Convenient Location, Prices Are Appeal : Inglewood: City’s population has diversity of cultures and its housing stock offers mix of architectural styles.

Convenience and competitive housing prices persuaded Diane and Nicholas Fernandez to buy their first home in Northwest Inglewood in 1989. But it was Inglewood’s diversity of cultures, home styles and terrain that convinced them they had made the right choice.

Diane Fernandez, an insurance coordinator with Martin J. Wolff & Co. in mid-Wilshire, and her husband, a loan officer with Tiger Federal Credit Union in Westchester, admit, “We both hate to drive, so we liked the fact that Inglewood was only minutes away from both of our jobs.”

The Fernandezes bought their three-bedroom home to accommodate their young family, which now includes 2-year-old Sara and her baby brother, Nicholas.

“We really liked the fact that there was such a nice mix of houses in this area,” Diane Fernandez said, “some older Spanish styles, some traditional, many remodeled, so that it doesn’t have a tract look. The neighborhood is quiet, well maintained, lots of trees, lots of kids.

“We had no idea Inglewood had such beautiful residential areas and we love it. It’s a good mix of people, too--Anglos, blacks and Spanish. We have great neighbors, who were really there for us when both of our children were born.”

Occupying a portion of what was once fertile grazing and farm land, Inglewood’s nine square miles are bordered primarily by Los Angeles International Airport and the community of Westchester to the west, the city of Hawthorne to the south, Van Ness Avenue to the east, and 64th, 76th and 78th streets to the north.

During the recent riots, 18 major commercial structures were damaged by fire in Inglewood, but none of the city’s civic buildings or residential neighborhoods were affected, according to Mayor Ed Vincent. He credited a quick response by citizens, police and firemen for containing the damage.

Incorporated in 1908, Inglewood is the oldest city in the South Bay and the eighth largest city in Los Angeles County. Its current population of 110,000 reflects an ethnic mix of roughly 5O% African Americans, 38% Latinos, 8% Caucasians, and 4% Asians. The evolution of its population during the last two decades represents a dynamic chapter in Inglewood’s history.

Joseph Mayfield, who opened Joseph Mayfield Realty Co. in 1965, prides himself on being one of the first black businessmen in Inglewood.

“Before 1965,” Mayfield said, “the population in Inglewood was primarily Caucasian. In 1965, the number of blacks moving from east to west began to increase and in the late ‘70s, the population in Inglewood was roughly 50% blacks, 35% Caucasian and 15% Latino. The 1980s brought a greater cross section of the Latino population to Inglewood.”

“The Latino population in Inglewood has changed dramatically,” agreed Mark Caple, a fourth-grade teacher at Amestoy Elementary in Gardena. “There’s a lot more for the Latino in this area. Stores cater to the Latino population. Spanish is spoken everywhere.”

Caple, who moved to Inglewood from Miami with his parents 20 years ago, now lives in the city’s primarily Latino neighborhood of Arbor Village with his wife, Carla, a student at Cal State Dominguez Hills.

Described by the Caples as a “quiet working-class neighborhood of mostly 30- to 40-year-olds,” Arbor Village is a pretty, tree-lined area located on Inglewood’s west side near the San Diego (405) Freeway, between Century and Manchester boulevards. Homes are typically two and three bedrooms, averaging in price between $150,000 and $220,000, according to Jose Fernandez, a broker with Direct Professional Realty.

“Today, most people think of Inglewood as Manchester Boulevard on the way to the Forum,” said Fernandez, “but Inglewood is really a community of mostly middle class neighborhoods.”

Fernandez, who has lived in Inglewood since 1966 and who grew up in Arbor Village, now represents the area on the City Council. “If you travel two or three streets in any direction, your whole environment changes,” Fernandez said.

Nestled in the southeast corner of Inglewood, just south of Century and east of Crenshaw Boulevard, lies Century Heights, a wooded hillside community whose residents are mostly business professionals, doctors and teachers, with larger homes averaging about $250,000, realtor Fernandez said.

Resident James Patterson recalls driving to work in the late 1940s through Inglewood’s soybean fields planted alongside Imperial Highway. “I watched as homes began to replace the farmland,” Patterson said of an area that was later to become his home.

In 1965, Patterson, his wife, Aplis, and their four children moved from South-Central Los Angeles to Inglewood’s Century Heights neighborhood because of the schools, its proximity to their jobs with the aerospace industry in El Segundo, and “because we were glad to be part of a developing community,” Aplis Patterson said.

