Spotlight on Azusa: Pro-Development Approach Creates Housing Land Rush
By ANTHONY PALAZZO
Staff Reporter
Azusa, long a working-class community with older, inexpensive housing stock, is trying to change its image. And with $1 million homes currently under construction in one section of the city, it may just succeed.
New home developments are the focus of the east San Gabriel Valley city’s budding revitalization efforts. With 400 new homes under construction, another 450-plus already sold and a 1,500-home development in the planning stages, Azusa is emerging as a classic bedroom community rivaling its more upscale neighbors such as San Dimas and LaVerne.
Looking to attract outsiders who overlooked Azusa in past house-hunting pursuits, city leaders say the new homes supplement the existing tired housing stock that limited the choices available for upwardly mobile residents of the city.
The development efforts are beginning to win support from residents who have rejected earlier plans, including one previous attempt to develop the sprawling Monrovia Nursery property.
“This town has a great future and if we put our cards in the right order it will go,” said Art West, a retiree who’s turned from long-time critic to a supporter of the council majority’s revitalization efforts. “We have a stigma that we’ve got to get over.”
One of the first new developments, called Parkside, is in the southwest corner of town below the 210 Freeway. Homes near the development, which sits on a former brownfield (post-industrial) site, were selling for a median price of $126,000. The developer, Legacy Homes of Pasadena, put a $200,000 price tag on the 82 new homes. “They were scared,” said Dick Stanford, a city councilman who was first elected in 1997. After a year on the market, nearly all the homes have sold, many in the mid-$200,000 range, and the remaining three are priced at $300,000.
Legacy is about to build 33 more homes in a new phase. “That told the tale,” Stanford said. “I wish I’d bought one now.”
Luxury development
Indeed, Stanford is looking at a home in the Mountain Cove development, which straddles the San Gabriel River. Prices range from $400,000 to over $1 million. City Manager Rick Cole bought one in the 350-home Citrus Collections, and another local official in a 26-home extension that’s now under way. “All of this is one reason I’m buying in Mountain Cove,” Stanford said.
The purchases illustrate a key element in the development strategy, which follows “new urbanist” design philosophies (smaller-scale, community-building development with some residential/retail mixed-use). Azusans who graduate from more modest beginnings need stepping-stone digs that will keep them within city limits, instead of moving away.
Azusa was stagnating in the mid-1990s when a new crop of city leaders took office and began trying to raise the city’s poor-cousin status. Known mainly for its industrial base and working-class neighborhoods, Azusa was being overlooked by house hunters altogether.
By the 1990 census, renters had overtaken homeowners as a majority of Azusa’s population. Crime was up and school test scores were down.
The approach that emerged from a new group that took office in the late 1990s was multi-pronged, but at its center was a bid to draw new blood into the community by encouraging the development of new homes, without alienating the working-class base.
Public participation
Part of the strategy involved opening up the planning process. After the previous plan for the Monrovia Nursery property was rejected by voters in July 1999, city officials started again from scratch, launching a design competition and inviting residents to weigh in with ideas and critiques.
Some of these ideas have been incorporated in a new plan that will be unveiled in final draft form in April. There will be three villages and a mixed-use retail/residential element built around a prospective station on the proposed Gold Line Metro Rail extension.
Meantime, the city has been sprucing up older parts of the city, allowing existing residents to share in the progress. For example, it took $1 million in fees for the 335-home Mountain Cove luxury development, and put it toward a citywide park-revitalization program.
