Saratoga

City, Santa Clara County

© McCormack's Guides

 

Zip Codes: 95070, 95071

Upscale town on edge of Silicon Valley. Population 31,592. Flatlands and hills and valleys. Some of the finest housing you will see in Santa Clara County, especially in the hills where high-tech moguls have built estate homes with vineyards. www.mccormacks.com

The flatland homes favor ranchers, one story, wood shingles, four and five bedrooms, large front yards professionally landscaped, variety of trees, many tall and full, meandering streets without sidewalks.

To the west, mountains, heavily wooded. Strong feeling of country. On many streets, at high noon, deer will be found grazing along the ditches, indifferent to passing cars. Like ... this is our land, not yours. The newer housing rises into two stories and if the homes are really new, even if in a small tract, they will look like something out of a glossy magazine.

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Saratoga is famous — or notorious — for being picky about development and protecting its charms. Large tracts ... forget it! The town is in-filling but its days of rapid growth are long over.

Downtown small and intimate. Restaurants, delis, coffee houses and sidewalk cafes, wine shop, markets, barbers, lawyers, art galleries, spas, nail parlors, small hotels. Nothing big. Many of the stores have gutted and modernized their insides and retained and brightened their old facades. Ornamental street lights. Farmers market. Not quite something out of Thomas Kincaid but working in this direction.

Proposals to add more stores (or parking) almost always run into town's wish to remain low-key and rustic. City restricts use of portable signs, streamers, banners, balloons in commercial district. www.mccormacks.com

On the downside, lacking many stores and therefore having a weak tax base, Saratoga often struggles to fund city services but if the shoe really starts pinching, residents have ample resources to relieve the pain. City is home to entrepreneurs, judges, doctors, computer chiefs, plus many middle and upper managers.

Academic scores very high. Residents in 1998 passed a bond to add a library and science building to the high school. With other funds, the high school built a performance and lecture center. See Schools.

Served by six school districts, among which the most popular are Saratoga Elementary and the Los Gatos-Saratoga High School District. Overall rankings for Saratoga High and the Saratoga elementary schools are in the high 90s, among the tops in the state. Almost every year Saratoga High on the math SAT lands in the top ten high schools in the state. Three private schools, located in or near the town: Harker, St. Andrew’s, Sacred Heart.

To renovate and upgrade schools, the Saratoga Elementary district passed a $40 million bond in 1997 and $20 million bond in 2002.

Another recent addition: a town library, twice the size of the old one. The city, after much argument, purchased a church for a community center with gardens. www.mccormacks.com

Crime very low. Zero homicides in 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002 and 2001. One homicide in 2000. Between 1999 and 1985, Saratoga had zero homicides. See Crime.

The Saratoga commute falls into the category of “not that bad.” The city borders or is close to the job centers of Cupertino, Sunnyvale, San Jose and Santa Clara. In 1996, Highway 85, which bites off a corner of Saratoga, was completed. This ties the town into the freeway network serving Santa Clara County. Walls muffle sounds from Highway 85. Buses from Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority. Caltrain to downtown San Francisco or San Jose can be picked up in Santa Clara.

Lovely town, one reason why its homes cost so much. Much attention to preserving old town. Streets clean. Homes well-maintained. City codes restrict repairing cars in driveway or street, allowing junk to accumulate in yards, leaving cars parked on public street for more than three days.

Recreation, cultural ornaments, unusually bountiful. Concerts, art exhibits at Villa Montalvo, a mansion that was turned into an artists’ residence and art museum. Jazz and pop concerts at the Mountain Winery.

City hall runs recreation programs for kids and adults. About nine parks. Community theater. Hakone Gardens, created by a gardener who worked for the Emperor of Japan. Shakespeare festival. Just west, over the hills, lies the redwood country of Santa Cruz County. If you play an instrument, the town has its own band. Old-fashioned nightclub with dancing. Horse trails and stables in the hills. www.mccormacks.com

In the middle of town sits West Valley, a community college, a cornucopia of facilities and activities, cheaply priced, all open to local residents. West Valley has a library, a theater, a gym and workout rooms, a track and playing fields, plus many classes on arts, literature, computers and business subjects.

Annual Mustard Walk. Theatricals and light operas. Golf course-country club on the west side.

First a lumber town, Saratoga in last century evolved into a resort-farming community that attracted people of money who liked the mild climate, the mountain setting and possibly the mineral springs in the hills. In one version of how Saratoga got its name, civic leaders lifted it from Saratoga, New York, a wealthy town that also has mineral springs.

