Fremont

City, Alameda County

© McCormack's Guides

 

Zip Codes: 94536, 94537, 94538, 94539, 94555

Bedroom high-tech city in south county. Population 213,512. School scores high. Almost every school is scoring above the 50th percentile and many are scoring in the 90th percentile, among the tops in the state. In 2002, passed a $157 million bond to renovate its schools. www.mccormacks.com

Soon to go into sports in a big way. The Oakland A’s are moving out of Oakland and into a new stadium close to the Fremont waterfront. By 2011, if all goes well, the major league baseball will be putting Fremont on the map.

One homicide in 2005, five in 2004, two in 2003, zero in 2002 and 2001, three in 2000, one in 1999. The counts for previous years, 9, 4, 3, 2, 6, 4, 6, 2, 2, 2, 2, 1. See Crime.

Click for regional or detailed map

Fremont rises from the Bay to the hills, which to a large extent have been spared housing. In winter, the hills turn green and snow sometimes caps Mission Peak. Streets clean. Homes kept in good repair. Trees plentiful, softening the lines of the housing. Fremont has been honored for planting many trees. The town has also done a good job on the little touches that at first you might miss then you notice: for example, the median strip along Mission Boulevard planted with shrubs, flowers and small trees.

Temperate climate. Breezes from the Bay yet warm enough for many homes to use solar heat.

Hard work and intelligent planning have helped Fremont but the city owes much of its good fortune to timing and fate. www.mccormacks.com

First came the Indians, called Ohlones, then the Spanish, who built the mission in 1797 and passed on diseases that killed just about all the Indians. Fremont has a large Indian cemetery a short distance from the mission, which has been restored.

Then came the Americans who farmed and welcomed the railroad. In the early 20th century, Charlie Chaplin shot some silent films in the Niles neighborhood, which now celebrates a June festival of silent movies.

As the century progressed, five hamlets blossomed and in 1956, seeing development coming, they incorporated themselves into the City of Fremont, population 22,443. A big city. Fremont, 77 square miles, is almost double the size of San Francisco. Left as five villages, “Fremont” would have grown up disjointed and difficult to administer.

Also by this time, planning for suburban cities was shedding its diapers and becoming more of a force. New cities are often more cleverly designed than old ones. Fremont officials established zones for homes, for apartments, for light industry, for shops and malls.

Meanwhile, across the Bay, reachable over the Dumbarton Bridge and Highway 237, and south to San Jose, Silicon Valley was coming to life and home prices on the Peninsula were rising. Many families looked east to Fremont for  lower prices. www.mccormacks.com

By 1960, the population had jumped to 43,790 and then it soared, reaching 100,869 by 1970. In the 1970s, Fremont added about 32,000 residents and in the 1980s, about 41,000. By this time, the city was running out of land. In the 1990s, Fremont increased its population by 30,000 and between 2000 and 2006 added 6,700 people.

In the 1960s and 1970s, housing tastes were changing. Garages went from one stall to two and three, bedrooms from three to four and five, stories from one to two. Lots shrunk. With both parents working, low-maintenance landscaping found favor over lawns.

Fremont has its very old housing, erected around the original towns. And it has its old suburban tracts, constructed just after World War II. But having built so many units after 1960, the city comes across as “new,” particularly in the hills, along and above Mission Boulevard, and down near Interstate 880.

The state in 2008 counted 72,059 residential units: single homes 42,466, single attached 7,221, multiples 21,616, mobile homes 756.

The old Fremont used to be considered blue-collar. It had a large auto plant that employed thousands. The plant is still there, General Motors-Toyota NUMMI, and is still the city's largest employer, about 5,000 workers. www.mccormacks.com

By and by, Silicon Valley also ran out space for plants and research facilities. Up to Fremont it came and built hundreds of high-tech firms, and later bio-tech firms, many of them located on the west and south sides of the city.

This wiped out the blue-collar image and turned Fremont into a Silicon Valley town. Needing highly skilled and educated workers, the new firms pushed the demographics further up the scale, which explains in part the high academic rankings.

In SATs, among Alameda County high schools, Mission San Jose High usually places first or second in math and among the top five in verbal. Every year only about three dozen California high schools crack the 600 mark in the math SAT. Mission San Jose High School is always in this elite group. See See Schools.

Parents in this neighborhood, the richest in the city, are prickly about education. When the school board tried to change attendance boundaries of the schools serving the Mission San Jose neighborhood, parents said, no way, hired lawyers and petitioned to form their own school district. In 2001, the state rejected the petition and, meanwhile, the school board softened its reorganization plan.

To even out attendance and avoid crowding, the district may assign some students to schools outside their neighborhoods. Parents new to district should call schools straight off to get information about the “overload” policy.

Fremont also has a community college, Ohlone, (about 3,300 full-time students) a big plus. Community colleges are loaded with activities and classes open to the public. In 2002, Ohlone won approval of a bond to build a campus in Newark and to renovate its Fremont facilities and add a student services building. www.mccormacks.com

Activities plentiful. About 40 parks and playgrounds. Lake in middle of town. Large library, small neighborhood libraries. Symphony orchestra. Trails, bay wildlife refuge. Annual arts festival draws about 350,000. Mission Days Festival. Festival of India. Celtic Festival. Olive Festival. Cajun/Zydeco Festival. Americana Festival. Muslim Film Festival. Performing arts center at Ohlone features touring shows.

