CHANGING THE CONTEXT

My friend Francine Moskowitz and I are taking an afternoon coffee break at the Corner Bakery in the Calabasas Commons, a new shopping village on the northwestern rim of Los Angeles County. With its gold-domed Rolex clock tower, posh boutiques, rock pond, waterfall, multiplex theater with 1940s-style marquee and whimsical Tom Sawyer-like wrought-iron figurines, the Commons feels both new and familiar. You’ve sat and talked like this before, in a town square like this one, but certainly not along the 405 or 101 freeways.

We are trying to determine which East Coast suburb this place reminds us of.

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“Chestnut Hill [Philadelphia],” says Francine.

“Long Island?” I suggest.

“Cherry Hill, N.J.?”

“Great Neck?”

“Great Neck! Huntington!”

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To say these town names, redolent of John Cheever and F. Scott Fitzgerald tales of wealth and ambition, makes us onetime East Coast girls giddy. We forget that we are sitting in a community that many outsiders still call “The Last of the Old West.” Right now, in the old-town section on Calabasas Road, Phyllis Power, head of the privately run Leonis Adobe Assn., is leading a tour of the 1844 Leonis Adobe and relishing the tale of colorful Miguel Leonis, ruthless “King of Calabasas” and his Indian widow, Espiritu Chijulla.

In place of the Old West, the Calabasas of today is a vision of the New West--a New Suburban West. This community is wealthy, but also safe, clean, vibrant and with-it in a calm, middle-class way. It’s suburban L.A. as we thought it should be, with its own myths and identity--perhaps like neighborhoods in the San Fernando Valley were years ago, before one butted up against another, before high-speed roads made the Valley into a characterless suburban adjunct of downtown and the Westside.

Calabasas residents created their city in 1991 to avoid the crime, congestion and bland, caricatured suburbia that define the worst parts of the Valley’s image. Similar instincts have given birth to planned communities in Orange County and elsewhere--notably Irvine and Rancho Santa Margarita. In the Valley, other communities have tried local resurrection within the last decade: West Hills separated from Canoga Park; Valley Village broke with North Hollywood. Yet because these areas are part of the city of Los Angeles, their efforts resulted in little more than changes of postal addresses, interpreted as sinister attempts to keep real estate values high. Calabasas had the ironic good fortune of existing outside of the city, under the county’s governance, which meant it could rebel against overdevelopment by voting to incorporate into a new city (some parts remain unincorporated and are directly controlled by the county).

So strong are those impulses that Calabasas residents don’t consider their city part of the Valley. The feeling is understandable, but it’s wrong--in geography and spirit. For in truth, the same impulses are coursing through the Valley. To understand them is to understand the Valley’s urge to change, to secede. In Calabasas, with its soothing gated communities and broad, tree-lined parkways, the Valley sees a message: You deserve to live in a place that reflects your own lifestyle and imagination--a community that offers something better than a strip mall on Ventura Boulevard as your piece of local destiny. If you were in charge of your own fate, if anyone had asked your opinion, as developers in Calabasas were forced to do, you might have designed a place like this too.

the calabasas coyotes are having a bad night against the visiting Agoura Chargers on a recent football evening. The crowd at Calabasas High School looks like outtakes from “Leave It to Beaver” with doting parents and enthusiastic students. The team, with a high number of Jewish players, almost had a locker room “throw down” in September over whose family makes the best kugel.

Schools provided the initial burst of energy in Calabasas more than a decade ago as families fled the Los Angeles Unified School District for Las Virgenes Unified. Las Virgenes has 12,000 students this year, almost 500 fewer than Santa Monica-Malibu Unified. The average age of Calabasans is 33, according to the city’s Web site, and a baby boom seems to be in full swing, judging from the overflow crowd of toddlers at the Tuesday morning GymRunners class at the Commons Gymboree.