Among the early residents was James Phelan, a U.S. senator who built a palatial home (Villa Montalvo) in the Mediterranean style. Phelan was a patron of the arts and helped set the artistic tone of the town. The home was later deeded to the county for the benefit of artists.

By 1940, the census counted about 350 homes. The war decade, when Santa Clara County developed its electronic muscles, saw the number of Saratoga homes more than double and in the 1950s, home construction boomed, 2,884 units. www.mccormacks.com

In 1956, Saratoga incorporated as a legal city. This took planning and zoning away from the county government, which was pro-growth, and placed them in the hands of local residents. In the 1960s, Saratoga built 3,200 units, in the next decade, 2,200 units and in the 1980s, 900 units.

In the 1990s, Saratoga built about 650 residential units and added about 1,800 residents and between 2000 and 2006 the population rose by 849 and the units by 364.

The state in 2008 counted 11,093 units, of which 9,728 were single homes, 560 single attached, 798 multiples and 7 mobile homes.

About one-third of the single homes have three bedrooms, about 40 percent have four bedrooms and 16 percent have five or more bedrooms (census data). In recent years, the trend has been to build larger homes. For the most part, the four-bedroom homes run to software engineer upscale: two-story structures built along enticing tract designs.

The custom homes, many opulent, can be found west of city hall, around Villa Montalvo and in the hills off of Big Basin Way. If you have ever wondered where the wealth of Silicon Valley is invested, take a spin up Pierce Road. www.mccormacks.com

Saratoga in its oldest sections has a few grand monsters that might have sheltered the Great Gatsby. The new homes can be viewed from the roads; the old often hide behind tall hedges.

Although considered part of Silicon Valley, Saratoga is not home to computer industries.

Saratoga has a formal government, the city council, and an informal one, the Good Government Group, a sort of watchdog, particularly sensitive to growth and aesthetics. If you like to argue about art, beauty and quality of life, this is the burg for you.

Local lasses who made good: the daughters of Lillian Fontaine, who ran a theater workshop and staged plays. Her daughters: Joan Fontaine (“The Women”) and Olivia de Haviland (“Gone with the Wind”).

Another star: the Hakone Gardens. They were used as background for the movie, “Memoirs of a Geisha.” www.mccormacks.com

Chamber of commerce (408) 867-0753.

• Not a hiking town — few sidewalks outside the downtown — but crude paths have been carved along the main roads. City is looking to improve old rail right-of-way and use it for a trail. Many trails in the hills.

• In 2006, the city was about to sell 2.5 acres, the site of several buildings and a church, when residents said, Wait a second! The city wanted to use money raised from the sale, about $7 million, to fix the roads, improve the community center and upgrade facilities. Opponents said, save church and buildings, renovate and use for community events. Opponents won.

• Nature’s way — raccoons, coyotes, bob cats, all venture down from the hills or out of the shrubs and show themselves around town, particularly where brush is plentiful.

• Saratoga to its west rises into mountains, many of which have been placed in parks. Trails wind through these parks, inviting casual hikers. In 2006, on Thanksgiving Saturday, a San Jose couple, recently married, took off for a hike, leaving their coats and a cell phone in the car. Darkness fell and soon they were lost among trees, brush and ravines. No food. They drank from a stream and at night huddled together among bushes and in a hollowed redwood. On Saturday night, their car was ticketed and on Monday relatives reported them missing. Authorities connected the car with the couple, sent out search teams and released information to the media. Tim Donohue frequently hiked the 5,000-acre park with his brother Kevin, a Saratoga resident, so he called him on Thursday after reading a news article and suggested he take a look for the couple. Good idea, responded Kevin, the Mercury reported. Off he went to a popular hiking destination and there they were, trapped in thick brush. He gave them food. Meanwhile, a search party following a tracking golden retriever, Susana by name, came shouting through the area and located the trio. Couple spent a few days in the hospital and went home. Said the husband, after thanking one and all, “the hope of getting out and our love for one another is what helped us get through it.”

• Mountain parks also popular with marijuana growers. In one raid in 2006, sheriff’s deputies found 20,000 plants. www.mccormacks.com

• Montalvo Arts Center is cutting back on mainstream performances — Johnny Mathis, Ringo Star, Earth, Wind and Fire, etc. and favoring experimental and educational, working with schools. Place is popular for weddings.

City web site: www.saratoga.ca.us