Posted on 05/28/2002 8:26:30 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
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Think of the Inland Empire as a work in progress. While moving vans keep rolling in from neighboring counties with thousands of newcomers each year, the fastest-growing region in the state is still coming of age. Though few icons, landmarks or places of note define its singular personality, the Inland Empire is at once a collection of mushrooming new towns, quaint Victorian neighborhoods and an emerging melting pot of ethnic diversity. As the fine people of Los Angeles were building their new rail link between the ports of Long Beach and LA recently, they realized the junkyards, rooster farms and scrap metal scavengers that rooted in this sacred transportation corridor would have to go. But go where? Where could these evicteds possibly relocate? Jim Wiley, the project's right-of-way manager, gave this some thought. "To the extent that such places exist," he declared, "they are probably in Riverside." To the extent that absolute ignorance about a city of 260,000 can be distilled into a single quotation, this is probably your prototype. The city of Riverside has such a stingy sign law that it practically requires Divine Intervention to advertise fried chicken. Live roosters do not stand a chance. Junkyards and metal scavengers are not aggressively courted, either. But Wiley's view of Riverside is probably as understandable as it is uninformed. Riverside and San Bernardino counties, which together comprise the mythical Inland Empire (a shamelessly boosterish moniker credited to a Riverside County supervisor who waged a futile campaign for an "Inland Empire" postmark), are having a roller coaster of a time trying to understand themselves -- how will they evolve and mature as wave after human wave churns toward them. If the Inland Empire had an emperor, he would be in the throes of a pimply, gawky, squeaky adolescent growth spurt. Instead, we have a full range of electeds, bureaucrats, consultants, lobbyists, gadflies and citizen activists who are trying to figure out how to absorb the hordes that have been rolling into the empire for the last two decades. There is no end in sight. For now, new arrivals are being shoe-horned into "integrated plans" and "Blueprints for Tomorrow" and "community visioning." They arrive from Orange County on one freeway, but their children might end up commuting to Orange County on a brand new freeway. They might settle in a city romanticized in the classic hit, "Route 66" but witness the day downtown San Bernardino is flooded by man-made lakes designed by civic boosters to rinse away urban blight.
The Inland Empire - a coming-of-age story now playing on California's newest (Go East!) frontier - is being planned, visioned, integrated and saturated by well-meaning people who have no better idea than anyone else what the future holds. Yet, they are determined to play a role in shaping it. They feel they must. For doing nothing would be irresponsible, if not disastrous. But ask them to describe their vision and expect a chorus of dissonance. Perhaps because we do not have an emperor, you will never hear one voice that speaks for the Inland Empire. Life in the Inland Empire is actually the story of millions of people living in dozens of cities and unincorporated outposts of such diverse character, geography, history, charm and abrasiveness that it would be futile to attempt to describe the "typical" Inland Empirian, let alone the "typical" Inland Empirian way of life. What we've got here is a basin with roughly 3.3 million people, bisected up and down and sideways by interstate highways. Its population has jumped 22 percent in the last 10 years to nearly equal Oregon's. And its ethnic diversity is changing even more quickly. Nearly four of every five newcomers in the last decade were Hispanic and the black population grew 57 percent. We Inland Empirians are situated between a string of mountain ranges that offer breathtaking snow-capped views in the winter. In the summer, these mountains trap smog (we call it "haze") - much of it manufactured in Los Angeles. We hold the push-pull distinctions of having two of the eight fastest-growing counties, the worst ozone pollution and the most endangered species (from plants to gnatcatchers to bighorn sheep) in the continental United States. Each working day, we dispatch 400,000 commuters to Orange, Los Angeles and San Diego counties. Some leave as early as 4:30 a.m. - and still get gridlocked. Some don't return home until 8 p.m. The exodus totals less than a third of our work force, and there are signs that drain is slowing as more skilled jobs are being created behind the empire's mythical moat. But we will always be one of Southern California's leading exporters of warm human bodies. Inside the Inland Empire roils a stewpot of diversity. Though we dwell in the shadow of LA's hydra-headed media market, we are not of Los Angeles - and it's no heart-breaker. Perhaps because of our rapid growth, commuter culture and racial and ethnic mix, we are every bit as cohesive as Los Angeles, which is to say not very. We have no over-arching icons - no Hollywood Bowl, Dodger Stadium or Coliseum - but we're not searching for one. Though we think hard about our economic future and sometimes fret about the quality of our increasingly crowded lives, forging a unique and uniform Inland Empire identity is not on our radar. Our identity, for the moment, is simple to describe: We have none. We have many.
