Know Your Neighborhood: Lincoln Village Mixes It Up on the Rancho Cordova Border

Lincoln Village is a neighborhood on the edge – literally. The more than 5,000 people who live between Highway 50 and Old Placerville Road east of Bradshaw and west of Routier roads, turn to Rancho Cordova City Council to represent their code enforcement and planning interests. They call Rancho Cordova police if their car is stolen, SacMetro Fire Department when they smell smoke. The 95827 zip code on their bills is a Sacramento address and they send their children to A.M. Winn Elementary, Albert Einstein Middle School and Rosemont High School in the Sacramento City Unified School District.

The 51-year-old community grew in fits and starts according to Lincoln Village Neighborhood Association (LVNA) President, Kevin Jenkins. Jenkins, a facility manager at a Methodist church in the Arden-Arcade area, moved to Lincoln Village in 2001. His wife’s family traces their roots in the area back to 1972.

Jenkins called Rancho Cordova’s incorporation in 2003 a good thing for the neighborhood. It brought more local representation to enforce blight code requirements, trash pickup and address speeders without the ultra-nanny regulations of a community with Conditions, Covenants and Restrictions (CCNRs). “We are very independent here,” Jenkins said.

Like much of the rest of the city, Lincoln Village’s location makes it attractive to many. The one-square-mile is freeway close, halfway between Folsom and Sacramento and light rail accessible. It’s also a great place to watch the annual Air Show from your front porch.

Mortgages and rental rates are accessible to many as the neighborhood boasts a housing mix that includes a mobile home park, duplexes, 400 apartment units and single-family homes. A study of tax records indicated that about a quarter of those are rentals. That can make for a mobile population with community members starting in Lincoln Village and then moving to a home in the newer part of the city or out of the area entirely. LVNA lost four of its seven committee leaders last year to moving vans.

Lincoln Villagers are an ethnically diverse lot. Residents include immigrants, retired military families, young professionals and working families. The demographics reported in the A.M. Winn Elementary School Accountability Report Card shows that in 2005, 44 percent of the student population was white. African-American (25.6 percent), Hispanic (19 percent) and Asian-American (7 percent) made up the bulk of the attendee race.

This diversity can be heard as well as seen. The Winn Report Card shows that English declined as the predominant home language from 65 percent in 2000 to 63.4 percent in 2005. Russian has increased from 17 percent to 19 percent and Spanish rose from 12 percent to 13.7 percent. Students also speak a handful of other languages at home, including Vietnamese, Hmong, Cantonese and Mien.

In addition to those who rest their heads in Lincoln Village, 750 people work in the neighborhood offices, retail and government buildings. Another 200 adults attend vocational or trade education at High Tech Institute or Western Electrical Contractors Association.

Jenkins estimates Lincoln Village is home to more than110 companies. Residents don’t have to leave town to find a dentist, optometrist, doctor, lawyer, accountant, insurance agent or any assortment of real estate and mortgage companies.

Restaurant choices in the ‘hood range from Korean BBQ and fast food to authentic Mexican cuisine. Bradshaw Road is home to a Food Source grocery store. Several smaller markets, including one specializing in Eastern European items, offer alternatives.

Residents even have options when it comes to where to worship locally. Churches in the neighborhood include Seventh Day Adventist, Baptist and Church of the Later Day Saints (Mormon). Cordova Church of the Nazarene and Mayhew Community Baptist Church sit just on the other side of the line.

“We have mixed together in such a way as to create a dynamic and energized neighborhood,” Jenkins said. Three years ago LVNA adopted the neighboring Countryside Neighborhood Association because the two communities share so many issues. The LVNA web site is a clearing house for popular events including an annual pancake breakfast, National Night Out, Spring Cleaning Days and the Rancho Cordova Park District’s upcoming Easter Egg Hunt. An array of standing committees are dedicated to the security and beautification of the place they call home.

One of the challenges residents have stepped up to handle collectively is blight. The foreclosure crisis hit the neighborhood particularly hard as some “affordable” homes may not have been and renters who were current on their payments were forced out when landlords lost their investments. That left a lot of untended yards.

“Many neighbors worked street-by-street, mowing grass on vacant properties,” Jenkins said. He predicted that the area would be one of the first to come out of the recession as newly available properties are priced to sell.

The neighborhood is getting help in the sprucing up department from California Dept. of Transportation, which is building new sound walls along the freeway edge of the neighborhood to replace the collapsing metal walls installed by the developer decades ago.

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Posted by JT Long on Feb 8 2010. Filed under Viewpoints. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.