Ygnacio Valley

The Ygnacio Valley neighborhood of Concord stretches in a L curve formed by the railroad tracks on its southern and eastern end. It covers much of Oak Grove and some of Monument Blvd. It goes from 4-Corners to Bancroft.

The neighborhood is mostly residential though it has an industrial section on its north eastern end. The residential section of Ygnacio Valley--especially on the southwestern end--is mostly made up Ranch Style homes on straight leafy streets. These are nicely kept middle class homes of the kind that you can find throughout California. They are the homes that once made up the middle class dream before uniform Contemporary style homes took over those dreams.

The median home price here is $350,000 for a single family home, with prices rising to about $500,000 on the southern end but no further.

On the northeastern end, closer to Monument Blvd., there are a number of boxy apartment complexes on relatively leafy streets. They are sort of middle of road: neither particularly inspiring nor particularly depressing.

Most of the northeastern end is made up of warehouses and businesses. Companies who have addresses here are Ale Industries (a beer maker), Techrestore (a Mac repair shop), Moose Metal (a metals welding place) and East Bay Machine (a sheet metal welder). There is also a Costco and a home supply shop up by Monument.

One of the organizations that calls Ygnacio Valley home is Books for Barrios, a non-profit that gathers English language books and sends them to schools in remote areas of the Philippines.
As you can tell by the businesses that reside here, these are mostly mid-level businesses that provide the necessary infrastructure for other businesses to thrive. These businesses however are the economic life force of this area.

This section of Ygnacio Valley is not particularly attractive but it is important for the economy.

As to crime and schools? Crime is average and schools are mostly poor--at least in terms of public schools. There are some private school options like nearby Carondolet, but these are, of course, more expensive.

Overall, Ygnacio Valley is one of the nicer neighborhoods in Concord.