Ice-skating rink, in part a tribute to local girl who made good: Kristi Yamaguchi, winner of Olympic gold in figure skating. City sponsors dozens of activities and classes, gymnastics, dance, cooking, singing, kiddie and toddler get togethers, jazzercize, etc. Usual kid sports, soccer, softball, football. Nine-hole golf course. Lagoon is being converted into a water recreation park; job scheduled to be finished in 2008.

East Bay Regional Park District has opened a swimming beach at its 450-acre Quarry Lakes Park, which has been stocked with fish.

Near the Bay, the park district runs a full-fledged farm called Ardenwood that grows organic crops and has horse and farm implements and gives a realistic idea of what farming was like in the 1800s. Popular place, especially with kids. Every year a group re-enacts a Civil War battle at the farm, which is big, 208 acres. Part of national movement to keep history alive.

Ohlone College runs summer programs for young children — sports, arts, drama, English, math, chess, computers and more. www.mccormacks.com

University of California at Berkeley offers extension classes in town. Many of the classes are aimed at working professionals. Several other schools — Silicon Valley College, Northwestern Polytechnic — offer courses for working adults.

Fremont promotes ethnic harmony and throws a Heritage Festival. Churches and schools help with the getting along. Many residents are professionals who came in the immigration wave that started in the 1970s.

Commute better than most. Buses, BART (commute rail), freeways, bridge to Silicon Valley. Boulevards, almost all four-lane, crisscross the city and end usually at a freeway. Two freeways: Interstate 680 and Interstate 880. The latter used to be a real dog, always congested, but in recent years it has been widened and overpasses and exits have been added or renovated. The result: still congested. More people, more vehicles.

Big job of this decade: the construction of an interchange at Mission Boulevard and Interstate 880. This interchange will make it easier to move between I-880 and I-680.

If you’re taking BART to Oakland or San Francisco, you have to rise about a half hour earlier than Berkeley residents and make the station by 7 a.m. On the plus side, Fremont being the beginning of the BART line, you’re assured of a seat. The Altamont Commuter Express, trains from Stockton to San Jose, makes stops in Fremont and Santa Clara. www.mccormacks.com

In 2000, Santa Clara County voters approved a sales tax increase that will raise money to extend BART to San Jose, and possibly beyond. When completed, the BART extension will make life easier for many commuters but the job is going to take probably decades.

• On many public projects, Fremont allots 1 percent of construction costs to art — statues and sculptures scattered around town at fire stations, community centers, library, animal shelter.

• The original towns were Niles, Centerville, Irvington, Mission San Jose and Warm Springs. As a way of building neighborhood cohesiveness, the city is restoring these old towns as business centers and gathering places (restaurants, cafes, a movie house or a theater).

• Stores. Pacific Commons, 800 acres near Interstate 80 and Auto Mall Parkway. Costco, Lowe's Home Improvement, Kohl's Department Store, Circuit City, Office Depot, Claim Jumper Restaurant, Starbucks, In-N-Out Burger, Linens N Things. Fremont also has two Wal-marts and a Target. Large mall in Newark, near I-880.

• Washington Medical Center is located near BART station. The hospital is being expanded and renovated. www.mccormacks.com

• The Centerville and Irvington neighborhoods run year-round farmers markets.

• Although Fremont has an ordinance discouraging home construction in the hills, at the lower levels they still have a fair number of homes. You can buy a view of the bay.

• Sport for the hills — para gliding, soaring off cliffs, borne aloft by a wing-shaped parachute. In 2006, one man lost control; tumbled 200 feet down a hill, broke back, ankle and shoulder.

• Skate park, Fremont has one but built of wood in 1999, it doesn’t get high marks.

• As land zoned for residential becomes scarce, the city has taken a closer look at some industrial parcels and switched them to housing. In recent years, this has led to projects bringing in over 500 townhouses and apartments. www.mccormacks.com

• Patterson Ranch, one of few large undeveloped parcels, 428 acres, may soon be developed for homes, parks and commercial uses. One plan would put 800 homes on the property, which is located west of Ardenwood Regional Park.

• Fremont has many restaurants and a Trader Joes but it pines for more upscale restaurants and a Whole Foods. The city has been wooing Whole Foods for six years but, as of 2007, nothing doing. In 2006, Fremont landed a Hooters, famous for chicken wings and buxom waitresses, and around town many a hoot was hooted about the city’s culinary status.

• 2006 was a bad year for crime. Mother of six shot to death for no apparent reason while walking, mid afternoon, with her youngest daughter. Man with a history of psychiatric problems is accused of running down and killing a Fremont man then rampaging with his SUV through San Francisco, running over 18 more people and seriously injuring many of them. Popular owner of a pawnshop was shot to death in a stickup.

• City fields a graffiti team that tries to get rid of graffiti as soon as it is spotted.

• In 2007, Fremont will debate proposal to limit size of new homes and avoid McMansion look. www.mccormacks.com

• Also under planning review, movie house with multiple screens coupled with a shopping center. To be situated west of Interstate 880. 

• Footwork. In 2006, Prevention Magazine named Fremont the ninth-best city in the U.S. for walking. In recent years, by one magazine or another, Fremont has been named one of the healthiest cities for men in U.S. and for its size one of the brainiest (number of college grads).

• In 2005, the California School for the Deaf celebrated its 25th year in Fremont.

• Down on the Bay, away from businesses and homes, a large garbage dump. Someone’s got to do it.

Chamber of commerce (510) 795-2244.

City web site: www.ci.fremont.ca.us