Issue date: February 24, 1999
By LAUREN JOHN
Behind the cold numbers and analysis of the real estate market are real people -- people moving in, people moving out, and many deciding to stay awhile.
Yes, for local home owners, it's good to know that housing prices continue to rise. And local residents may be pleased to be reminded that they live in some of the most expensive housing markets in the nation. But there are personal stories that are as much a part of the real estate landscape as the latest property value poll.
Take, for example, longtime resident Richard Sumner, 60, who recently sold his three-bedroom, two-and-a-half bath house in Atherton "at the top of the market" and is using the profits to build a Spanish/craftsman/Tuscanesque" home in Ojai near Santa Barbara.
Mr. Sumner owned and ran the Richard Sumner (framing) Gallery in downtown Palo Alto for 13 years, and more recently the Brush and Palette framing gallery in Los Altos. Now both galleries will be run by his longtime partner Mahmut Keskeyci.
While he is looking forward to living in the Carmel Valley area surrounded by neighbors such as Ellen DeGennares, Kevin Costner and Michael Douglas, "saying goodbye is not easy," he says. "I've lived my whole life here."
Mr. Sumner says he has deeper roots here than most in that he is descended from explorers who first came to this area in 1740 with the DeAnza expedition.
"This morning, it rained heavily and my dog Chloe and I checked out the water level of the San Francisquito Creek -- the same creek my ancestors explored," he says, adding, "I remember when I was a kid building rafts in that creek."
About 35 or 40 years ago, he built sets at Burgess Theatre for a play called "The Horses Mouth." He also remembers an El Camino Real that was "three lanes wide, very sparse and full of old homes -- with goats penned at the corner of El Camino and Encinal."
"There has always been a sophisticated arts community here," says Mr. Sumner. "Stanford had a lot of wonderful artists, there was a well-educated group of buyers, and as time went on, law firms and venture capitalists moving into the area began to buy art as an investment."
Newcomer
He recently moved from a house in San Jose to a cottage a stone's throw from the Dutch Goose pub in West Menlo Park because he prefers the community here.
The result has been a big bump in his monthly rental payments. He was paying $385 a month to share a three-bedroom house near San Jose State University with two roommates. Now he lives alone in the one-bedroom cottage and pays $1,600 a month.
"I don't like paying as much as I do," says Mr. Smith, "but I know what prices are like here and I'm willing to pay what I have to."
Mr. Smith, whose car was stolen from in front of his San Jose house a month before he moved, says he feels safer in West Menlo. And while he goes to San Francisco or Lake Tahoe for socializing and night life, he says he does enjoy local restaurants The Left Bank and Scala Mia.
A dedicated runner and swimmer who participated last year in the "Escape from Alcatraz" triathlon, he uses Burgess pool and gym in Menlo Park, but goes to Gold's Gym in Mountain View for workouts. He says he'd like to be able to go to an affordable, comprehensive health club closer to home.
No place like here
Today, Ms. Woodworth's eight-bedroom, arts-and-crafts style Addison Avenue home is worth more than 15 times what she, her husband John (also a teacher at the time), and another couple paid for it back in 1972. Each couple had two children and they all grew up together.
Today, the Woodworths own the entire home, and rent the upstairs floor. And they remain enthusiastic about living in downtown Palo Alto.
In 1986 they bought and refurbished a nearby arts-and-crafts style home -- transforming it into the Cowper Inn -- a thriving bed and breakfast.
However, Ms. Woodworth says that she is saddened that today it would be virtually impossible to buy a home like hers on two teachers' salaries -- or even four teachers' salaries.
"It's hard for people who are not upper-middle class to rent or buy here now," she says. "And as a result that limits the diversity of the population."
One of her favorite places in the old days, say 20 years ago, was a family tavern at the corner of Waverley and Lytton Streets. "The prices were cheap, you could get a great hamburger, and it was a place people brought the entire family," she says.
As a homeowner and an innkeeper, Ms. Woodworth also misses a fix-it shop in downtown Palo Alto where "you could get a waffle iron fixed." And she adds that she misses many of "the small personal businesses" on University Avenue that are now gone. "Rents went up, seismic upgrades were expensive, smaller businesses found it harder to exist," she says.
While the community has grown, "we are still surrounded by nature," says Ms. Woodworth, surveying the lime trees outside her window that have grown immense since she first planted them 20 years ago.
"When you go out at night, Palo Alto is a no longer as quiet as it was -- it's a city," she says. "But the community has still retained a great deal of physical beauty."
Lauren John writes for the Palo Alto Weekly, The Almanac's sister paper.
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