| Martens-Carmelita, Mountain View
Wycliffe "Woody" Woodward moved to Carmelita Drive in 1961, in the days when the Monte Vista Drive-In Theatre still dominated the corner of Grant Road and El Camino Real.
"Over the years I've watched a gradual remodeling of the area," Woodward said. "People upgrade their houses, and a bunch of new homes are going up these days."
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While single family homes are still the standard, the area also accommodates a few apartment complexes and the Sahara Mobile Village. Bordered by Grant Road, Sleeper Avenue, Highway 85 and El Camino Real, the neighborhood was once home to an apricot orchard, before the first post-war homes went up on Martens Avenue and Carmelita Drive.
The orchard may be gone, but current residents still care about trees. "With a lot of newer homes being built, we're losing the trees out of their lots," Wycliffe said. "Just recently a developer who built a couple other homes and got rid of the trees wanted to develop another property. Well, neighbors got together and went down to city hall and said nope. So we saved a couple of trees."
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Martins-Carmelita facts
CHILDCARE AND PRESCHOOLS: St. Timothy's Nursery School, 2094 Grant Road; YMCA -- Huff Kids' Place, 253 Martens Ave.
FIRE STATION: No. 2, 160 Cuesta Drive NEIGHBORHOOD ASSOCIATION: Martens-Carmelita Neighborhood Association, Robin Iwai, 650-961-8257, robin.iwai@yahoo.com
PARKS: Huff Park, Martens Avenue POST OFFICE: Blossom Valley, 1768 Miramonte Ave. PRIVATE SCHOOLS (NEARBY): St. Simon Catholic School, 1840 Grant Road, Los Altos PUBLIC SCHOOLS:
Mtn. View-Whisman School District -- Huff Elementary School, Graham Middle School;
Mtn. View-Los Altos Union High School District -- Mountain View High School
SHOPPING: Grant Park Plaza, Grant Road at El Camino Real; Mountain View Center
MEDIAN 2007 HOME PRICE: $1,450,000 ($1,300,000-$2,139,000)
# HOMES SOLD: 9
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The Martens-Carmelita Neighborhood Association helps to develop the unity necessary for such community action. Robin Iwai, who's lived on Carmelita Drive since 1993, serves as the contact person for the loosely organized association.
"We have an annual neighborhood garage sale," Iwai said, "and an annual neighborhood block party. One year we had a back yard garden tour."
The neighborhood's cul-de-sacs and unconnected streets are nice for privacy and calm traffic, but can make it awkward for everyone to share a single sense of community. Bentley Square housing developments border Carmelita Drive, but no streets connect them, and this leaves residents like Maria Lange a little uncertain of their relationship to the rest of the neighborhood.
Lange moved to Bentley Square in 1984, and does her own part to keep her neighbors connected to the community pulse. "I'm on the library board, and I'm in tune with the city," said Lange, who maintains an informal e-mail list to pass on what she hears.
Lange is enthusiastic about the Bentley Square community. "I moved here because the homes are charming, it was close to my daughter's school, had lighted tennis courts, a pool, and even though it's very private, it has access to major freeways, and shopping centers right across the street," she said. "When I first moved in, there weren't many children, but now there are many more, which is nice."
Tonya Cummings is also glad to see more kids coming in since she brought her three young children to Barcelona Court in 2005.
"This summer another mom moved in next to us," she said. "It's really nice to have a friend next door. I don't know California that well, but it's nice to have a community feel even in a really busy part of the state. We can walk to Huff elementary school. Everything's here. If I didn't want to, I'd never have to go five miles from my house. Ever."
-- Katie Vaughn |
