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| Associated Press, Friday, July 4th, 2003 |
| by Jim Wasserman |
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| 21ST CENTURY TOWN ENJOYS FIRST SETTLER - Community has claims to be newest new town |
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MOUNTAIN HOUSE -- Dan Marlar moved into his first home Thursday and made a unique mark in the suburban history of the United States.
Occupying a new forest-green 1920s-style bungalow, he's become what most experts believe to be the first settler of America's first new town of the 21st century.
The town's founders, who have spent millions since 1987 to plan, buy land and fend off lawsuits, call Marlar's new community "the newest new town of the new millennium."
The U.S. Post Office calls it Mountain House, CA 95391.
Named for a Gold Rush-era way station between San Francisco and the Sierra gold fields, the town couldn't be more different from hundreds of new towns that popped up through-out the nation's history with a church, a saloon and general store.
Sixteen years in the making, cobbled together a farm and field at a time, sued twice and draining countless millions of dollars before a single home sale, Mountain House hasn't ar- rived overnight or easy.
But now, this collection of 200 homes rising against a backdrop of sunburnt hills and commercial windmills near Tracy is projected to swell within 20 years to 16,000 homes and 44,000 people.
"It's not a suburb of any community. It's starting a new town from scratch," explains Duane Grimsman, general manager of the project for developer Trimark Communities.
Trimark's new town is the newest phenomenon in the explosive story of California's growth -- and the newest Bay Area battleground for older questions of sprawl, traffic and affordable housing.
Urban planning experts call Mountain House the first large-scale new town since the Disney Company's 1996-era Celebration, Fla., and other maturing new towns such as Irvine and Rancho Santa Margarita, Reston, Va., Columbia, Md., and Woodlands, Texas.
Though California and other fast-growing Sunbelt states see giant new neighborhoods with thousands of homes and shopping, entirely new towns are rare, says John Landis, professor of urban and regional planning at University of California, Berkeley.
They're complicated, time consuming and too expensive for most developers, he says, requiring years of waiting "until the growth reaches you. It can be 10 to 15 years."
They need more than homes and homeowners. Downtowns, civic centers, plans for thousands of jobs, even a political plan for eventual incorporation are necessities. Mountain House, unincorporated and run by San Joaquin County, will elect a first board of directors, a forerunner to a city council, to plot its future upon reaching its 1,000th voter.
Historically, building towns was easier. "We're in the most-regulated state in the country," Grimsman said.
Mountain House calls for 12 elementary schools, a high school and a start-from-scratch downtown to replicate Main Streets of old. Its first elementary school, Wicklund Elementary, opens in January; a first fire station is on the drawing boards.
Borrowing from the pioneers who settled countless new towns throughout the nation's history, sales reps have already dubbed Marlar and others moving in behind him "mountaineers." They'll be first to taste an entirely new town with fiber optic lines for every house, yet designed as a throwback to construction of the 1920s through the 1940s, with front porches, less visible garages, narrower streets and antique-looking black lampposts and mailboxes.
Planted in fast-growing San Joaquin County, where 40,000 residents commute up to 80 miles to Bay Area jobs, the 5,000-acre new town in fields north of Interstate 205, aims to woo buyers seeking alternatives to stucco subdivisions.
But the primary force to fill Trimark's new town may be the growing crush of middle-class workers pushed out by the Bay Area's high home prices. Like Tracy and Manteca -- and now Lathrop, where builders are proposing 11,000 houses in River Islands -- Mountain House has become a testament to California's severe housing shortage and willingness of its residents to endure grueling commutes for a house they can afford.
"It's well worth it," says Marlar, 28, a land surveyor trading a Contra Costa County address for the Bay Area's extreme outer edges -- and doubling his commute time. "I could maybe buy a condo for the same price as I purchased a new house, but it would be rundown and you'd have to do maintenance to get it up to date."
Mountain House homes, starting at $360,000, remain affordable by standards of the nine-county Bay Area. But a recent tour of model homes provides testimony of would-be homeowners trapped between high prices and antigrowth politics that make it difficult to live close to work.
Raman Kailey, 25, drives 75 miles a day from Gustine to his insurance job in San Ramon -- and says moving in would cut his commute to 30 miles. Kailey's wife, Rajbir Kaur, 25, a student at California State University, Stanislaus, hints it may be now or never.
"I think this is a good time to buy a house," she said.
Both live with Kailey's sister while saving for their down payment.
Cristen Mason, 28, a Union City bartender, and his 26-year-old schoolteacher wife, Kristina, live in Tracy with Kristina's parents.
They're eyeing Mountain House -- because anywhere near Union City is impossible.
"To save the extra $100,000, you might have to travel the extra 20 minutes," says Cristen Mason.
Michael Chang, 53, a chemical engineer in Livermore, says buying a house there "would be a stretch on my living."
But even as these prospective home buyers ponder the promise of a new town versus a standard subdivision in Tracy, Manteca or Stockton, environmental critics call Mountain House the same old sprawl with a new face, and worry it will spill even more traffic onto crowded Bay Area highways.
Though developers tout their town as a place for people who work and live in the same community, Eric Parfrey, an urban planner who chairs the Sierra Club's Northern California chapter, fears many of the22,000 jobs promised at Mountain House may never happen.
"I'm talking about good jobs, good, paying jobs," says Parfrey.
Despite an exodus of thousands of commuters to San Joaquin County during the past decade, new high-tech jobs have not migrated east. Indeed, many jobs that could have moved have disappeared entirely as the industry contracted.
Grimsman says an agree-ment between San Joaquin County and Mountain House requires an economic development director to woo jobs from the Bay Area. The county also has an option to slow housing growth if jobs aren't keeping up.
"Obviously, we hope that doesn't happen," says Grimsman.
With similar requirements to attract jobs, developers of Lathrop's River Islands project will assess each new house $5,000 for the town's development.
"I think it's a matter of time," says Susan Dell'Osso, project director for River Islands. "Once one comes, then there will be an avalanche. Look at the Tri-Valley. Nobody was there a decade ago."
Landis isn't so sure. He says, "Folks for Alameda County would prefer that jobs stay in Pleasanton and Livermore. None of us know how that is going to turn out."
But Mountain House has always faced tough odds, its creators say. A pair of landowners are still holding out for a better price. San Joaquin County wants more houses that wor-kers can afford. The wind discourages some visitors. A new town isn't for the faint of heart. |
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