San Jose Mercury News, Calif. Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Feb. 18--Stephanie Burnias is the proud owner of a three-bedroom house with a big yard. She earns enough as a personnel manager for her fiance to stay home and take care of their baby girl. And she works just 10 minutes from home.
Best of all, this refugee from East San Jose didn't have to leave the Bay Area too far behind. Burnias, 28, moved to Sacramento County, far enough way to find cheaper housing and a job but close enough to zip back for the weekend with her family.
Lured by lower living costs and a stable economy, Santa Clara County residents fleeing the Bay Area have made Sacramento County their number one destination, according to demographers at the state Department of Finance. Three out of every 10 Californians who moved to Sacramento County in 2001 were from the Bay Area, according to Internal Revenue Service data.
In the process, they are helping transform the Sacramento area from a sleepy government town to a fast-growing economic hub that is slowly becoming an extension of the Bay Area.
'We've historically looked at Sacramento and the Bay Area as separate places,' said Robert Fountain, director of the Sacramento Regional Research Institute. 'But they're really more closely intertwined than 10 years ago. The day when Sacramento is viewed as part of the Bay Area isn't as far off as you think. It's like Orange County and L.A., the linkage is happening very quickly.'
The transformation hasn't been all good. Along with a taste for high-end restaurants and entertainment, Bay Area residents have brought along their morning and evening traffic jams -- and the smog that goes with it. Soaring home prices, driven in part by real estate speculators and equity-rich outsiders, have locked many locals out of the housing market. Many public schools are overcrowded.
Fountain said longtime Sacramento residents used to say 'No way L.A' about the interlopers. Now they say 'No way East Bay.'
But economic development officials welcome the influx. The Sacramento Area Commerce and Trade Organization launched a campaign two years ago to lure Bay Area companies and has so far attracted 13 firms with 2,197 jobs.
One such firm is TRW Electromagnetic Systems, which moved its headquarters from Sunnvyale to the former McClelland Air Force base and is transferring up to 300 employees. Company officials were drawn to the area by lower lease rates and salary levels, more affordable housing for workers and proximity to the Bay Area.
The relocations have helped the region reduce its reliance on government jobs, creating a more diversified economy that includes high-techology, manufacturing, call centers and health care firms.
Where the Bay Area has been reeling from the dot-bomb, Sacramento was able to stave off job losses until the summer of 2002. The Sacramento region's average annual unemployment rate ranged between 4 and 5 percent for the past four years, while Santa Clara County's has rocketed from a low of 2 percent to 7.7 percent.
'I blink, double-blink, when I hear people talk about a recession,' said Tina Deller, a longtime Sacramento Realtor.
Although home prices in the Sacramento area have shot up, they still are about 60 percent less than in Santa Clara County. The median price of a single-family house in Santa Clara County last year was $490,000, compared to $195,000 in Sacramento County.
Burnias, the personnel manager who just moved to unincorporated Sacramento County, spent $219,000 on her 1,600-square foot house.
'I was looking at 1,000-square-feet condos with no backyard in San Jose,' she said. 'It's been a great move.'
Beth and Shannon Conway sold their Willow Glen home in 2001 because the pricey mortgage forced Beth to work when she wanted to stay home with their daughter. They ended up in Folsom in a 'family-oriented' neighborhood where most mothers are full-time homemakers.
'It's like a Normam Rockwell painting,' Beth Conway said.
The move doesn't work out for everyone.
Shiu Rem moved with his wife and son to Elk Grove two years ago from South San Francisco with the expectation that his son would eventually find steady work in the Sacramento area. It never happened, and now the family is moving back to the Bay Area, selling their spacious five-bedroom home.
Rem, 58, said his son had to keep his Bay Area job and commute back every day at 4 a.m. 'That's just too much,' he said.
The stifling summer heat and the poor air quality also have left some transplants pining for the mild Mediterranean weather of the Bay Area. Sacramento is one of the ten worst metropolitan areas for ozone air pollution in the U.S., according to a recent report by American Lung Association. No city in the Bay Area made the top ten.
Those drawbacks, though, have done little to slow the growth of Elk Grove, a newly incorporated city just south of Sacramento that typifies the changing face of the region.
Acres of red tile-roofed tract homes in 'planned communities' have transformed the once-quiet rural town into a booming suburb.
One new home salesman estimated that 40 percent of his buyers came from the Bay Area. Ozzie Mendoza is one of them. The affordable real estate market has helped the former Fremont resident scale the economic ladder faster than he could ever have imagined.
Frustrated at the expense of Bay Area housing, the 35-year-old auctioneer and his wife, Connie, abandoned Fremont three years ago as renters. They bought a four-bedroom cream-colored tract home for $185,000, and soon after tapped the equity to buy another Elk Grove home as an investment.
Connie stays home with their two children, aged 4 and one. On balmy summer evenings, they barbeque with friends along the shore of a nearby man-made lake.
'I travel a lot for work, and the more often I get out, the more I enjoy living here,' said Mendoza, who has lured Bay Area friends to the region.
When the Mendozas arrived three years ago, there were few shops or amenities nearby. Now, Home Depot, Starbucks, Best Buy, Old Navy, theaters, Borders Books are all just minutes away.
Already, the regions' living patterns are mirroring those of other metropolitan areas. Wealthier, more conservative whites, including those from the Bay Area, are moving to the surrounding foothill communities, leaving the inner-ring suburbs more economically and socially diverse.
The diversity close in to Sacramento is a pleasant surprise to many Bay Area transplants. On Mendoza's cul-de-sac, neighbors are Indonesian, Chinese, Mexican and Iranian. In his local school district, African American, Latino and Asian students each make up about 20 percent of the student population.
In other ways, too, Sacramento is emerging as a major metropolitan center. There is a new performing arts center, minor league baseball team and more than a dozen new restaurants planning to open this year. Philanthropy is growing.
Former Cisco employee Rex Pugh and his wife Debbie Pugh are opening up six 'It's a Grind' coffee houses in the area.
'Years ago, there would have been a market for this only in downtown Sacramento,' said Rex Pugh, 42, a Sacramento native. 'But there are a lot of professional, middle-income people here now, so it's not as much of a cowtown.'
Maybe not. But this is still a place where country western station KNCI remains the number one music station.
By Tracey Kaplan and Michael Bazeley
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(c) 2003, San Jose Mercury News, Calif. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.
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