A View From Here

So, it feels weird to me, writing a, I guess I'd have to call it a real estate review, more or less at random, without any real previous introduction on the blog. However, I studied history, of course, and particularly, a part of history where organized bureaucratic states are often minimized, ignored and even denied. It is as if an archeologist in the Middle East were compelled constantly to defend and redemonstrate the argument that Ur was an urban center that functioned like a city that we recognize. They'd learn a lot about urban planning.

I love stories of ancient Rome and, not shockingly, Greece, if you have read my posts discussing my religious beliefs, and I prefer city-building style video games (like Sim City, if you're not a gamer) among a few favorite genres. I'm a city boy, its simply fundamental, and I was displaced to the small town life of Ojai and State College and San Luis Obispo, all of which are growing places with (absurdly self-righteous) anti-growth political movements, every single one of which stinks to the sky of "growth means Black and Brown people" to the point where I will forever hear 'local' and think "how is this White person going to say something racist while claiming to be liberal?"

So I love cities, and neighborhoods, and especially growing cities and neighborhoods. I love knowing the streets of a city that millions of people can relate to, can attach personal stories and memories to that carry us through a conversation like old neighbors catching up. I love dropping place names like the Fish Market in Maputo, Moçambique or the Duomo in Milan and seeing who picks them up. Who else made a meal of salume and baguette on the edge of the fountain out front? Who else walked the whole perimeter of the fortaleza, actually trying to comprehend the fact that this massive structure, with barracks, warehouse and two command structures free standing inside, all stone-built, was thrown up in five weeks by six-hundred men in 1500 (or 1501, really).

But I love more mundane things about cities as well. I may have already given love to the Chicago El, the purple and green lines, and I wanna add some for the Skokie Swift, too. I once walked the whole Magnificent Mile, just for funzies, all the way to the Field Institute and then came all the way back up Wabash, under the tracks, because 'whatever, I just saw Michigan.' I know I have given love to the Yellow Line Light Rail in LA, which stops in Chinatown close (enough) to Dodger Stadium. And I love Chinatown. Chinatown San Francisco, Chinatown Chicago, Chinatown LA. I love Koreatown and Maxwell Street, Milpas St. in Santa Barbara and the Mission District.

I love neighborhoods with character, like Castro St. or Telegraph Road (Berkeley) and ones that merely have that hipster feel, like Noe Valley, Melrose or Haight-Ashbury (why...yes, I did put those two in a basket...didja need to talk about it...?). College and Beaver Aves., the parallel downtown streets of State College, where I would sit out in front of the local bookstore, playing endless games of chess with my college friends before filtering out to our houses and back to the bars at three corners of a two-block square around it (and a couple in the alleys, either direction), or to the upscale jazz club for professors, across the street from the bookstore, on Wednesdays, where my musician friend had his only classy gig in a small town. The bookstore has moved from Allen Street up to Beaver Ave. since I was at school there, but I am only thankful it has survived at all, and managed to find retail space downtown, because there was a time, as I was graduating, when the best plan sounded like a place five miles up Atherton St. past the fancy hotel for rich alumni and football media.

Moorpark, CA is too far from Downtown LA and Santa Monica to ever even quite be a Noe Valley, out of all those examples, but Simi Valley is separated from Chatsworth and the LA 'city limits' (with the valley and beach towns of LA County now incorporated into the metropolitan government of LA) by a single, low and well-paved mountain ridge, some ten lanes wide at the summit. Moorpark, meanwhile, is contiguous to the Simi Valley city limits. Simi is large enough to be an independent population engine, like Anaheim, keeping the city physically growing northward. Within the century, Moorpark will probably be at least a 'suburb' of the LA metropolis, if not an integral neighborhood existing mentally within the concept of the city of Los Angeles.

There is a good, reliable and direct rail line that runs the length of the Valley to Burbank before turning south toward Union Station. A spur line from Chatsworth to Malibu and another from Northridge to Santa Monica would be welcome, in a world where new rail lines were actually being built in LA, but a person could easily live in Simi (2 stops) or Moorpark and commute to the Valley by train. The 118 freeway simply turns in the middle of town, becoming the 36, which turn forms the outer corner of the outer ring of the LA metro freeway web, for now.

In Moorpark there are a few neighborhoods, some, near a newish Target shopping center, that feel quite 'SoCal suburban,' with similar-looking development houses along terraced streets with only one or two intersecting 'thoroughfare' roads, so that it is difficult (though, unlike NorCal, not impossible) to gain advantage over traffic on the main roads.

