Golden Eagle Farms

Golden Eagle Farms is a little mcmansion neighborhood just to the north of the Castlewood Country Club. The only reason I call these mcmansions and not just mansions is because I have a harder time thinking of a home as a mansion when it was built like tract housing as part of a planned neighborhood. When I think of mansion, I think of homes that were built by the owners on top of a hill to meet their specific likes and dislikes, not that a developer set out along a neighborhood of 2 dozen.
Also most neighborhoods like this are farther up into the hills, but this is one is mostly down near Foothill Road along the flatter portion of the neighborhood.

On the western end of this Golden Eagle is Bernal Park, one of those green spaces that is great for hiking and that sort of thing.

You can roughly divide Golden Eagle into three sections: the hilly western section, the mini-neighborhoods just east of Foothill Rd., and the mcmansion area between Foothill and Highway 680.

The hilly western section of Golden Eagle has a somewhat rural feel, with large though not particularly luxurious looking homes along the rise. You get some pretty good views of the Pleasanton valley area from here. (If you go up into Bernal Park you will get some even better views from spots.) There are some newer mansions built up here as well. These seem more like what we think of as traditional mansions, though they were still clearly built by one developer and have a certain homogeneity to them, with adobe walls and pale tiled roofs. This mcmansion area is a gated community. To enter, you have to be invited and get by the security detail down at the bottom end—I guess that is one way to keep the riff raff like me out.

Down by Foothill Rd., you get another couple of planned communities though much less posh—much more 80’s—than the ones that surround them to the east and west. These are kind of smaller, uglier condos that were fairly popular when Ronnie was president but which are kind of ugly now. This is still a solid place to live, though not very attractive imo.

On the eastern end of Golden Eagle you get more mcmansions, these not so exclusive that you can’t take a drive through.
These are large Med style homes that are big like mansions. They come in various styles, often incorporating columns and having the symmetry of classical architecture in an attempt to quote previous kinds of stately buildings. The effect is individually fairly impressive. When you place a bunch of them on the same street however, the homogeneity and closely packed nature of the neighborhood diminishes the effect somewhat.

Don’t get me wrong, this is still an impressive neighborhood that exudes wealth. But it still feels a little bit like they are faking their wealth—like they just made their dotcom fortune yesterday, bought their way into this neighborhood, and that they might lose it all tomorrow, and move out again.

Okay, maybe too much projection on my part, but that is just the feeling I get.

As to the price tag of living here and other practical considerations?

Well the condos are obviously the cheapest place to live. These go for under $300 K mostly. The most expensive areas are the sprawling hillside mansions. If you want to live there, expect to pay multi-millions. Down by the mcmansion neighborhood, those homes just go for around $1 million each.

All the usual things about Pleasanton apply here: good schools, low crime, the usual suburban amenities.

Overall a nice place for dotcom millionaires and condo living.