Some Inland Empire families -- black, white and Hispanic -- date back more than a century. Some date back six months. Some live in tree-lined neighborhoods dotted by old Victorians, which used to be the "big" houses that towered above rows of citrus groves. Some live in virginal neighborhoods that have cornered the worldwide market on fiberglass red-tile roofs. The Inland Empire is increasingly awash in new homes, each with an anemic front-yard sapling and the faint promise of a neighborhood library. The empire devolves into fiefdoms, with the clean-living Seventh Day Adventists and a pioneering heart-surgery hospital occupying the small San Bernardino County city of Loma Linda. Nearby Fontana, once a tough steel-mill-and-Hell's-Angels town, now worries whether new townhouses with one-year leases will ensure neighborhood stability. Redlands, picturesque, snooty and prone to averting its eyes at the mere mention of poorer cities like Rialto and Colton, revels in a rich 114-year heritage of citrus farming and culture. The gorgeous Smiley Library and well-regarded Lincoln Shrine betray an educational bent whose roots run as deep as citrus itself. Ontario, with its international airport, new convention center, sprawling retail/entertainment Ontario Mills, appetite for tilt-up architecture and proximity to key interstates and Los Angeles, has become the Inland Empire's commercial beachhead. Once-comatose Corona has morphed into Orange County East, with Orange County refugees crossing the county line in search of new homes, more room and lower prices. Between 1990 and 2000, Corona's population nearly doubled to 133,000. Unincorporated land ringing the city has erupted with housing tracts, causing such a strain on roads, parks and libraries that Corona officials threaten to secede from Riverside County. Farther south on I-15, Temecula and Murrieta -- cities that didn't even exist before 1989 -- now blanket the southwest Riverside County valley and hillsides. Avocado groves have been replaced by red-tiled subdivisions and you-could-be-anywhere retail stores. Sun City, for years a no-kids retirement zone, now sees new homes (young families!) nipping at its flanks. Riverside, the Inland Empire's largest old city, is a historic treasure of buildings and neighborhoods. It has fashioned itself into a citrus preserve (though that long struggle may yet succumb to developers' bulldozers). It claims a justice center for the two counties and has the area's only University of California campus. Yet, though it pines for high-tech and professional employers, Riverside can't seem to get anyone to take it seriously. When Riverside bagged a Barnes & Noble last year, it was viewed as one of the biggest coups in the city's 130-year history. Politically, the empire is mostly moderate Republican, with only a few right-wing pockets. And San Bernardino County actually sends Democrats to the Legislature and Congress. Economically, the empire ranges from serfs to lords. About half the residents are renters. The median household income is around $41,000 - still lower than California as a whole. There's some big money out here, but not that big. A $5 million pledge to Univeristy of California, Riverside (for a law school that may never be built) would be regarded as pocket change by our neighbors. Fleetwood Enterprises, builder of manufactured homes and RVs, was the empire's only representative on the Fortune 500 until it dropped off the list in 2002. Educationally, the Inland Empire is sprinkled with public and private colleges and universities, including the rapidly expanding University of California, Riverside. Yet, while 19.7 percent of Californians between the ages of 24 and 35 have bachelor's degrees, the percentage here is just 9.7. With our major freeways, proximity to airports, seaports, rail lines and big cities, plus a couple of local ex-military bases that may be converted to air-cargo ports, the terms "Inland Empire" and "transportation hub" seem destined to become interchangeable. For all its geographic, racial, ethnic, historical and municipal schizophrenia, the Inland Empire, a booming metro area with almost 10 percent of the state's population, is bound together by transcendent afflictions. Our lives are buffeted by furious residential growth, exhausting commutes, lousy air (although it's less lousy than it used to be), and, in some Inland Empire enclaves, a defensiveness about where we live.
