The Bel-Air of Ventura County : North Ranch Is Home to Wildlife and the Wealthy

The North Ranch neighborhood in Thousand Oaks is home to a mysterious millionaire philanthropist, an alleged felon on the run, the local Rolls-Royce dealer and a heavy-metal rock star.

Frankie Avalon lives there, as does the former U. S. ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago. Even the actor who plays the “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” on TV is thinking about moving to what residents and real estate agents call the Bel-Air or Beverly Hills of Ventura County.

But Cathy Schutz, who also lives there, said what really makes the neighborhood special are the frogs.

“I love the frogs. I absolutely love the frogs,” said Schutz, who was lured to North Ranch in 1986 by its outdoorsy flavor, including the croaking amphibians that lull her to sleep at night.

“In the spring, right now, it’s like a chorus,” Schutz said.

Few would argue with Schutz about the natural beauty of the oak-dotted hills of North Ranch.

Bordered by publicly owned parkland and centered around a 27-hole private country club, the six-square-mile enclave is home to about 6,000 of the county’s wealthiest and most comfortable residents along with deer, hawks, owls, coyotes, mountain lions and frogs.

Allan H. Friedman, a wire manufacturer who moved to North Ranch from Woodland Hills three years ago, said the neighborhood is so nice he sometimes feels guilty about living there.

He appreciates it, he said, especially when coming home after traveling to luxurious resorts all over the world. Driving back from the airport at night recently, Friedman slowed to avoid deer lingering in the dark road. Finally arriving at his sprawling dream house, surrounded by a golf course, he turned to his wife and said to her, “It’s like living in Shangri-La.”

To be sure, North Ranch is not utopia. Some fear that steady development is crowding the neighborhood and changing its character. Others say strict landscaping and building regulations cramp their style. And in a racially charged after-school brawl at a local park last year, two high school students were shot.

In North Ranch, however, residents have a way of seeing even the neighborhood’s drawbacks as advantages. Jody Weiss, for instance, complained about the lack of nearby shopping centers, but said that can be a good thing too.

“That’s why we all can live in these expensive houses,” Weiss said. “We don’t spend any money.”

Not exactly.

In fact, hundreds of North Ranch residents have paid the required $45,000 to become a golf member of the North Ranch Country Club. Then they spend another $5,000 each year in dues, locker rental fees and mandatory food and beverage purchases at the club. Tennis and social memberships are cheaper.

Joining the club can take three or four months. Applicants must be sponsored and seconded by someone who already belongs, and then they must submit to a credit check, play a game of golf and eat dinner with representatives of the club’s membership committee.

Those who eventually pass muster, and pay the money, can stride confidently past the gleaming brass “Members Only” sign at the clubhouse door. They can make their way through the marble-tiled entrance hallway, past another sign warning “No Denim Allowed.” Then they can venture outside onto the golf course that developer Jon Hedberg, a club member, calls “the crown jewel of the neighborhood . . . the best-conditioned golf course in Southern California.”

Once on the links, members can stop under the oak trees to sip icy gin and tonics mixed by white-jacketed bartenders driving specially equipped golf carts.

After golf, members can choose filet mignon, rack of lamb or other country club cuisine for dinner in the Regency Room.

“The food is veddy, veddy good,” said club General Manager David A.N. Vansittart, his British accent still very, very strong after 17 years in the United States.

Indeed, said Larry Horner, a former mayor of Thousand Oaks, the food is so tempting that, while he and his family joined the country club fully intending to use it to play tennis, “now most of the time we just go there and eat.”

Food notwithstanding, golf is what attracted many to this neighborhood, where the greens and fairways roll right up to back doors.

David Angell, an executive producer of the television shows “Frasier” and “Wings,” said living on the course means no longer having to purchase golf balls.

“I get a lot of golf balls,” said Angell, who also wrote and co-produced “Cheers.” “They land in my yard.”

Friedman’s property, which overlooks the cascading water hazards of the country club’s signature eighth hole, has been the landing pad for so many golf balls that he finally decided to build a sculpture out of them.

His four-foot tall sculpture of a golf ball on a tee is made of 1,180 balls. It sits in his front yard as a kind of monument to golf.

“People stop and take pictures of it,” Friedman said.

To get to Friedman’s front yard, however, a photographer would either have to be a golfer at the country club or a resident or guest at North Ranch Country Club Estates. Guards staff the two gated entrances, keeping out curiosity seekers who might want to peek at the house where “Melrose Place” star Heather Locklear lived with Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee. Lee is a member of the country club and used to join Locklear there for Sunday brunch, Vansittart said.

