Life by the Sea Seems Safe and Slow Paced : Carlsbad: Weekends find familiar faces browsing downtown village shops, but a new Carlsbad is emerging in the low hills to the east.

Michael and Tracy Patane have lived in Carlsbad for only a few months, but already these newlywed career-minded twentysomethings have fallen into a comfortable routine typical of local residents. Carlsbad does this to people.

Saturday mornings, the Patanes have breakfast among local regulars in the heart of the downtown village at Don’s Country Kitchen, where fresh biscuits with gravy are the featured attraction. Later, they browse the antique shops on nearby State Street and bike along the coast, stopping to admire another classic Pacific sunset.

“We fell in love with the little town, the hometown feeling,” Tracy Patane said. “We see the same people week after week in the same little restaurants and hangouts.

“It’s a very nice, organized city--the street patterns, the government,” said Gary Nessim, owner of Home Life/Village Realtors in Carlsbad, who moved to the city from Long Island, N.Y., 11 years ago. “The people are pretty calm and slower, more easygoing than in L.A. or San Diego. The climate is perfect, and you can get to just about everything. Skiing’s only a couple hours away.”

Carlsbad straddles the San Diego (5) Freeway on the coast of north San Diego County, south of Oceanside and north of Leucadia. Life in Carlsbad centers on the village at the heart of town, where the Victorian-era Twin Inns and Magee House and an old-German-style building called Alt Karlsbad, added in 1964, lend a historic flavor.

This city of long-standing traditions feels safe, and numbers back up this impression. Carlsbad consistently has one of the lowest crime rates in San Diego County, second only to Coronado.

Carlsbad has spent millions during the past decade to spruce up the village with new sidewalks, street trees, decorative paving and public art. Life in Carlsbad may be laid back, but the city is progressive when it comes to the arts.

“Split Pavilion,” a new piece of public art designed by New York artist Andrea Blum, has caused a stir. Some residents claim its vertical steel poles detract from precious ocean views and have called for its removal. But the city plans to keep it, with slight modifications.

Meanwhile, to the east of the walkable, colorful downtown, a second Carlsbad is emerging in the low hills east of I-5, where acres and acres of tract homes spread during the past decade as the city’s population shot from 37,583 to 63,026. Two of the largest new residential tracts in coastal North County are located here.

Aviara is a 1,000-acre resort community along the northern edge of Batiquitos Lagoon that will eventually include homes, condos, a golf course, a sports club, public parks, schools and a luxury hotel. The developer is Hillman Properties West.

The Fieldstone Co. owns another 2,800 acres a couple of miles to the east, slated for residential development over the next 15 years.

More on these two developments in a minute, but first a few more basics about Carlsbad.

As of April, the median price of a home in Carlsbad was $265,000, according to Dataquick, up 9.5% from April, ’91. But this may not tell the whole story. When home sales are slow, as they are now, the median fluctuates widely from month to month. In January, for example, it was $221,500.

As in most of Southern California, existing home prices in Carlsbad peaked in 1989. They have since fallen 10% or so in lower price ranges and as much as 25% at the high end, according to Gary Thompson, owner of a Century 21 office in Carlsbad.

“The cheapest three-bedroom family home in Carlsbad now is around $170,000,” Thompson said. “On the other end, there are houses that run $2 million to $3 million right on the beach. Condos on the sand are $600,000 and up, homes there start at $1 million.” The least expensive condos and townhomes start at well under $200,000.

The Patanes bought a home in Hospitality Woods, a 1980s development formerly known as Los Arboles, where three- and four-bedroom homes now sell for $188,000 to $300,000, according to Thompson. This modest-sized tract is nestled among eucalyptus, conveniently located near California 78, which connects with Interstates 5 and 15 to the west and east, and near Plaza Camino Real, Carlsbad’s largest shopping mall. The Patanes are also only minutes from the ocean.

Like other recent arrivals in Carlsbad, the Patanes found the location convenient to their careers in two counties. Tracy Patane is in sales and often commutes to Orange County, while Michael Patane is a doctor at Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla.

“Our house backs right up to a park, and we only have a neighbor on one side,” Tracy Patane said. “It’s gorgeous; we love it. We also had good experiences with the people when we used to visit Carlsbad. They were really friendly.”

Whether or not it’s true (and residents swear it is), Carlsbad has a long-standing reputation for mega-friendly citizens.

“Carlsbad has throughout its history attracted men and women who, even in pursuit of their own goals and dreams, have kept a larger-than-common sense of community, compassion and kindness,” wrote Charles Orton in a 1987 history of Carlsbad, prepared for the city’s centennial.

Today, residents are proud of their city’s quality of life, but it has changed--some say deteriorated--since Carlsbad was founded during the 19th Century by Germans who hoped to exploit the supposedly healing waters of its mineral wells.

“I just love to brag about Carlsbad, because it’s paradise, believe me,” bragged Kay Christiansen, 83, who lives on the top floor of Alt Karlsbad, built by her father during the 1960s.