The typical Inland Empire resident's commute takes between five minutes and two hours. Riversider Cathy Mueller holds down a high-tech job in nearby Redlands. She can leave her home with her two retrievers at 6 a.m. and 30 minutes later complete a hike to the top of Mount Rubidoux (a downtown Riverside mountain famous for Fourth of July fireworks and Easter Sunrise services). She can then march back down the mountain to be home by 7:15 a.m. and breeze into work (a 20-minute drive, tops) by 8:30 a.m. Janet Vaniman, who also lives in Riverside, can hit the road for her high-tech job at 6 a.m., ease onto a westbound freeway and almost count on coming to a dead stop 20 miles down the road. Janet is part of the Inland Empire's daily human hemorrhage that gushes to jobs in Los Angeles and Orange counties. Living in the Inland Empire often feels like a bedroom existence, though not always of an amorous nature. Even those who don't commute may be directly affected by it. Perhaps their spouse departs at an obscene hour. Perhaps they run a day-care business catering to commuter parents. Perhaps they run a garage crammed with youthful, sputtering, broken-down commuter vehicles. For many Inland Empirians, commuting is just part of the pact with the Devil: Cheaper housing, more room, in some cases better schools. But your job is where you left it. Hit the road, Jack. But it's worth it when you can slip across the county line, from Orange County to Riverside County's Corona, and move into 2,866 square feet of house for $246,355. It's worth it when you can move your family into a sprawling kitchen-merges-into-family-room spread when, just 25 miles away in Orange County's Buena Park, the cheapest model in a new subdivision goes for $271,000 and offers a spacious 1,530 square feet. So we don't shake our heads in wonder when the Inland Empire Annual Survey (area academics run the thing) reports that affordable housing is among the top three attractions the mythical empire holds for its residents. The other two are weather (triple-digit summer heat plummets 40 degrees at night) and location. Any discussion of location is liable to tap into a vein of conflicting emotions. From birth (or moment of immigration), Inland Empirians recite this mantra: An hour from the desert, an hour from the mountains, an hour from the beaches. While this suggests a world of possibility, it leaves the impression that the Inland Empire is plopped in the middle of nowhere. This is far from accurate, for the Inland Empire is rich in history (the century-old Mission Inn Hotel is not only the jewel of Riverside, but draws visitors from all over the world). The empire also is blessed (for the moment) with open space and parkland; it is home to a small, well-regarded wine industry; a leading incubator of Indian gaming casinos - there are 10 within easy losing distance, including the new, garish Trump 29 Casino near Indio. We are a hotbed (three teams) of Class A baseball, swimming in recreational water worlds, including the new Diamond Valley Lake near Hemet, and a deafening vortex (the California Speedway) of auto racing. The Inland Empire also supports three symphonies, light opera, ballet and community theater. The body-pierced, head-banging set seems partial to outdoor rock concerts at San Bernardino County's Blockbuster Pavilion, while the picnic-blanket, community-sing-along crowd flocks to the historic, outdoor, free-admission Redlands Bowl. Redlands and Riverside, both blessed with historic downtowns, host weekly market nights that lure entire families away from TVs. Yet, these homegrown attractions cannot satisfy all of the people all of the time. Life in the Inland Empire flows effortlessly in any direction: to Palm Springs and Palm Desert (gated golf, swanky hotels, budget-busting boutiques); to Big Bear, Lake Arrowhead and Idyllwild - all mountain resorts; to San Diego, Pasadena, Santa Monica, the Getty Museum, Disneyland; to major league parks and arenas or to the venerable Santa Anita racetrack. We are at once cosmopolitan and provincial. Though we live in the slick shadow of Los Angeles, we maintain vestiges of innocence. There's still a buzz when a new Starbucks or Krispy Kreme comes to town. Yet, there's an edgy sense that the momentum is unstoppable. Mom-and-pop bookstores and hardware stores have been squashed by the big boxes. Temecula, the young Southwest Riverside County city, has never met a franchise it didn't like. The Inland Empire has its distinctive, you-have-arrived Nordstrom and Trader Joe's, but it is also increasingly wall-papered with Wal-Marts, hopping with Home Depots, layered with Lowe's. - - - - - - We here in the Inland Empire sense that we're on the verge of a critical chapter in our history. The University of California, Riverside will swell to 25,000 students by 2015. But the concern is not how we can possibly absorb all these graduates. The concern is what to do with them. In the last dozen years, the empire has birthed more than one of every three new Southern California jobs. But too many have been blue-collar gigs. Managers and professionals may live among us, but many are forced to seek employment elsewhere. What will it take to persuade well-paying, white-collared employers to start-up here - or defect from other counties? Cheap land? Cheap power? Better-educated residents? Cleaner air?