The neighborhood of Morningside Park lies just to the north of Century Heights. Developed in the 1940s and ‘50s by individual contractors, the area avoided tract housing and today residents enjoy a comfortable mix of Spanish and traditional architecture, with the average size home beginning at 1,600 square feet and ranging in price between $150,000 and $250,000, according to Mayfield.

Morningside Park resident Gladys Waddingham is not only one of Inglewood’s earliest residents, but also one of its most beloved, according to many of those interviewed for this story. For 45 years, beginning in 1922, Waddingham taught Spanish in the Inglewood school system and is now a member of the city’s historical society.

“Inglewood was an easy place to get a teaching job back then,” Waddingham said. In the early part of the century, “it had been a quiet little agricultural town but then the 1920 earthquake put Inglewood on the map. The earthquake had done a lot of damage and people came to see what had happened. Everyone who came fell in love with the climate and wanted to stay. In two years the population increased so much that the high schools were bursting at the seams.”

“However, the first major change in Inglewood occurred at the time of World War II, when it changed from an agricultural town to an airplane center,” Waddingham said.

Another longtime resident and member of the historical society, Betty Albright, recalls times in the 1930s when she and her brothers would stand at the corner of Imperial Highway and Hawthorne Boulevard selling sandwiches to people as they stepped off the streetcar and waited to catch a bus to the Mines Field airport.

“People came from all over to watch the air shows and airplane races,” Albright said. Indeed, the history books have recorded the flights and landings of Charles Lindbergh and the Graf Zeppelin in the late 1920s at Mines Field, which is now the site of LAX.

“North Inglewood is divided into East and West by La Brea Avenue,” explained resident Liz Weaver, an agent with the Westchester office of Kent Realty. The streets of northeast Inglewood wind their way up and through the hillside community, revealing older single-family homes ranging in price between “$130,000 for a fixer to $250,000,” Weaver said.

Crossing La Brea to northwest Inglewood, the tree-lined streets continue but the terrain and the single-family homes “vary in size from two bedroom, one bath to three bedroom, two bath with a wide price range between $160,000 and $325,000,” Weaver said.

“North Inglewood is attracting young families,” Fernandez added, “because the homes are comparable to areas of neighboring Ladera Heights but the price tags are more affordable.”

Rental units in Inglewood have provided affordable and stable housing alternatives for many residents, despite the fact that Inglewood does not have rent control laws. Louis and Sandra Gardner still consider the two-bedroom garden apartment that they rented for $550 in 1985 a bargain today at $700.

The gated community of Carlton Square is Inglewood’s newest development of Cape Cod-style condominiums located next to the Forum, with tennis courts, swimming pools and a clubhouse. Built in the last five years and averaging two and three bedrooms, the condominiums range between $140,000 and $175,000, according to Mayfield.

The Lockhaven area, which is located in Inglewood’s southwest corner beneath several flight paths into LAX, is the primary target of the city’s redevelopment efforts. Built up in the ‘50s, Lockhaven once boasted luxury apartments, housing workers in the airline industry.

With the coming of the jet age, however, the noise soon made the apartments undesirable and now “long-range efforts have been put into motion to relocate residents and redevelop the area for light manufacturing and small industry,” Fernandez said.

“Inglewood is going through a difficult transition,” Aplis Patterson said. “We watched when the downtown plaza was built and Inglewood was a bustling town. And we’ve watched as the stores have closed down. But our City Council and the community are working together, very hard, to meet the needs of all of the people living in Inglewood today.”

A sense of community was echoed by all of the residents interviewed. “We like the small-town atmosphere in Inglewood,” said Mark Caple, who cites the city’s biggest change as “cultural,” the biggest problem as “traffic--it seems to be everywhere” and its biggest draw “being centrally located to everything.”

The Pattersons have thought about leaving the “hustle and bustle” of the South Bay now that they have retired and their children are grown, but “in all our travels up and down the California coast, we haven’t found any place we’d rather live, they said. “This really is our home.”

Patricia Bennett is a West Los Angeles free-lance writer.

At a Glance

Population 1991 estimate: 112,775 1980-91 change: +19.7% Median age: 30 years Annual income Per capita: 12,265 Median household: 32,860 Household distribution Less than $15,000: 20.2% $15,000 - $30,000: 25.3% $30,000 - $50,000: 26.9% $50,000 - $75,000: 17.8% $75,000 +: 9.8%