 34% to two-year colleges.

Driving around the area, she noticed miles of open hills surrounding the community and the native oaks preserved within the neighborhoods. Most of all, she noticed that people were outside--walking, jogging, biking or sailing on the lake.

“In the Valley, you never see people outside of their cars,” Teresa Calderon said. “It’s only 20 miles away, but it’s like night and day.”

And so two years ago, the family sold its Valley home and enlisted the help of Jim Cicchese, an agent with Fred Sands Brown Realtors, to find a house in the price range of around $400,000. After being outbid on three homes they wanted, the family finally bought a two-story tile-roofed house with a pool in Westlake’s Village Homes neighborhood, which was built in the 1970s.

To say the Calderons are happy is understated. “My husband and I pinch ourselves all the time,” Teresa Calderon said.

The Calderons’ contentment is not by chance; the master-planned community of Westlake Village has been constructed over the last 30 years to bring about just that state of mind.

Once Little More Than Rolling Plains

In the early 1960s, when the San Fernando Valley was in the throes of a tract-house building explosion, the 12,000 acres that became Westlake Village, then known as the Albertson Ranch, was little more than rolling plains of prairie grasses punctuated by cattle and oaks.

The ranch was purchased in 1963 by the American-Hawaiian Steamship Co., which was determined to turn it into “a new city in the country,” according to sales literature, “a new and better place for people to live, work and play.”

American-Hawaiian paid Bechtel Corp. and other consultants $1 million over three years to create a master plan for a balanced community of modest, medium-sized and monstrous homes, of wide sidewalks and streets, of commercial and retail areas, sites for churches and schools, all surrounded by miles of open space.

In 1966, Prudential Insurance Co. became a partner, and in 1973 it took over developing the rest of the community. In 1967, the 9,000 acres of Westlake in Ventura County were annexed by Thousand Oaks, and the 3,000 acres on the Los Angeles County side became the city of Westlake Village in 1981.

Still, the original 12,000 acres of the original plan are known as Westlake. The community is divided into north and south by the 101 Freeway, with the lake and most of the population in the South Ranch area and the private golf courses and million-dollar mansions in the North Ranch region.

“I think Westlake has done well,” said Cy Faries, a chemist and businessman who bought his one-story, 2,000-square-foot townhouse just north of Westlake Lake in 1972. The Northshore townhouses were among the first homes built in Westlake and cost $35,000. Today they’re worth up to $300,000.

“Overall, Westlake has kept the integrity it was designed to have,” Faries said. “It attracted the people it was purported to attract.”

Like the Calderons, Faries and his wife, then the parents of a 4-year-old daughter, were drawn to Westlake for the quality of the schools.

“It was a nice area,” Faries said of his former Canoga Park neighborhood. “But I wasn’t happy with the schools. I was concerned with the discipline. They were more liberal than I was. So we started looking for other locations.”

Faries’ grown daughter has moved to La Jolla and is raising a 4-year-old of her own, and Faries said his daughter turned out “wonderfully” after an idyllic childhood in Westlake.

“We made sure she had a sailboat to grow up with,” he said. “We made sure she had a horse to grow up with.” The boat was sailed in Westlake Lake, and the horse was boarded at nearby canyon ranches.

For a while, as the community’s first children became adults, it seemed to Faries that Westlake was becoming a retirement area. In the last five years, however, he has seen a resurgence of young families, and now there are eight or nine children living on his cul-de-sac.

“When I come home, I’m greeted by a bunch of little kids,” Faries said, “which I love. I’m a great fan of children. They’re the best of us.”

The areas around the lake and on its island are good examples of the master plan’s attempt at balance. Townhouses in the $175,000 to $350,000 range are within walking distance of the lake, as are homes costing $700,000.

Sought-after offices--for lawyers, chiropractors, therapists and other professionals--overlook the lake. Three restaurants there are busy. Ducks float on the lake, dive for fish and waddle boldly across parking lots.

Though two-bedroom condos of 1,000 square feet can be found in Westlake for less than $150,000, the average three-bedroom two-bathroom house sells for about $350,000 to $400,000, according to Cindee Zabner of Prudential California Realty.

In North Ranch, home prices start at more than $500,000 and reach into the millions. A 12,000-square-foot home on two acres overlooking the golf course was recently listed for $4 million. Rentals in Westlake cost about $1 a square foot per month, Zabner said, but are hard to find.

On the Island, Houses Start at About $450,000

In the South Ranch area, the island in the middle of Westlake Lake is considered an especially desirable area. There, past a gate and a guard, houses sell from around $450,000 to more than $1 million. Those on the Venice-like canals are less expensive, with those facing the lake costing more.

“I’m in the low-rent district,” joked George Caroll, 54, a hairstylist and beauty expert who moved to the island 10 years ago. Before that, he lived in nearby Agoura and often said, “Oh, man, I’d love to live on the island if I could afford it.”

Caroll and his wife, Carol, bought their three-bedroom two-story house in 2,500 square feet on a canal for about $400,000 and figure it’s worth about $600,000 today. Like Faries, Caroll has noticed an increase in the number of children throughout the island.

A remodeling boom is in progress on the island to update the quarter-century-old housing stock, but restrictions are many. No hammers can swing before 8 a.m. or on weekends. Until recently, Caroll said, weeping willows were the only trees permitted.

“They’re loosening up now,” Caroll said of the island’s homeowners association. “They’re allowing palm trees. As younger people move in, things change.”

What hasn’t changed is the feeling of safety Westlake residents mention often. “You can walk all over at 11 p.m. and feel really safe,” Caroll said.

According to Realtor Pat Evans of Coldwell Banker, pressure from residents helps prevent the community from straying too far from the master plan and becoming overcrowded.

“Open space is so prized here,” said Evans, president of the 900-member Conejo Valley Assn. of Realtors. “If it is threatened, you will hear such an uproar.” In a recent controversy, Thousand Oaks wanted to put a golf course on designated open space, which some believe should be kept natural.

Preservation of Westlake’s essence means a lot to Kristin Walker, 33, a dermatologist who wants to start a family with her husband, Peter Aughney, also 33.

“It’s very family-oriented,” Walker said. “The people are very friendly.”

Two years ago, the couple moved to Lake Sherwood, an exclusive area just south of Westlake Village, to escape Manhattan Beach. “It’s so congested,” Walker said. “Houses are right on top of each other.”

Recently, the coupled decided to build a custom home in Westlake’s North Ranch on a half-acre lot.

The Night Life Retires Early

If Westlake has any shortcomings, it’s that there’s not much to do at night if you’re not a kid or raising kids.

“If you want to go to nightclubs every night, Westlake is not the place for you,” said Cicchese, the agent who helped Steve and Teresa Calderon find their family home.

Even Teresa Calderon resisted moving from the vibrancy of the San Fernando Valley.

“I used to be a little more cosmopolitan,” she said. “I wanted to be near Ventura Boulevard, closer to the mall, closer to the Westside.

“Now my priorities have changed,” she said. “Now it’s all about family.”

Kathy Price-Robinson is a freelance writer. She can be reached at KathyPrice@aol.com.