University South, Palo Alto
Working hard for their community

From their homes on tree-lined streets, the lure of downtown Palo Alto is only a few blocks away for University South residents. They live in a calm oasis on some of the most expensive real estate in the country, but this is not an island of unapologetic conspicuous consumption. The people who live in Palo Alto's University South neighborhood are not caught up in their own lives. They work hard for their community.

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"A lot of people are active in the neighborhood and people see each other in different settings. So there's a lot of social bonding," said City Councilman Vic Ojakian, who lives on Addison Avenue.
"And there's a lot of caring for the other person. People get together and help out in a quiet way."
Tranquility is one marker of this neighborhood. But the community also has a long history.

University South is Palo Alto's oldest neighborhood, dating back to 1891. The first settler, Anna Zschokke, was the first person to spend the winter in what was then University Park. Living at Homer Avenue and High Street, she later mortgaged her home to build Palo Alto's first high school. Lee DeForest, the inventor of the vacuum tube in the early 1900s, had a house at Channing Avenue and Emerson Street, and the now-famed Hewlett-Packard garage was on Addison Avenue.

University South is a triangle roughly bounded by Homer Avenue and Embarcadero Road to the north and south, and Alma Street and Middlefield Road to the west and east.

This serene neighborhood has also banded together to make some noise.

"Go back 30 years," said Ojakian. "The neighborhood group here got active over the (Palo Alto) Medical Foundation high-rise proposal and other proposals for development downtown."

In the early 1970s, the foundation planned to build a new structure at Alma Street and Addison Avenue, and had bought up a lot of the homes in the surrounding blocks. According to Ojakian, the City Council was more development-oriented back then and passed the land-use proposal. The neighborhood association brought the plan to a referendum and won, leaving the Palo Alto Medical Foundation with a lot of property it no longer wanted.

"For my family it was nice. We didn't buy one of the homes, but many people did. They were able to buy up some of the homes on those blocks at prices that were reasonable at the time. And it was us saying we were going to stay a neighborhood," said Ojakian.

"What happened when they sold off those homes was that a lot of people moved in that were similar in age, raising families at the same time. People with similar interests ended up in the area and it helped solidify us as a neighborhood -- before the economy took care of that issue."

With the concerns over the medical foundation's development abated, Ojakian said the neighborhood association didn't do very much, that is until he and former mayor and councilman Joe Huber got it going again in the early 1980s.

"I was the treasurer and we had this dormant bank account. The bank had actually transferred the money to the state and I convinced them to give it back," Ojakian said. "So we started with a few bucks."

And it wasn't long before the residents of the neighborhood again went into action. This time, it was in response to the Medfly that was threatening California's fruit and vegetable crops.

"The neighborhood group told the county agency that they would take care of putting the traps around and would help monitor them so that the agency could use their manpower for other things," Ojakian said.

The same kind of people still live in the neighborhood that did then -- active and caring in their quiet way, he said.

"I have this feeling like I'd rather live here than in modernia," Ojakian said.

"But every decade has its own issues. Now it's the encroaching businesses. It's not into the neighborhood anymore, but how much more development is going to happen on the fringes of downtown and how it's going to impact our quality of life."

Right now, the quality of life is pretty high. Ojakian describes the neighborhood as "not an absolute urban place, but close enough to downtown that you can pick up some commercial amenities."
Residents of the community often stroll down University Avenue, stopping at Swensen's Ice Cream Parlor for an ice cream cone or heading to Blockbuster to rent a video.

Elaine Meyer, a 20-year resident of the neighborhood, also enjoys the convenience and walkability of the area. But as the president of the University South Neighborhoods Group (in 2000), she was really concerned about the changes that are taking place -- especially current major redevelopment projects. For the past couple of years she has been distributing an occasional e-mail and printed newsletter to bring her neighbors up to date on issues such as plans for the South of Forest Area (SOFA).

The plan for SOFA calls for redevelopment in two phases. Phase I is east of Ramona Street, and features new condominiums, office buildings and homes on the block where the Palo Alto Medical Foundation used to be.

Phase II of SOFA, the west of Ramona area, involves redevelopment from Ramona Street to Alma Street and Addison Avenue to Forest Avenue, including the Peninsula Creamery, the Homer historic corridor and Whole Foods Market.

"The city's now looking at how to plan it and there's a revolution going on here," said Dave Bubenik, acting president of the homeowners association.

"The area affected is about 55 acres and we want to be sure it's developed into something compatible with the neighborhood."

And Bubenik, who moved into his Homer Avenue home with his wife Trish four years ago, knows exactly what kind of neighborhood that is. He used words like eclectic, open, tolerant and accepting to describe the urban oasis.

"We have everything Soho or Greenwich Village (in New York City) would have, except the artists," he said.

"Actually, there are a few design firms that are here now, although no Bohemians. But they would be welcome. It's probably the only area in Palo Alto where they would fit in."

-- Heather Wax