“We came here in 1926, when there were 700 people and the avocado culture was just starting. My father went up and down the coast of California, then he came back to Nebraska and told us we were moving. My sister and I were going to a new high school, and we weren’t too pleased, but he said, ‘You can go swimming in the ocean three blocks away.’ ”

The oceanfront edge of downtown is lined with hotels, time-share resorts and small tourist businesses, but Christiansen says these are well-run. Even on weekends in midsummer, the city maintains a more peaceful aura than some of its coastal neighbors to the north and south, she said.

Heavily promoted tourism and a growing light-industrial base in outlying portions of the city eventually replaced avocado groves as Carlsbad grew into a thriving city, but Christiansen believes the quality of life is still good.

Office developments south of Palomar Airport and east of I-5 added research and light-industrial uses to Carlsbad during the 1970s and 1980s. Major employers include Taylor Made Golf Co. and Calloway Golf (golf equipment), Upper Deck (baseball cards), Dyna Corp. (medical products and publishing), Beckman Instruments, Puritan Bennett (hospital life-support equipment) and Jazzercise Inc.

“What I liked was the rural atmosphere, and a great deal of that’s gone, but we still have great people, and that means a lot,” said Glenn McComas, 72, who served the city, first as a planning commissioner, later as a city councilman, from 1963 to 1978. McComas has lived in Knowles Terrace, east of I-5 and north of Las Flores Drive, for 33 years.

Although some residents credit Carlsbad’s hard-line slow-growth policies, adopted during the 1980s, for preserving quality of life, McComas, who helped draft the city’s original 1960s General Plan, isn’t so sure.

“I don’t necessarily agree with slow growth,” he said. “I agree with good growth and well-planned growth.” McComas blames slow growth for limiting the supply of houses in Carlsbad and driving up prices.

The La Costa area was annexed as part of Carlsbad in 1971, and the city’s focus shifted eastward as the well-known La Costa Resort Hotel & Spa--an international magnet for golfers--and nearby residential neighborhoods were completed.

It is in this eastern area where Aviara and Fieldstone La Costa will be completed over the next several years.

Fieldstone La Costa is the first of four residential developments totaling about 3,000 homes that Fieldstone has planned in La Costa. Fieldstone La Costa--1,076 homes spread over 530 acres--will eventually include elementary and junior high schools, a new church, a pedestrian trail system and a community recreation complex with a day-care center.

The first new homes will go on sale this fall at the Fairways, a gate-guarded subdivision of 132 homes with a pedestrian trail system and seven pocket parks along the 14th fairway of the La Costa Hotel & Spa golf course--the last major residential development parcel on the original 18-hole La Costa golf course. Prices will start in the mid-$300,000s for homes of 2,000 to 2,640 square feet.

Hillman Properties’ plans for an eventual 2,000-plus homes at Aviara have been drastically slowed by the recession, but key features of this new community of Spanish/Mediterranean-style buildings are already in place: roads, landscaping and other infrastructure, plus an 18-hole Arnold Palmer-designed golf course with a clubhouse/restaurant.

The community’s most visible feature--a 454-room hotel--is stalled midway through construction, its steel frame resting forlornly on a hilltop after Japanese financing fell through last year. Hillman has been unable to secure the $200 million in new financing needed to complete the project.

Hillman bought the Aviara property from Hunt Properties for $72 million in 1988 and has since sold about half of its acreage to home builders.

“The biggest problem we have is finding construction financing, not only for the hotel, but for the individual builders we’ve sold land to,” said D. Larry Clemens, vice president and general manager of the Aviara project.

Aviara has also been plagued by ongoing struggles over water levels in Batiquitos Lagoon, a nesting site for least terns, an endangered species. In May, Hillman finally won a legal battle to keep the lagoon full of water, agreeing to siphon off just enough water to expose least tern nesting areas. Without the water, Aviara would lose one of its primary natural assets.

Homes at Aviara will range from under $300,000 to $2 million, or more. Davidson Communities, one of the first two builders to put homes on the market at Aviara, has sold 39 of an eventual 112 luxury homes at its Pavona project, where prices range from $400,000 to more than $585,000, and home sizes from 2,340 to 3,522 square feet.

“We had been looking for a place to live for literally 10 years,” said Dianne Scott, who camped out in her motor home for several days so she could be among the first to buy at Pavona in May of last year. Scott, who works at a San Diego radio station, and her husband, Alan, a commercial real estate broker, previously lived in Clairemont, an older community several miles to the south in San Diego. They paid $625,000 for their home at Pavona, and Dianne said a similar house next door sold a month later for $725,000.

“I think Carlsbad is unique,” Scott said. “The beaches are so close and everything is clean. Everyone takes pride in the community. The other thing that is so unique is how quiet and serene it is. In Clairemont, we used to hear sirens and other city noises all the time.”

At a Glance

Population

1991 estimate: 63,026

1980-91 change: +77.6%

Median age: 35.4 years

Annual income

Per capita: 19,760

Median household: 44,688

Household distribution

Less than $15,000: 12.5%

$15,000 - $25,000: 13.0%

$25,000 - $50,000: 31.2%

$50,000 - $75,000: 24.1%

$75,000 +: 19.3%