Lincoln Park Recaptures Its Early Glory

After scouring the San Gabriel Valley for months looking for a historic home in their price range, Michael and Bonnie Bone were ready to give up. Everything was either too expensive, too ugly or in too rough a neighborhood.

As their search moved steadily east from Pasadena (too expensive), they began to despair. Then a real estate agent mentioned a quaint neighborhood called Lincoln Park.

Their hopes soared until the agent told them it was in Pomona. The Bones didn’t know a lot about this older city on the eastern edge of Los Angeles County, but they had heard it had high crime, urban blight and other problems.

“My husband . . . was convinced it was gangland, but I told him . . . just look, just look,” Bonnie Bone recalled.

Look they did, and it was love at first sight when they spied the old California bungalow with three bedrooms and a den. But the Bones moved cautiously and did their homework.

They drove around quite a bit, Bonnie Bone said, checking out the neighborhood and hanging out in nearby Lincoln Park to make sure it wasn’t a stamping ground for young gangbangers and unsavory types.

The Bones were also reassured to learn that their real estate agent, Margaret Ruecker of Century 21 Gene Hart Realty in Claremont, lived across the street from the home they were contemplating buying.

Still, “My husband made me call the police and the Fire Department,” Bonnie Bone recalled. What they learned was that Lincoln Park has one of the lowest crime rates in all Pomona, along with Phillips Ranch and Ganesha Hills.

Best of all, the Bones’ new home could easily be restored to its former glory. Previous owners had left hardwood floors intact under the shag carpets, original fixtures and built-in nooks that reflected early California character.

So in 1989, the Bones decided to buy. Price: $158,000.

They took to their new house with gusto and fixed it up over several years. When their first child came, they stayed in the neighborhood but traded up in 1993 to a larger house, this time with Spanish architecture, five bedrooms and a huge yard. Price: $282,000.

And they couldn’t be happier with their choice of neighborhood.

“People are really friendly and down-to-earth, I love the antique district nearby and we can afford to send our kids to private school because our entire income isn’t engulfed in a mortgage,” says Bonnie Bone, who has since had a second child.

The Bones are part of a wave of renovation that has turned Lincoln Park, northeast of downtown Pomona, into a highly sought-after historic district of old homes, friendly neighbors and good real-estate deals that long ago vanished from much of the rest of Southern California.

Indeed, Pomona has 2,784 historic homes and buildings, a terrifically high number, says Diann Marsh of Marsh & Associates in Santa Ana, which did a historic resources survey of the city.

“Outside of Pasadena, Pomona was the most significant community east of Los Angeles and has more remaining homes from those early years,” Marsh said. “There are an unusually large amount of Victorian homes.”

Pomona was once a jewel of a city whose wealth and history rivaled Pasadena’s in the early decades of this century. Back then, Lincoln Park was known as Pomona’s Silk Stocking Row because many wealthy people built houses around a small park from which the neighborhood takes its name.

The city’s reputation began to tarnish in the 1960s as small businesses failed or fled to new malls and many of the old-time residents died or moved away. Trouble accelerated in recent years, as high-paying unionized jobs disappeared. Hughes Missile Systems Co., the city’s second-largest employer, pulled up stakes in 1992 and moved to Tucson, taking 2,000 aerospace jobs with it.

Today, unemployment remains at nearly 12%, well above the county average. The city logged 40 murders in 1994, and gang wars plague huge chunks of the city. But Pomona is fighting back on several fronts.

Strapped for cash, the city is pursuing controversial plans to open two card-club casinos that their backers say could bring $10 million in annual tax revenue. The city is also putting money into wooing new businesses, working to curb crime with a new police substation downtown and revitalizing the historic part of the city.

To that end, the city has hired Darrell George, a redevelopment specialist who oversaw the revitalization of Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade and has high hopes for a $21-million regional transit center that will bring hundreds of Metrolink and bus commuters downtown each day.

