Leaving Los Alamitos

LOS ALAMITOS —  It was largely the loss of military personnel that took the population down by 700 people, city officials say.

In any case, their departure has apparently been so quiet that few people in the city knew they had gone, or where, or why.

“It’s certainly not because of our food,” said Maryann Trasport, who, with her husband, Amel, runs the Pittsburgh Broasted and Flame Broiled Chicken and Seafood shop on Katella near Bloomfield.

The lost residents actually made their biggest impact in Sacramento, where the Department of Finance recently made it all seem more dramatic by releasing statistics that showed Los Alamitos had lost a bigger percentage of its population during 1996 than any other California city.

“Several hundred housing units [at the Armed Forces Reserve Center] were housing people who worked at the [now-closed] shipyard in Long Beach,” said Robert Dominguez, Los Alamitos city manager. “Several hundred people have already moved out. There are probably 200 left.”

That, he said, largely accounts for the city losing 6% of the 12,350 who lived within city borders on Jan. 1, 1996. The decrease, and a smaller but related 0.4% drop in adjacent Seal Beach, were the only negatives on an Orange County sheet of positives.

Countywide, population grew by an estimated 1% last year, or 27,700, to a total of 1.65 million. While the rate of growth was far outpaced by other areas of the state--most notably Lassen County in the northeast, with a 12.4% increase--Orange County was fourth on the list based on actual increases in population. However, Orange County was displaced from 1995’s third-place ranking by Santa Clara County, with 32,400 new residents.

Overall, California’s population grew by 1.2%.

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Laguna Hills saw the largest growth in Orange County, from 25,100 residents to 29,950, nearly all of it attributable to the city’s annexation of North Laguna Hills, said Don White, Laguna Hills assistant city manager.

In Los Alamitos, the change was harder to quantify. Along Katella Avenue, home to strips of small businesses and the Los Alamitos Medical Center, life has ambled along as usual.

“I lose some business, I gain some business,” said Amel Trasport, who with his wife has owned Pittsburgh Broasted Chicken for five years. “Business stays pretty much the same.”

“If we noticed a 6% drop in business,” Maryann Trasport adds, “we wouldn’t be here any more.”

So wherever the people went, they ate before they left.

And they’re still ordering flowers. But not for a lot of funerals, ruling out another possible destination.

“We had five funerals in March--that’s probably just as much as before,” said Judy Frazier of Los Alamitos Flowers & Plants, Etc. “There’s a lot of remodeling going on. Older houses, the two-story houses. People are spending a lot of money on them. You drive down the street, you can tell it’s high income. You can smell the money.”

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So if the missing 700 did die, they didn’t take their money with them. And wherever they went, they apparently didn’t take their school-age children with them, either.

“Our population of students from within our boundaries has not declined,” said Dr. David Hatton, assistant superintendent for Los Alamitos Unified School District, which also draws students from Seal Beach, Rossmoor and a slice of Cypress. “We saw a real modest increase in enrollment from within our attendance boundaries this year.”

In any case, city manager Dominguez said, the loss won’t be dramatic enough to affect per-capita allocations of state revenues from such sources as gas taxes.

In fact, the loss hasn’t been dramatic at all, said Carol Walker of Bella Vista Travel. “I go to the grocery stores, the shopping plazas--I don’t see any less people,” she said.

But Walker said she does know two families who moved from Los Alamitos for job transfers to other parts of the country. One was a couple with three young children, the other was an older couple with grown children.

“I know where they went, and I know why they went,” she said.

Seven explained, 693 to go.

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A (More) People Place

Orange County’s population increase of 1% from 1996 to 1997 continues a trend of slow, steady growth. The county’s population is up 7% in the past five years. Here’s how the countywide population has increased since 1992, and the city-by-city change in the last year. All totals as of Jan. 1:

Countywide Population

1992: 2,488,500

1997: 2,659,300

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City 1996 1997 Change Anaheim 294,000 295,500 0.5 Brea 34,900 35,250 1.0 Buena Park 72,900 73,100 0.3 Costa Mesa 102,300 102,600 0.3 Cypress 46,500 47,050 1.2 Dana Point 36,100 36,200 0.3 Fountain Valley 54,500 54,800 0.6 Fullerton 122,400 122,800 0.3 Garden Grove 151,800 152,000 0.1 Huntington Beach 187,700 188,500 0.4 Irvine 127,500 129,300 1.4 Laguna Beach 23,850 24,100 1.0 Laguna Hills 25,100 29,950 19.3 Laguna Niguel 55,700 56,400 1.3 La Habra 54,300 54,400 0.2 Lake Forest 57,800 57,800 0.0 La Palma 15,550 15,750 1.3 Los Alamitos 12,350 11,650 -5.7 Mission Viejo 90,100 91,900 2.0 Newport Beach 69,200 70,000 1.2 Orange 120,000 122,300 1.9 Placentia 45,100 45,550 1.0 San Clemente 46,750 47,300 1.2 San Juan Capistrano 29,000 29,650 2.2 Santa Ana 306,600 307,000 0.1 Seal Beach 26,450 26,350 -0.4 Stanton 31,950 33,000 3.3 Tustin 63,800 65,300 2.4 Villa Park 6,375 6,450 1.2 Westminster 82,700 83,100 0.5 Yorba Linda 57,800 58,500 1.2 Unincorp. areas 181,300 185,900 2.5 Total 2,632,300 2,659,300 1.0

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Source: California Department of Finance