Selling Downtown Selling Downtown (October 14, 2005)

Busy, historic Main Street attracts buyers, record-high housing prices
by Jeb Bing

This 19th Century Williamsburg-style colonial at 692 St. John St. just sold for $1.9 million, a record-high price for a home in this neighborhood of already-pricey homes just west of the Union Pacific Railroad tracks close to downtown Pleasanton.

Broker/Realtor Blaise Lofland of Alain Pinel Realtors handled the sale of this landmark home, built in 1896 and for years owned by Nancy and Tom Elsnab. He said its high price and reasonably quick sale shows the continued strength of properties in and around the downtown district. In fact, on the heels of completing the Elsnab sale, Lofland put on the market another downtown area home at 323 Neal St. This 2,500-square-foot home, built in 1999, is listed at $1,395,000.

Other downtown homes are also on the market for prices far above what similar-sized homes would sell for in most other Pleasanton neighborhoods. Hometown GMAC is showing a downtown condo for $470,000. Diane Sass of Century 21 Heritage Real Estate has just listed a two-bedroom, one bathroom "cozy and convenient" house at 220 Kottinger Dr. for $659,000. Kris and Tyler Moxley, also of Alain Pinel, are the agents for a 1,400-square-foot home at 4304 Second St., which is being offered at $950,000.

"Downtown Pleasanton has a special appeal," Lofland said. "There's so much energy there and we all want to be part of it. I think Main Street embodies the logo: 'City of Planned Progress.' It's all there."

With the City Council's approval of the construction of four new cluster homes and two apartment units last week at the corner of St. John and Peters Avenue, most of the vacant lots in the greater downtown area are gone. Like the rest of Pleasanton, where only about 1,500 more homes and apartment units can be built before the city reaches its voter-mandated housing cap of 29,000 units, demand is outpacing supply and causing prices to rise, especially close to downtown.

"Many downtown houses have the same character as buildings in our historical downtown and so people enjoy living in houses that have that same character," Lofland explained.

The Pleasanton Downtown Association defines the downtown as stretching from Bernal on the south to the Arroyo on the north, Peters Avenue on the west and First Street on the east. But Realtors extend the downtown area much farther - all the way to where Division Street turns into Hopyard on the west and east as far as Pleasanton Heights and Pine Hill Lane.

Almost anyplace in town where residents can comfortably walk downtown qualifies as a "near downtown" location, Lofland explained. He lives in Ventana Hills above Mission Hills Park with his wife Amy and their two daughters, Jacinda, 16, and Kelsie, 14, both students and varsity and junior varsity tennis players at Foothill High School. They frequently walk downtown for coffee and Cokes, meals and to shop.

"Ours is an evolving downtown," Lofland said. "It's become quite a public gathering place since we moved here in 1982. The bars are gone and we now have upscale restaurants and retail stores, but it still has that small town feel with the Museum on Main in the old police station that looks the same and the Veterans Memorial Building about to get a facelift without losing any of its historic appeal."

Lofland became a Realtor in 1986 with Tri-Valley Brokers and moved to Alan Pinel in 2001, where Blaise Lofland is an independent agency within the Alain Pinel organization. Working with him in his growing business, which handles numerous downtown property sales, are lifelong Pleasanton residents and Amador Valley High School graduates Marti Gilbert, a licensed executive assistant, and Ashley Kenitzer, executive assistant.

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