Calabasas High School, with 1,680 students, is completing its physical expansion. But it may not be large enough. The school boasts high scores on the Scholastic Assessment Test for college admission: In 1999-2000, the school’s SAT average was 1149. By comparison, at El Camino Real High School, not five miles away and a jewel of the Los Angeles Unified system, the SAT average was 1067. Nearly one-fourth of Calabasas graduates go on to the University of California, school officials say, more than at El Camino, where 15% go on to attend UC schools.

“Not everyone who moves here sends their children to the public schools, but the schools are definitely a draw,” says Doris Abramson, a Calabasas resident and real estate agent whose children have attended both public and private schools. It’s a factor that leaves El Camino parents somewhat resentful. Moskowitz’s sons graduated from El Camino prepared for UC Berkeley and the University of Pennsylvania, but the school sits in Calabasas’ shadow. Moskowitz is adamantly opposed to the proposed breakup of the Los Angeles district, but many residents see lower school scores reflected in their real estate values and would vote for Valley schools to secede.

A second, more recent chapter in the Calabasas story has arisen along the Ventura Freeway corridor from Burbank to Ventura. Commuter freeway traffic now clogs both sides of the 101 at the Calabasas grade, discouraging regional transportation experts who are trying to ease side-street congestion caused by employees heading to and from Thousand Oaks’ Amgen, the biomed giant whose work force grew 36% last year to 4,800, and WellPoint Health Networks, which employs 3,700.

Also, City National Bank opened a Sherman Oaks office last summer to harness some of an estimated $4 billion destined to be spent on L.A. County’s high-tech industry. At the time, said Bob Brant, executive vice president of City National’s Technology Group, “30% to 40% of the business communities in Los Angeles and Ventura counties” were tech-related, adding that Burbank and Calabasas were the hottest of the hot spots.

The city is largely a bedroom community, attracting corporate honchos from both Los Angeles and eastern Ventura counties. But it’s also growing an economic base. The French telecommunications company Alcatel headquarters its Internetworking division out of Calabasas, as does Countrywide Home Loans, Cheesecake Factory and THQ Inc., a maker of multimedia software that was one of Fortune magazine’s 100 fastest-growing companies this year.

Bill Watkins, executive director of UC Santa Barbara’s Economic Forecasting Project, estimates that Calabasas and eastern Ventura County will have a regional growth rate of 14%. Calabasas, where an astounding 95% of adults own their homes, is outpacing the rest of Los Angeles County. The lineup of BMWs and Land Rovers at valet parking stands on Saturday nights attests to the new buzz.

According to the Calabasas Chamber of Commerce, the city is one of America’s wealthiest communities--with an average household income of about $209,000. With a median home sales price of $725,000, Calabasas ranked as the 11th highest-priced community in the county in September. (Santa Monica is first, having overtaken Beverly Hills with home prices averaging $1.5 million.)

Yes, the houses are virtually the same, but there are compensations: an inspiring view of the mountains and seasonal sightings of deer, the pleasure of being part of a community among the lowest of population densities. Rachel Purkin, a violinist with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and her husband moved here from Sherman Oaks, where she felt her home might be a target of crime. “It has a planned feeling, but there’s plenty of room for individuality,” Purkin says. “Here we know our neighbors. There, we never knew anyone.”

Scott Goldman runs his wireless company, WAP Forum, from his home office in Calabasas. He appreciates Calabasas for its hills and mountain biking paths, among other features. There’s still a slice of Mayberry, USA here, with an annual Pumpkin Festival and an ever-present motorcycle sheriff who issues tickets to those who run stop signs on Parkway Calabasas. The crime rate is low, 650 per 100,000 people, about one-third the rate of Laguna Niguel’s. “We moved back here from Atlanta,” says Goldman, who’s eating lunch at the Corner Bakery. “I just got back from a bike ride in the mountains. My wife runs. It’s great.”

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AT THE FOOTBALL GAME, the Coyotes are being trounced, 42-24. I sit in the bleachers with my friend Olivia Cohen-Cutler. Her son, Donnie, a senior, plays offensive guard for Calabasas; daughter Sally is a freshman. Her husband, Andy, is a gourmet caterer and coaches freshman football at the school. Olivia, an attorney, spends most of the game hoping Donnie won’t play, and thus avoid injury.

