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A New Wrinkle in Urban Renewal

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Times Staff Writer

For many cities with dying downtowns, urban renewal is all about attracting hipsters, yuppies and childless professionals with disposable incomes to burn on culture and coffee shops.

But in the cities of Lancaster and Palmdale, officials are looking to a different demographic to revitalize their urban centers: the elderly.

In Palmdale, the most ambitious component of the city’s downtown revitalization plan is a proposed $20-million, 300-unit senior housing complex that would cover three blocks near City Hall.

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In neighboring Lancaster, a 116-unit senior apartment building, now under construction, is due for completion early next year.It will join three other major senior living centers in a historic commercial core that has suffered since the rise of the regional shopping mall and, more recently, the arrival of a host of big-box retail stores in outlying neighborhoods.

While the approach goes against the grain of most downtown revitalization programs, urban planning experts said it might be a template for communities whose central business districts, while in need of help, are not yet plagued with the kind of big-city problems that could scare off potential senior residents.

“It’s a strategy that recognizes what’s going on in this country, because we’ve got all these aging baby boomers,” said Thomas Lyons, a community development professor at the University of Louisville in Kentucky. “In many cases, they’ve got a lot of income, and they need to be in places where they can walk to things.... They’d be close to services like doctors’ offices and pharmacies that tend to cluster in downtowns anyway.”

An influx of senior residents downtown would benefit existing small businesses, Palmdale and Lancaster city officials say, and perhaps help kick-start the kind of renaissance that would attract new restaurants, cafes and clubs.

Officials are also aware that their family-oriented cities -- located about 60 miles north of downtown Los Angeles -- are not exactly competing for loft-dwelling artists, young singles, and other typical urban pioneers.

“I wouldn’t consider this your classic yuppie community,” said Mark Bozigian, Lancaster’s assistant city manager for redevelopment. “We’re a family community, and part of that family community is seniors. We’re just going with our demographics.”

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The vast stretches of affordable, undeveloped land that have made Lancaster and Palmdale two of the state’s fastest-growing cities have also encouraged extensive sprawl-style development, which has come at the expense of the cities’ urban cores.

Looking to the elderly for the revival of these downtowns makes sense from a demographic perspective: According to county figures, the number of residents age 60 and older in the two cities is expected to swell from about 23,000 now to more than 40,000 by 2020.

Nationwide, there is also some indication that baby boomers are seeking to retire amid more urban settings. In recent years, Pulte Homes, whose subsidiary Del Webb Corp. is responsible for the popular Sun City retirement communities, has begun adding elements of “new urbanism” in its plans for retirement subdivisions by incorporating a more pedestrian-friendly, city-like feel.

The change is due, in part, to the fact that the company is building many of its new communities closer to major metropolitan areas, where land is scarce. But it is also a response to the kind of lifestyle that retirees say they want.

“For a lot of them, the key things are socialization, low-maintenance living and fitness,” company spokeswoman Valerie Dolenga said. In Pulte’s new developments, “there are little town squares and fitness centers where they may take a yoga class, or socialize, within walking distance of their home.”

Palmdale and Lancaster city leaders hope seniors eventually will come to view their downtowns that way.

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Both areas have a number of mom-and-pop stores selling appliances, jewelry and sporting goods, with a few restaurants sprinkled in for good measure.

While the cities have built performing arts centers and other amenities in their central cores, national chain stores have elected to locate in such areas as west Palmdale, to be closer to the newer subdivisions.

Downtown Lancaster business owners such as Mary Faux said they welcome the city’s new senior development, which, when completed, would be operated by a private company and offer affordable rents to seniors. The elderly “are part of our culture, so I think it’s great,” she said.

Faux is opening a new coffee shop, Perk Place, a block off of Lancaster Boulevard, the main street downtown.

Her inspiration for the shop was the TV show “Friends,” with its depiction of a cozy, sociable city culture. But she is also aware that the “Friends” environment is dominated by the young. While she has faith in the city’s plans for downtown, Faux said the area “needs some excitement to it ... we need to work with the youth, too.”

Despite the fact that crime is much lower in Lancaster than in many parts of Los Angeles, retiree R. Lyle Talbot said he couldn’t imagine living in downtown Lancaster, because he wouldn’t feel safe.

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The 73-year-old, whose home is about 1 1/2 miles from downtown, said he also worried that the redevelopment projects would displace current low-income tenants.

“They’re moving them out into other neighborhoods that are getting a little older, such as mine, and that just shifts the crime scene,” he said.

With its 1940s-era post office and historic wooden hotel that’s now a museum, downtown Lancaster has some of the charm of a rural county seat. The character of downtown Palmdale is less cohesive, having grown up along two major thoroughfares, Sierra Highway and Palmdale Boulevard, which is part of California 138.

Revitalization efforts are particularly important here because the boulevard -- which brings travelers and their dollars -- will lose its state route designation in about 15 years, when state officials reroute California 138 about 1 1/2 miles north, said Danny R. Roberts, the assistant executive director for the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency.

Palmdale hopes to build its senior housing development, known as the Courson Connection, with the help of federal block grants, loans and other public funds.

Preliminary plans show a series of buildings with a vegetable garden, a chess park and a shuffleboard area.

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The complex would be located one block from Palmdale Boulevard, near an existing park, a playhouse and a senior center and a short walk from a string of modest stores along the boulevard that are slated to receive city-funded face-lifts later this year.

Roberts envisions a day when the shops will be patronized by the retirees.

“We figure they’ll have time to browse,” he said.

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