Ok, have I shown enough 'civil planning nerd' to convince you yet? I really like the, you would have to call it the 'Old' Downtown Moorpark neighborhood, now, High St., where the train station is located along one side of a two or three block late-19th-Century Central Business District that was...gamers refer to it as 'nerfed' by the Target development half a mile south on East Los Angeles Road. But even a nerfed feature can take on new life, and I think the Old Downtown has the potential to do just that, with a walkable center, good restaurants, a small surviving movie theater, coffee, the post office nearby, and a couple of bars.

That, however, is not the neighborhood I am focused on. I sit at a coffee shop daily in a neighborhood that is, today, kind of a forgotten satellite to the rest of town, north and east of Old Downtown, around the curve of the interstate where the designation has already changed to 118. It sits at the foot of the hill on which Moorpark College is built, an unassuming little California Community College. It has a solid 'JuCo' baseball team, if you are in that third tier of young talent still struggling to 'find it' and improve your draft ranking, and the Exotic Animal Training and Management program is considered second to none, as I hear.

There is a small private elementary school up that hill as well, and not especially innovative or individual architecture in the residential neighborhood covering the other half of the slope, but lovely California homes. The public park sitting at the fourth corner of the 'Campus and Collins' intersection, pictured below, covers perhaps half a city block, but is nestled against the freeway with a moderate-sized dog park pressed in between.

So, I sit on this patio and I take Opie over to the park nearly every day. In the shopping center here is the Carnitas El Rey outlet I have already reviewed, the Chinese restaurant I believe I've previously promised to review (and which I ordered from yesterday, in preparation), and a short order 'American' food place, burgers, I see gyros advertised, french fries. There is also what looks to be rather a 'dive'-type tavern next to a storefront custom pizza joint. I have not been inside, and it looks more hole-in-the-wall than others of the type, but they do the pizza toppings while you watch and the brick oven cooking.

Up the street, forming what would be the other 'bottom end' of the hillside neighborhood, is another little shopping center, with a bodega, another couple of restaurants and the remainder of what shapes out to be rather plentiful retail and office space. I sit here, as I say, and I feel that it needs something, but just one thing, in order to be the 'new black' of the north LA housing market. I have two suggestions, and I will add them below, but I think that someone looking for a 60-year real estate investment, a personal residence that will accrue both value and prestige over the next century, would be well served to put the Campus and Collins neighborhood on their green-lit map.

The fact is, economically speaking, it is nearly a certainty that, if I am right that only one thing or a simple few things are missing from the place, that thing, either precisely, or categorically, will find the waiting space and fill it. In Southern California, that will likely happen 'soonish,' too, where one might expect it to happen only 'eventually' in, say, Fargo. It could be as simple a fix as one more solidly-drawing restaurant. The Starbucks I sit at has recently moved across the lot from a corner storefront to a freestanding drive-thru abandoned by a McDonald's franchise (did I tell that anecdote? About the McDonalds and the Burger/Gyro Joint and trying to Big Time a California small town? See, not everything about cities is better...).

The orphaned front is still open, still food-prep certified (or easily could be), though it would need stoves and/or an oven. With the established precedent of Starbucks's curbside system, it might be perfect for a little take-out centered sandwich shop. I keep thinking fried chicken sandwiches would be perfect, a very college-munchies type of menu. There is a significant summer down season, but I watched the customer base leap past the previous year's traffic every single fall I've been coming here (on and off) for six years now, which shows that returning students bring friends.

What I really think would change the economic trajectory of the whole neighborhood, however, and quickly, is a relatively small remake of this space:

This little planter is well inside the shopping area, about midway along a parking lot much bigger than the traffic sustains and right in the midst of all four restaurants (excluding Starbucks as a 'restaurant'). You would have to extend the cement area a bit and fence the space off, but if, instead of a planter, this little concrete circle were a three-tiered skateboarding feature, the tree might not even need to be removed and the space would be a draw for the students of the private school up the hill, the charter school in the back of the shopping area, and very likely a few of the older skaters taking classes up at the college.

I'm not going to belabor the point, because you'll note that the opposite ethic governs the outer edge of that planter bench. But one could easily bump the revenues of these businesses by ten percent simply by removing those hideous little cast-bronze fallen-leaf obstructions that prevent skateboard grinding and by putting up a waist-high fence. Kids would come skate outside of school hours, parents would pick them up from there, away from school traffic, and, frequently, they would decide to pick up dinner while they were there. If there were a fully-built skate park, the boost would likely be more than thirty percent.

So that's my review of the Campus and Collins neighborhood. Great spot to invest in a community ready to find itself, 'itself' would be a much nicer being if they didn't treat skateboarders like criminals.