The Cohen-Cutlers moved to Calabasas seven years ago from Ridgewood, N.J., knowing nothing about its previous reputation as back of beyond. Since they are new to L.A., as are many Calabasans, they have no history to live down or up to in their choice of home turf.

What they found could be called a second-generation American suburb, filled with parents who grew up in suburbia. The Cohen-Cutlers, for example, grew up in suburban Newton, Mass. Second-generation suburbanites I’ve spoken to generally remain committed to public schools, though they are willing to accept racial imbalance to get to the best of them. They remain attached to the creative offerings of large cities and are willing to drive long distances to get to the Music Center, LACMA and other cultural venues.

The Cohen-Cutlers chose Calabasas after a three-day swing through the area on a July 4th weekend. A corporate relocation officer had provided them with a list of seven cities, including Santa Monica and Beverly Hills, that met their criteria, which included good public schools and a reasonable commute to Burbank. At first they preferred Pasadena. Its renovated Old Town won their hearts, and the city’s charming homes reminded them of the 100-year-old farmhouse they were leaving.

Ultimately, Pasadena seemed too similar to what they already knew. “When we saw Calabasas,” Andy says, “we saw palm trees, birds of paradise, rolling hills, ocean breezes. We thought, ‘This is California. Let’s do something completely different.’ ” Now firmly established in Calabasas, they hear frequently that they are “far out,” and worse, that they live “in the Valley.” Olivia thinks Westsiders’ attitudes toward the Valley are half-baked. “We don’t live in the Valley,” says Olivia. “We live in Calabasas, just as when we lived in New Jersey, we really lived in the New York area. If you plunked Calabasas in the middle of Ohio, without the creative forces of this region, we wouldn’t be here.”

But, of course, they do live in the Valley. Even so, Mark Persico, city planning and building services director, ing an opinion on whether this is the Valley or not.”

Author William Fulton argues in his book “The Reluctant Metropolis: The Politics of Urban Growth in Los Angeles” that perhaps the only thing linking the residents of these gated communities is that Calabasas “is not the San Fernando Valley.” I disagree. Calabasans have much in common; they are 90% white, upscale (51% of families earn more than $100,000), and well-educated (74% of households have at least one college graduate). And most of them believe that they do not live in the San Fernando Valley.

In that, they embrace what three-time Mayor Dennis Washburn calls a Calabasas “mythology.” This mythology, of independent thinking and fighting City Hall, is now as deeply ingrained in local lore as the rascal Miguel Leonis. The vote for cityhood was an act of rebellion, an insurrection against the development-happy L.A. County Board of Supervisors. Persico says the city is still dealing with excessively indulgent building permits issued by the county in those give-away years.

A city general plan issued in 1995 included the mandate to “define Calabasas’ desired community character, and translate that character into clear guidelines.” Today a Tree Board meets monthly to discuss variances for the moving or removal of ancient scrub oaks. The city has a full-time storm water manager. The planning department analyzes the types of trees and lighting that homeowners propose to install along a scenic drive. Architectural extravagance, like the 23,000-square-foot mansion and 18-car garage on a 26-acre site that Pamela and Richard Aronoff were planning, was regarded with suspicion and rejected by the city planning department. “We’re aware that our backyard is the Santa Monica Mountains,” Persico says. “Once we do something, there’s no going back.”

A secret formula to Calabasas’ success is that while it may appear isolated, even escapist, it is attuned politically and economically to the surrounding communities. The city has taken a leadership role in a joint lawsuit with the environmental group Heal the Bay to stop Ahmanson Ranch, a development approved by Ventura County that would add 3,050 new homes and 400,000 square feet of new commercial space in the county’s southeastern corner. Calabasas sees it as a direct assault on its image. “We’d receive almost all of the impacts from the proposed city,” Persico says. “It is not well thought out.”

Congressman Brad Sherman, a Democrat from Sherman Oaks, calls approval of the Ahmanson development “havoc in the making.” He notes that it would add 45,000 additional vehicle trips per day, many of them flowing into Calabasas before entering the Ventura Freeway.