Already, downtown Pomona--less than a mile from Lincoln Park--has the feel of a place where exciting things are happening. There is a thriving antique mart with more than 400 dealers who have taken over abandoned shoe stores and drugstores in the old pedestrian mall of downtown Pomona.

At these homey shops, Lincoln Park residents can browse for California landscape paintings, glass doorknobs, Mission furniture and California pottery to complement their historic homes at prices one-third below comparable purchases in Los Angeles proper.

In recent years, the antique stores have been joined by a college of osteopathy with 1,000 students, coffeehouses, bookstores, multicultural fashion stores, galleries and more than 200 artists’ lofts in restored Art Deco buildings that give the still-raw downtown area a funky flavor that the Bones relish.

Home prices in Lincoln Park begin at the entry level, says Ruecker, who has sold homes in the area for 10 years. A historic two-bedroom one-bath house with a formal dining room and 1,100 square feet goes for about $125,000, In the middle, a four-bedroom, 3,000-square-foot, two-story Craftsman in original condition recently went for $225,000.

At the high end, a 4,000-square-foot-plus mansion with five bedrooms and a huge yard just fetched $340,000.

Ruecker adds that Lincoln Park homes have held their value well despite the downturn in real estate because people looking for vintage homes come in a steady stream from the Los Angeles area and more expensive parts of the San Gabriel Valley.

Many of these urban pioneers are in their late 20s or early 30s. There is a thriving population bent on gentrification. The atmosphere is of a small town, not a big city, with neighbors hanging over white picket fences to exchange the week’s news and gossip.

Some of Lincoln Park’s residents are involved in the revitalization of downtown Pomona, too. Consider Michael Agee, who owns Michael’s Coffeehouse downtown.

Agee grew up in Pasadena but found the cheapest historic home in that area too expensive at $200,000. Then he visited Lincoln Park and found the same thing for $100,000. For that price, he snatched one up.

“It was built in 1922, it has beautiful hardwood floors, it’s in a quaint old area. I could have never afforded this in Pasadena,” Agee said.

Best of all, his commute is nil, either two minutes by car or 10 minutes by bicycle to his coffeehouse.

Then there is Kristi Alvarez, a Lincoln Park homeowner and former president of Pomona Heritage, a historical society. She is a staunch supporter of downtown merchants and said she likes living where she does because “it’s like going back in time.”

Alvarez, who is fiercely protective of her neighborhood, even helped draw up a historic preservation ordinance approved by the city in November. The older parts in the city are now free to apply for designation as a historic district.

Said Alvarez: “There’s a lot of people in [Lincoln Park] who really care about old homes.”

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Lincoln Park Home Sale Data

Sample Size (for 10-year period): 410

Ave. home size (square feet): 1,417

Ave. Year Built: 1928

Ave. No. Bedrms: 2.64

Ave. No. Baths: 1.26

Pool: 5%

Central air: 5%

Flood zone: 64%

Price Range (1995-96*): $50,000-340,000

Predominant Value: $106,000

Age Range: 2-96 years

Predominant Age: 78 years

Average Sales Data

*--*

Year Total $ per Median Sales sq. ft. price 1996* 3 $97.79 $106,500 1995 52 $78.78 $106,250 1994 32 $80.04 $118,125 1993 23 $94.78 $139,956 1992 24 $93.58 $127,000 1991 45 $100.34 $129,211 1990 46 $97.67 $129,836 1989 76 $89.99 $118,421 1988 56 $74.28 $100,000 1987 53 $64.74 $83,858

*--*

*1996 data current through January. Source: TRW Redi Property Data, Anaheim

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At a Glance

* Population

1995 estimate: 4,202

1990-95 change: +10.1%

* Annual income

Per capita: 17,328

Median household: 28,643

* Household distribution

Less than $30,000: 51.0%

$30,000-$60,000: 27.1%

$60,000-$100,000: 16.7%

$100,000-$150,000: 3.6%

$150,000+: 1.4%