Developers Hiring Pros to Put Community Into Projects

In the old days, when a new family moved into the neighborhood, somebody from next door might stop in with a casserole or a welcome basket.

The neighbors would size each other up, compare notes on kids and jobs, and maybe they would become friends.

Today, as community-hungry home buyers spill into the ultra-planned communities that are enveloping the landscape from San Diego to the Bay Area, they might instead find themselves face-to-face with someone like Kimberly Ryneal, community programs director at the new Ladera Ranch development in south Orange County.

Part den mother, part social engineer, Ryneal tries to foster the kind of neighborly relationships among Ladera’s residents that many people seem to have lost somewhere between “Leave It to Beaver” and “The Simpsons.” She will help residents organize a walking club, find a baby-sitter, post a newsletter on the community’s Intranet, organize a landscaping seminar, or help lonely new residents find companions.

“You bring 10 kids into a room, and I guarantee in five minutes those kids are going to know each other,” Ryneal said. “But as we get older, we lose that. People feel overloaded, people are busy, and fun is a lost art. It’s sad, but now like everything else, you’ve got to pay for it.”

Real estate developers are addressing the issue in a small but growing number of master-planned communities from Southern California to Florida.

The Playa Vista development scheduled to open next year in West Los Angeles will have a community coordinator. The Talega community in San Clemente is interviewing candidates for the position now, and future projects in the Bay Area and San Diego are also looking to include similar coordinators.

‘The Amenity of the Future’

“Instilling community into these projects is really going to be the amenity of the future,” said Bob Cardoza, assistant vice president of Merit Association Services, a subsidiary of the Mission Viejo-based Merit Property Management Inc., whose clients include Playa Vista, Ladera Ranch and Talega.

“We know how to pay for pools and maintain pools, but how do we instill community back into these projects?”

Anne Firestone, 54, a single mother with grown children who moved to Ladera from Costa Mesa, said she considers having Ryneal around a real plus.

“I don’t expect [Ryneal’s community events] to be the basis of my social life, but it’s a really nice, warm, friendly feeling to know that’s available,” she said.

With everyone in the neighborhood a recent move-in, Firestone said she is meeting plenty of people on her own.

“I’ve never seen anything like it. People will just walk up to your door, knock and say, ‘Can I look at your tile?’ and nobody cares.”

‘A Conduit to Get People Started’

To Ryneal, the kind of woman who greets strangers with a hug, it’s all about teaching people how to trust their neighbors again--a feeling she says was lost with the advent of the automatic garage door opener and the demise of the outdoor clothesline.

She is armed with a regimen of four events that she stages in each of the new neighborhoods: the bagel bash; a “meet and greet,” where people identify their skills and trade business cards; a hobby night to which people are encouraged to wear costumes reflecting their hobbies; and finally a pet parade.

“By then, we know a lot about our neighbors,” Ryneal said. “Hopefully by the time I’ve done my fourth event, someone will approach me and say they want to do their own event.”

That’s when Ryneal draws from her collection of “Events in a Box,” party planning kits that help neighbors take command of their own fledgling social lives.

“Kimberly will not spend the next five years going to every single barbecue,” Cardoza said. “They’ll do it on their own. She is a conduit to get people started. They want to live in a community where they can have fun, feel safe, and where they can be themselves. These feelings are gained from positive experiences with their neighbors.”

And when people do start to connect on their own, “it’s such a high,” said Angel Hanzal, community coordinator at the Rolling Hills Ranch development in Chula Vista. She is, by her own estimate, the only such person in the San Diego area.

Hanzal recalled a recent welcome dinner she hosted for dozens of new families. “When I left there were four couples still standing there. They had never met each other before, and their biggest decision was which couple’s house they would go to next to continue this.”

Hanzal, who works directly for developer Pacific Bay Homes, said her position was modeled after a similar post at the Disney housing development in Celebration, Fla.

New Phenomenon In Housing Industry

“That’s money very well spent,” said real estate consultant John Burns, senior managing director of the Meyers Group in Irvine. “A home isn’t just a roof over your head. What they’re trying to create is a community. Especially if you have a large community, you’re really going to benefit from the atmosphere you’re creating.”

Homeowners associations have long been involved in fostering community events. Burns said he sees the community director as a logical outgrowth of that trend.

Previous attempts to establish similar positions in Mission Viejo and Rancho Santa Margarita lasted only as long as the developers were willing to fund them.

Ryneal, who currently works for Merit, will eventually be paid by a nonprofit that will draw its funds from transfer fees when properties are sold or resold, corporate sponsorships and event fund-raising.

While it’s common to have a professional community director in retirement homes and resorts, the phenomenon is still new in housing developments, said real estate consultant Emma Tyaransen of the Concord Group in Newport Beach.

It’s also new to Anna Garrity, a recent transplant to Ladera Ranch.

“For 27 years I had my own home and my own community, and I’ve always been the community director,” Garrity said.

She said having a professional on board is helpful in an environment where everybody is new to the neighborhood, even if the concept is somewhat artificial.

“Unfortunately in our society I think it’s needed more because people aren’t home as much as in the past to create community environments,” said Garrity, the mother of four grown daughters. “I think it was better the old way.”

Nonetheless, Garrity said she recently attended a planned event--a card game of Bunco with her new neighbors--and had a blast.

“I think Kimberly is a good asset to come alongside and create opportunities for people to grow,” she said.