Here was a great deal for someone tired of paying rent in Land Park. New Benson and Sedar homes with atrium entries, double master suites and oak cabinetry, starting at $85,900. A 30-year mortgage fixed at 11.9%. That’s how banks got rich in 1982.
Say goodbye to landlords. Move 4 miles down Riverside Boulevard and own a piece of the dream. Welcome to Greenhaven Pocket.
I missed my chance. When I bought a house in Pocket in 1990—three bedrooms, two baths, built six years earlier by Winncrest—prices had skyrocketed. I paid $183,000. Soon after escrow closed, recession hit. The home instantly lost value.
I thought about those early Pocket years while walking the neighborhood the other day. I wanted to see how Greenhaven Pocket looked six decades after developers replaced 4,700 acres of swamps, orchards and potato fields with 16,000 homes.
The answer: Not bad.
Pocket’s wide, meandering streets and low density reflect the excess of late midcentury suburban planning. These days, streets get narrow and lots shrink. Density rules.
But a walk down Rush River Drive or Durfee Way proves planners and builders who created Greenhaven and Pocket in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s met their moment. They predicted how the community would look two or three generations later.
They played the long game. Their instincts were good.
The most interesting part of Pocket’s design was the subtle suggestion that residents don’t need cars all the time. Radical thinking six decades ago, mostly discredited.
Today two-car garages still dominate from Riverside Boulevard to Pocket Road. The first things a visitor from older neighborhoods in Midtown or Land Park sees in Pocket are endless garage doors. That’s what homeowners wanted 50 years ago.
Two-car garages, double master suites and oak cabinetry dazzled prospective buyers in the 1970s. But Pocket was planned with convenience in mind.
Residents could shop for groceries, send their kids to school, pick up prescriptions or attend church without opening their garage doors.
They could walk. They could ride bikes. Pocket’s planners created a green belt and bike trail through the community’s heart. Drainage canals—necessary because Pocket’s heart sits below sea level—are lined with walking and cycling paths.
Planners built bike bridges over Florin Road, Gloria Drive and Riverside Boulevard to eliminate cross-traffic conflicts between vehicles, bicycles and pedestrians. They formed a tunnel under Parklin Avenue to keep bikes moving.
The dream that Pocket people might walk everywhere was naïve. Developers knew it. They surrounded the community’s five retail shopping centers with parking lots, crowded ever since, packed with ever-larger vehicles.
When I moved a few blocks behind the Promenade center, I walked to Bel Air for groceries. After Nugget opened, I walked the canal to Lake Crest Village. I never saw anyone else walking home with groceries.
Beyond the parkways, canals and garage doors, a remarkable feature of Greenhaven Pocket is something unseen: utility polls jumbled with phone and data cables and electrical wires. Utilities are buried underground. Rest in peace.
Pocket planners didn’t limit their foresight to utilities. They engineered diversity.
The result is a place where apartments fill key intersections. On side streets, two-bedroom duplexes nest alongside single-family homes. Pocket has gated neighborhoods, lakeside villas and studios by the month.
Reviewing Pocket real estate ads from 44 years ago, I got lost in time. Nothing much changed since 1982.
“Life in the Greenhaven Pocket area is among the best!” one ad says. “Nowhere else can you find the unique combination of recreational opportunities, services and a choice of affordable homes.”
“Affordable” and “nowhere” were notable claims in 1982, when atrium entries were the rage and interest rates were 11.9%. But the words were more or less accurate.
Today young parents can’t buy a house for $85,900 or dinosaur bunk bed at My Kid’s Room. The Lake Crest Village furniture shop closed decades ago. Otherwise, Greenhaven Pocket feels almost good as new.
R.E. Graswich can be reached at regraswich@icloud.com. Follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram: @insidesacramento.
