Ventura

Ventura is an affordable, up-and-coming Palo Alto community that is mixed between residential terrain and commercial real-estate. It is a skinny slice of land spanning about 0.4 square miles and nestled between El Camino Real and Alma Street. Most residents choose to live here either because of the district’s excellent public school system or its convenience to the shopping drag that lines El Camino Real. Demographically speaking, the area is also pretty diverse. Of the total 3,000 residents, the racial makeup is about 50% white, 20% asian and 15% hispanic.

Concentrated towards the southeastern side of the district, Ventura’s residential aesthetic combines an old-fashioned charm with a pleasant living environment. For prospective residents, there is a larger number of apartment buildings and condominiums than homes. These condominiums are often pretty attractive, usually built within the past decade or so and can sell, on average, for a reasonable $230,000. As for apartment complexes, they can be a bit dull and underwhelming but still range from a reasonable $1,400 to $1,700/month.

Houses tend to vary in age, from the 1950’s to the 1970’s. Most residences are one-story in size and were built as modest (and/or tiny) cottages, craftsman, tract or bungalow style homes with approximately 1000 square feet of living space. But many of these homes have been torn down and replaced with much larger homes, sometimes doubling in size, while others have stuck with its historic charm. For the most part, residences tend to sit on small lots with skinny driveways and little room for front lawns (some with no garages). If you’re looking for a price, house listings tend to sell for around $1 million.

Ventura, it seems, has a couple micro-neighborhoods within the district. While residences split between renters and homeowners, there is a discernible commercial hub that saturates El Camino Real. The area provides everything from fast food chains to cafes to lodging areas, but still evokes a small town feel. However, the district is within walking distance of downtown Palo Alto and Stanford University. For local commuters, a bus line traverses the street every so often, while the California Avenue Caltrain, which skirts the northern edge of the neighborhood, connects residents to neighboring San Jose.

Not to be confused with the SoCal city of the same name, Ventura in Palo Alto is one of the more student friendly areas with a pretty strong commercial section as well.

Let’s start with the commercial section. On the northeast end of Ventura is a commercial area anchored by the offices of Cloudera, some kind of “enterprise software firm” devoted to “Apache based Hadoop software and services.” I am quoting because I have no idea what that means. I assume from their name that they also do some kind of cloud computing, or because they have their head in the clouds, I really don’t know. I do know that another company in the area is Danger, Inc—part of Microsoft—which is best known for “Sidekick” some kind of cloud storage app which notoriously lost users data a couple of years ago.

Another company in Ventura is Playdom, a social media game maker in the style of Zynga, which as far as I can tell seems to make knock-offs of popular games like Civilization for social media. (Their version is City of Wonder.)

This location also seems to have a high percentage of auto shops with at least a half dozen that I counted, and a bunch of stores as well, including the Teak Patio, Kelly Moore Paints, Mike’s Bikes and Gryphon Stringed Instruments (which has great, though pricy guitars and also offers lessons—don’t forget we are in Grateful Dead territory here).

Of course, whenever you get this many businesses packed into one location, you will also find a number of restaurants looking to feed at the economic troth as well. Thus, for those who don’t want to head up to the Mecca of S. California Avenue where great iconoclastic restaurants abound, there is Hunan Garden, Baja Fresh, Boston Market and probably my favorite in Ventura, the pricy Straits Café—a Singaporean fusion restaurant.

With all this business on its northern end, you should not overlook that Ventura also has a residential area on its southern end that is largely made up of older Ranch and Mission Revival style bungalows dating from the mid to early 20th century by all appearances.

What does it cost to live here?

A one bedroom around here will run you about $1550 around here—which was too expensive for us, but is relatively affordable by Palo Alto standards, which explains why we know of at least two other students from my program that found homes here.

It’s a nice spot—relatively close to campus and with stuff to do nearby (including the Cinearts movie theater). I can certainly understand why it is so popular among students.