Behind the Country Club Estates guard shacks are some very large houses. Sigi Ulbrich, a broker at Prudential California Realty, said they cost up to $3.5 million and are as large as 23,000 square feet.

Some hilltop houses are still under construction, awing those who toil below.

“That’s a house, a house! Not a clubhouse or a set of condominiums, a house. It’s huge,” Vansittart said, pointing at one mansion-in-the-making.

The country club set, and their gates, can provoke ire as much as awe, however, especially among those who moved to North Ranch earlier, live in smaller and less expensive houses and still are the majority.

“I’d like to keep the area open and outdoorsy, not gated and closed in and private,” said Schutz, a neighborhood activist on the board of the Westlake North Property Owners’ Assn. She said she does not see the country club as a focal point of the neighborhood.

“I’m not into North Ranch as being elitist or anything like that,” Schutz said.

Other longtime residents worry that more new houses and proposed shopping centers will change the neighborhood’s character.

“It’s getting too crowded now,” Weiss said. “People who used to live in the Valley or the Westside are all moving here. We just don’t want it to get wrecked.”

The backlash against rich newcomers erupted last fall, when neighborhood residents fought a plan by Charles Probst to landscape the hillside and build an underground garage below his house at Westlake Boulevard and Kanan Road. Residents also challenged Probst when he erected a wrought iron fence around the yard.

Probst, who pledged $2 million to the Civic Arts Plaza last October, had his landscaping plan approved by the City Council the next week. The fence has been allowed to remain temporarily.

Even longtime residents can face opposition when their landscaping plans get too elaborate.

Gary Nesen, the car dealer, said he spent more than $500,000 to landscape his North Ranch home with palm trees and monogrammed iron gates.

“They hassled us over what kind of trees we were putting in, what kind of bushes. It was ridiculous,” Nesen said.

George McNee, president of the North Ranch Property Owners’ Assn., said strict rules governing landscaping are necessary to keep the neighborhood looking good.

“Most people cooperate,” he said. “But there are always a few people who have an idea that rules are nice, but want to perceive themselves as a possible exception.”

While the rich of North Ranch draw complaints about their landscaping, they also garner praise for their philanthropy.

In a demonstration of gratitude, the city named the Civic Arts Plaza’s main auditorium after Probst. And Everett Eaton, principal of Westlake Hills School, said North Ranch parents helped raise $21,500 to buy computers for the school by having a tennis tournament at the country club.

“I’d like to have every school I go to have that kind of support,” Eaton said.

Friedman, who gives money to the Conejo Valley Food Bank and whose wife, Lois, volunteers teaching English as a Second Language, said charity is a way to address the guilt that comes with living in a neighborhood that is isolated from most social problems.

“Maybe it salves our consciences a little bit,” he said.

The neighborhood is isolated.

“You don’t see homeless people here,” said Diana Turk, who moved from Woodland Hills 1 1/2 years ago. “There are teen-agers, but they’re not hot-rodding down the street.”

Sgt. Claude Robillard, a watch commander for the Sheriff’s Department, said the neighborhood is so exclusive and crime-free that he would move there himself if he could afford it.

“Probably the most we get out there is an occasional burglary or unlicensed solicitor,” Robillard said.

There was a shooting in February, 1994, in North Ranch Park. James Lee had scheduled an after-school fight with a high school football player, and arrived with five carloads of supporters armed with sticks, bats and guns, authorities said. Lee jumped bail in April and disappeared with his brother.

The shooting prompted Turk to organize a Neighborhood Watch group.

“Everybody was concerned about it,” Schutz said.

But the neighborhood quickly returned to its usual peace, and most residents said they feel safe walking the streets alone at night. In North Ranch, Schutz said, the sounds that sometimes bother her overnight guests are not sirens and gunshots, but hooting owls, chirping birds and yipping coyotes.

And, of course, those frogs.

“You go to bed at night and listen to the frogs,” Schutz said. “I always tell my house guests, you might get real concerned, but you get used to it.”

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North Ranch at a Glance

Median house value: $500,001 Median family income: $107,073 College graduates: 52.5% Under 18 years old: 23.8% Aged 65 or older: 4.4% Married couple households: 90.4% Owner-occupied dwellings: 92.1% Percent white: 87.4% Total population: 5,678

Source: 1990 U. S. census