Garden Grove

City, Orange County

© McCormack's Guides

 

Zip Codes: 92840, 92841, 92842, 92843, 92844, 92845, 92846

One of the older “suburban” cities of the county. Aging gracefully. A city that mows its lawns. Home to Crystal Cathedral and pastor Robert Schuller of television fame. Population 173,067. www.mccormacks.com

Served by several school districts but mainly by Garden Grove Unified. Many schools are scoring in the 30^th to 60^th percentiles and a few in the 70^th and 80^th percentiles, the top 30 percent. See Schools.

After the baby boom collapsed, the district closed ten schools. In recent years, it has reopened almost all the schools. In 2004, the district was named “Best Urban School System” in U.S. and awarded $500,000 in scholarships. Garden Grove district publishes a parent handbook that can be downloaded.

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Six homicides in 2005, ten in 2004, six each in 2003 and 2002. For preceding years, five, four, eleven, seven, three, five, six, seven, sixteen, eight. Garden Grove honors its slain officers by naming streets after them. See Schools.

The state in 2008 counted 47,232 housing units, of which 26,807 were single-family detached, 4,492 single attached, 14,105 multiples and 1,828 mobile homes. Census placed 33 percent of residents under age 21. This indicates many young families. Median age of residents is 32.

Garden Grove’s housing boom started in the 1950s — about 16,300 residential units constructed or more than a third of the existing housing stock. The boom continued into the 1960s when about 12,600 units were built, then dropped off in the 1970s — about 8,600 units. About 80 percent of all housing units were built between 1950 and 1980. The 2000 census counted 45,791 housing units, 60 percent owner-occupied, 40 rentals. www.mccormacks.com

Many of the homes were priced for veterans entering the housing market and for the blue- and white-collar middle class working in the defense industries in Orange and Los Angeles counties. This was an era of rising prosperity and as the years passed the homes became bigger but were still designed and priced for the middle class.

In the big picture, these stats make Garden Grove an old suburb, parts of which span three generations. First buyers, then on to sons and daughters (or people their age) and now grandchildren (or peers).

Old suburbs are new phenomena in California. In some, there comes a point where they tip into problems: the crime creeps up, the school rankings sink, too many lawns go without mowing, appearances slide.

Other suburbs find ways to rejuvenate themselves. City hall dolls up the downtown and pays more attention to parks and services. Often, it’s not what the city does, but what its residents value. Do they keep up their lawns, do they paint and repair and stay out of trouble (which keeps police costs down and allows the city government to put its resources behind other ventures).

Garden Grove comes across a city that is maintaining its quality. The typical home in many sections is the three-bedroom tract model, here and there given to the fancy curls and touches of the late 1950s and 1960s. The paint has been applied, the mower kept active, the snippers put to work on the hedges and bushes. Some people have gone whole hog on the fronts — topiary and trees and manicured lawns — but most have simply done a good job. www.mccormacks.com

The downtown has been revived: beautiful Methodist church, ornamental streetlights, hanging flowers, brick crosswalks. Also in downtown: a Home Depot, an Office Depot, a Costco, and several hotels, including a Hyatt (17 stories).

Garden Grove has its own tourist attractions, foremost the Crystal Cathedral, striking edifice, 10,000 panes of glass, worth a visit, even for nonbelievers. The cathedral is also famous for its organs. Concerts throughout year.

Strawberry Festival, Korean Cultural Festival, Lunar New Year (Tet) Festival, popular time to get married, Easter pageants. Garden Grove attracts several million visitors annually.

Many of the apartments and condos are located along the arterials, particularly Garden Grove Boulevard. This often forces cars and vehicles to back into heavy traffic, one drawback to early suburbia. Planners soon figured out — as later Garden Grove neighborhoods illustrate — that it is better to wall the new tracts and face the garages onto slower residential streets.

The City of Stanton just about divides west Garden Grove from the rest of the city. For this reason, the west side comes across as more intimate, more together, than the larger east side. The west neighborhood has its own schools (two elementaries, a middle and a high), a library, a shopping plaza, four parks, and, close to Knott Street, a business-industrial section, which means jobs. www.mccormacks.com

Fourteen parks, play center, sports complex (tennis, sports courts hockey rink), seniors center, tiny tots camps, many activities for all ages Badminton. Summer concerts. Farmers market. Usual sports. Close to Anaheim Arena. Regional mall. Movies. Coastline Community College and Cal State-Fullerton have opened a downtown campus.

Highway 22, the Garden Grove Freeway, runs east-west across the city and connects to the freeway network. This freeway is finishing up extensive improvements — $549 million — that include more lanes and better access ramps. As the improvements take hold, traffic on Highway 22 is expected to increase — old story in Southern Cal.

Many Garden Grove residents have an endurable commute because the city is close to large job centers — Long Beach, Anaheim, Irvine, Santa Ana. The land is flat and crissed-crossed by about 10 boulevards that move a lot of vehicles.

Chamber of commerce (714) 638-7950.

• Casino? City is waffling on this one but some civic leaders and politicians favor building a Las Vegas casino in the downtown. Garden Grove is only a few miles from Disneyland. City leaders want to parlay this proximity into a resort district with hotels, high-rise condos, restaurants and possibly a casino. But the casino is probably a long reach.

• Wal-Mart wants to build a super store, the first in Orange County. Opposition forming. Decision may be made in 2007. www.mccormacks.com

• Bunny trouble. Down through the years, people who tired of bunnies as pets turned the animals loose in a flood basin near Walton Intermediate School. The predictable happened: rabbits multiplied, invaded school grounds, burrowed holes in fields, creating hazards, and pooped all over. In 2007 … enough! Bunnies rounded up, many will be euthanized, some adopted.

City web site: www.ci.garden-grove.ca.us