Beach Town Worth a ‘Second’ Look : El Segundo: Its name means ‘The Second,’ but residents praise its first-rate safety and small-town atmosphere. Besides, home prices are attractive.

Ask Scott Reed why he and his fiance recently moved to El Segundo and he quips: “To be closer to the refinery.”

Fair enough. After all, to live in El Segundo is to anticipate the one-liners told for years about the tiny seaside town that owes its start, its name and much of its identity to the huge oil refinery on its southern boundary.

But the real joke, to hear Reed and other El Segundo residents tell it, may be on those who are buying homes, townhouses and condominiums elsewhere without giving a thought to El Segundo.

Consider, for example, that last October, Reed and his fiance, Liz Johnston, bought a new 1,440-square-foot townhouse in El Segundo for $269,000, thousands of dollars below the price of comparable units in nearby beach cities.

“We’re a lot less than the surrounding beach cities because some people still think of El Segundo as ‘El Stinko.’ But if they took a harder look, they’d see how much this city has to offer,” said Olga Benson, an El Segundo realtor since 1955 and a property owner since 1946.

Over the years, not everyone has been willing to take a harder look at El Segundo. Even longtime residents admit it’s been tough sometimes to sing El Segundo’s praises, what with the noise, traffic and odors from industries that surround the city.

But those factors haven’t deterred El Segundo’s new residents, including many who have looked elsewhere but settled in the city because of its pace, services and real estate prices.

“We were renting in Playa del Rey and paying $1,100 a month. So we started looking around for something to buy,” said Reed, the 26-year-old marketing director for C. J. Barrymore’s, a huge nightclub/restaurant in El Segundo, where his fiance also works as a bartender.

“We looked from Marina del Rey to Hermosa Beach and saw a lot of places with prices similar to what we paid. But they were older places and not as appealing structurally as what we bought,” Reed said.

What they bought was a 3-bedroom, 2 1/2-bath townhouse in El Segundo’s largest-ever townhouse development, Grand Tropez. The 88-unit complex, where prices range from $250,000 to $319,000, reflects the changes under way in El Segundo.

True, the city of 15,000 is still described as “Mayberry” by many of its residents. Its population has increased by only 1,000 residents or so since 1960. It has good schools, nice parks and quiet, safe neighborhoods protected by police and fire departments that are huge, considering the city measures only 5 square miles.

El Segundo--Spanish for “The Second,” a reference to Standard Oil’s decision in 1911 to build the second of its California refineries on what was then a desolate sand dune--even has an honest-to-goodness Main Street lined with small shops and sit-down restaurants, but no department stores or fast-food drive-ins.

“I just talked to a guy who moved into the city, and he was bragging about how his kid was going to make the Little League All-Stars. And that’s exactly the kind of thing I bragged about when I moved here 30 years ago,” said Al West, a retired auto shop owner and now a member of the El Segundo City Council. “That gives you an idea of how this town hasn’t changed much over the years.”

But it has been changing, at least in terms of residential development. El Segundo is still a town of many single-family homes. But the demand for housing, coupled with El Segundo’s enormous commercial/industrial growth in the 1980s, have brought about higher-density development.

“There are a tremendous number of apartments and townhomes recently built or now under construction,” said Jim Marak, a real estate agent with Re/Max Beach Cities Realty.

“Of course, the term tremendous is relative to the community. You have to remember that the Grand Tropez was the biggest residential development of its kind that El Segundo has ever seen.”

The reasons for the increased residential development are many.

In the last seven years, the city has responded to the interest of businesses, big and small, by almost doubling the commercial and industrial space in the city.

And with employment at Hughes Aircraft, Rockwell International and nearly 500 other companies swelling the city’s daytime population to about 100,000, many workers are settling in the El Segundo area to avoid long commutes.

The city’s zoning has long required a minimum 5,000-square-foot lot for a single-family home, with many lots measuring 7,000 square feet. Thus, the size of the lots enable them to accommodate multiple units.

To encourage ownership and provide more affordable units, city officials in 1985 adopted a plan that allows industrial-zoned land west of Sepulveda Boulevard to be developed with townhouses and condominiums.

And last year, when the city’s renters outnumbered property owners for the first time, the City Council again moved to increase the number of property owners by allowing the development of small condominium projects of as few as four units.

Land prices, while higher than in many regions of the county, remain lower than other nearby beach communities, a selling point both for buyers and developers.

“We’re priced lower than any of the beach cities north or south of us,” Marak said. “We’ll always be that way because the city doesn’t actually touch the beach even though it’s a beach community.”