But if we're on the verge of something, we're not inclined to wait and see what happens. We're bent on shaping our destiny. The mayor of San Bernardino is trying to reinvent her city by erasing downtown blight the size of Central Park and replacing it with $200 million in lakes, fountains, gardens, homes, restaurants and shops. Riverside, the state's 11th largest city, has embarked upon a consultant's dream: a "visioning" process designed to help shape what kind of city (high-paying jobs? throbbing downtown night life?) Riverside will become in the next 20 years. Riverside County, tugged by builders, environmentalists, consultants and lobbyists, is crafting a "Blueprint for Tomorrow" that not only feeds Southern Caliofrnia's No. 1 addiction - new freeways - but declares endangered species habitat off limits to developers and prime residential and commercial land off limits to endangered species. Something for everyone. On paper. We have few clues about how all this planning, consulting and carving will affect our lives. We just know that the Inland Empire will continue to fill up - not necessarily with rooster farms, junkyards and metal scavengers, but with hundreds and thousands of people. Rooflines are our corporate logo. The "visioning" and "blueprints" might help us stay ahead of the tide. Yet, the mere fact that these efforts are underway suggests a danger: New roads might become instantly congested, new schools overcrowded, new homes less well built and less affordable, new cities may lack any character save for the character of Every Town USA. And the old bugaboos of crime and drugs - some fled Los Angeles to get away from them - may nip, nag at and eventually invade even the most pristine subdivisions. We've seen this happen elsewhere. We've witnessed other cities' and counties' mistakes. Will we commit the same development atrocities or find a new and better way? That's why the Inland Empire is an intriguing story. Maybe not a thriller but packed with just enough suspense to make a lot of us hang around to see what will happen next. Dan Bernstein is a columnist with the Riverside Press-Enterprise. Comments may be sent to edit@statenet.com. |
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I happened to notice a hideous development of houses which were about three feet apart and looked like a massive condominium development with a little air between the condos - in other words, massive and ugly.
I wandered into an open house and asked how much it was. $249,000, I was told. It was a four-bedroom, about double the size of my rented two-bedroom house in Woodland Hills, which would have gone for maybe $270,000.
And what about those really ugly homes down there, I asked, expecting to hear him say around $150k. No; they go for $300k. I guess they're more square feet or something, but I'd never pay that kind of money for them; I would hate to live that squished together.
Can anyone tell me why someone would buy those homes when you can get a nicer resale home for much less? Why do developers do that in a region whose main strength is a relative abundance of land? Well, I suppose I know why developers would want to do it, but why would anyone buy?
Personally, I'll stick with Woodland Hills. It's a lot more attractive, housing has a pleasing variety, and as long as you don't need massive amounts of room, you don't even spend that much more (especially factoring in commuting costs).
D
Go Simon!
Actually? Dan, do you mean you have hope that the Inland Empire will live up to your liberal standards someday? LOL!
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