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IT’S SATURDAY NIGHT AT the Commons. Every parking spot is filled. Mom and Dad are eating at the gourmet Mi Piace. The navel-ring crowd is at Johnny Rockets. One area features a live jazz combo, another has Sinatra piped over speakers hung in trees. With night life, a multiplex theater, a bookstore and food, a suburban family can enjoy a rich social life in the Commons--and many do. Yet as nice as Calabasas is, for years it was little more than an elite aerie until the Commons opened in 1998.

The Commons was a 67-acre parcel originally zoned for high-rise commercial projects before Calabasas became a city. So anxious and distrusting were local residents that a community survey found that Calabasans didn’t mind driving out of the city to shop. They feared becoming “Valley,” which had grown up along truck stops and the old Kings Road. The advent of the shopping mall in the ‘70s bypassed the Valley’s “Main Streets” altogether. Shopping centers and office complexes considered land values and freeway exits first and neighborhood impact second, if at all. The last thing Calabasas wanted was a Ventura Boulevard strip mall, or any mall for that matter.

Perhaps Rick J. Caruso was the only one who could make it a go. Caruso, 41, is president of Caruso Affiliated Holdings and a real estate lawyer. His specialty is controversial projects stalled for years by recalcitrant homeowners. He had, for example, already worked something of a miracle at Ventura Boulevard and Hayvenhurst Avenue, talking residents into transforming an open pit into the Encino Marketplace, which became an instant center for the community.

In Calabasas, he found intense opposition. “By the time we got the project, it had been idle for eight years,” he recalls. Yet Calabasas was never an anti-growth city like nearby Hidden Hills, which has no commercial development. And it was sitting on a gold mine--the high proportion of college-educated professionals throughout the Valley who had no place to go. So Caruso met repeatedly with homeowners, asking what they wanted. “I wanted to create a place where people hang out with their families,” says Caruso, a father of four who lives on the Westside. “A shopping center like the Commons can’t be supported by a community with 28,000 people. So I wanted a place that would appeal to everyone from Westlake to the 405. Everything we do is based on a very expanded definition of family. I wanted them to come here just for fun. Not even to buy anything. If I can create that environment where they feel comfortable, then they’ll feel they own the place.”

And, eventually, they did. “I was against the Commons,” says resident Doris Abramson. “I was afraid of the traffic, I was afraid it would be a hangout. But I think it’s been great for the community.”

From his ocean-view offices in Santa Monica, Caruso has a clear vision of life in Calabasas. “They live in gated communities, in houses that look the same. So they hungered for a place where they could see each other spontaneously.” He also knows that hunger extends beyond the Valley. His company is developing the Grove, a 575,000-square-foot development adjacent to the 66-year-old Farmers Market at 3rd and Fairfax. It will include parks and lakes. And he’s just signed to develop the controversial 23-acre town center at Playa Vista, one of the largest undeveloped tracts of land in Los Angeles.

This means that Caruso’s concept of suburban downtown--one part Italianate center, one part Great Neck--designed by his chief architect, David W. Williams, is coming over the hill. The Valley, as it were, is coming into the city. Caruso identifies other L.A. retail areas suffering from a lack of community: Westwood, Van Nuys at Ventura Boulevard, Beverly Hills. Yes, Beverly Hills. “Where can you go to sit and see people?” he asks. “People want a place they can come back to time and again. It validates their investment in their homes, their viewpoint and their community. It tells them [that] they have a great lifestyle.”

So is Calabasas the Valley or not? And does it matter? When people put so much energy into arguing a point, there must be something important at stake. If we learn anything from Calabasas, it is the vulnerability of neighborhoods and communities in building a larger civic life. Somehow this lesson got lost in Los Angeles on the way to regionalization, but now it seems to be in high demand. Calabasas knows full well that it is connected to Los Angeles, but it also understands its uniqueness. Maybe this is a universal need--to have a distinct sense of place.

Calabasas may be in the Valley, but it is not of the Valley. If this is the city of the future, it’s closer than we think.