Of course, as new and old residents admit, there is another reason El Segundo’s real estate is priced below that of other beach communities: its location.

Chevron USA’s refinery is on the south, Los Angeles International Airport is on the north, the Hyperion sewage treatment plant on the west and busy Sepulveda Boulevard on the east.

“The city does have a lot of negatives. We’re totally surrounded by industry, with lots of noise, traffic and pollution,” acknowledged former El Segundo Councilwoman Le Synadios.

At the same time, she stressed that the city’s assets--small-town atmosphere, proximity to the beach, large, well-trained police and fire departments--more than outweigh its negatives.

Added realtor Marak:

“I just sold a place to a young couple from Redondo Beach who work in the city. They wanted something closer to work and are going to have their first child any day. We see a lot of that today. Young couples who are ready to buy, (they’re) starting a family, want a safe neighborhood and like El Segundo because its safe and more affordable than anything else near the ocean.”

El Segundo real estate is a bargain compared to Southland beach communities. Condos and townhouses are priced from $225,000 to $360,000 while older single-family homes range from $275,000 to the high $300,000s.

The most expensive homes, many of them custom-built houses of 3,500 square feet or more, are priced at $600,000 to the mid-$700,000s.

Ralf and Lynn Stier, using the equity she collected in her first home, just bought a 2,700-square-foot home on a bluff overlooking the ocean for $609,000. The house was Stier’s first in the city, although he owns two in nearby Hawthorne.

“I moved to El Segundo 13 years ago as a renter because I found a great apartment and I liked the city. I’ve been here ever since,” said Ralf Stier, 37, a photographer who owns a studio in El Segundo. “And now that we’re expecting our first child, I see it as a great place to raise kids because it’s so safe.”

Time and again, residents use the word safe to describe their city. The reason is obvious.

With so many businesses to safeguard within the city, El Segundo lawmakers over time have made police and fire services a top priority. El Segundo has one of the lowest crime rates and highest ratios of police officers and firefighters of any city in California.

The city has 4.4 police officers per 1,000 residents, almost three times the average of nearby cities, and almost as high a ratio of fire personnel, according to David Holmes, administrative analyst in the El Segundo Police Department.

“People move here because of the sense of serenity. They’ll put up with the environmental degradation because this is a small, safe town in an urban area. And you just don’t find that anymore,” said Lynn Harris, the city’s director of development services.

Although property values have forced some young adults to buy their first house elsewhere, El Segundo, true to its quiet Midwest flavor, still includes many who have never lived anywhere else. Younger people who were raised in El Segundo are now raising their own families in the city.

Karen Spagnuolo is one of them. The 28-year-old secretary at Hughes Aircraft has lived in the city all her life. So have some of her closest friends, who live just down the street from her home on Walnut Avenue.

“I like it because it’s a safe community where people know each other. The schools are great. The parks are great. It’s still a family town where people live in the houses they grew up in. I really think it’s the last of the small-town communities around,” Spagnuolo said.

A divorced mother of two young children, Spagnuolo is remodeling the two-bedroom, 1 1/2-bath home she bought late last year for $300,000. It is only the latest of her real estate purchases in El Segundo, beginning with a condominium.

“I just kept moving up. Every two years, it seems like I was able to make about $100,000 on my investment. Before I moved in this house, my ex-husband and I bought a brand-new 3,000-square-foot home on Acacia Street for $286,000 and sold it for $485,000 after the divorce,” Spagnuolo said.

Now Spagnuolo is remodeling, intent on staying in the city.

Many residents, it seems, want to stay and to improve their homes.

But not everyone stays. In fact, Councilman West said, a lot of people over the years have decided they’re moving on. Settling somewhere else, they tell him. Some place where they won’t have to put up with the traffic and the airport and, of course, the smells that sometimes linger over parts of the town like fog on a marsh.

“Over the years, I’ve heard so many people say they want out. And invariably, two or three years later, they want to come back,” West said with a chuckle. “They realize once they are gone, that this city has just too many nice things going for it to leave.”

AT A GLANCE

Population 1989 estimate: 16,042 1980-89 change: 16.6%

Median age: 36.2 years

Racial/ethnic mix White (non-Latino): 85.3% Latino: 10.7% Other: 3.6% Black: 0.4%

Annual income Per capita: 21,238 Median household: 43,967

Household distribution Less than $15,000: 10.9% $15,000 - $30,000: 16.9% $30,000 - $50,000: 32% $50,000 - $75,000: 22.9% $75,000 +: 17.4%

Home price January average: $343,271