Rancho Bernardo as Reinvention of the Suburb: The Formation of a New Type of West Coast Master-Planned Community

Rancho Bernardo, a community in the northernmost portion of the city of San Diego, California, arose in the 1960s to become a rather unique kind of suburb for the era: It was a corporately-managed master-planned community that included multiple types of housing, including condominiums, and certain of its neighborhoods were reserved exclusively for older individuals. Rancho Bernardo’s modern history began in 1961, when Donald and Lawrence Daley sold part of the land from the Daley Ranch to the city of San Diego. Two La Jolla-based developers, W.R. Hawn and Harry L. Summers, then hired Charles Luckman and Associates of Los Angeles to draw up the original master plan in 1962; this plan was subsequently amended three times, in 1966, 1971, and 1974. The community also tried to get people to move in from other parts of the United States with a newsletter (and later magazine) called the Bernardo Brandings. Rancho Bernardo, Inc., with Summers as president, managed the covenants, conditions and restrictions, or CC&RS, in the housing developments from 1963 to 1968; late that year, a New York-based conglomerate called AVCO purchased a fifty-one percent controlling interest in the company and renamed it AVCO Community Developers, Inc., (ACDI). ACDI effectively controlled the CC&Rs in the Rancho Bernardo developments until 1984, when AVCO sold off their last remaining assets in the community, at which point the homeowners’ associations in each neighborhood had full control over the CC&Rs. This thesis also includes a website and two short films, one focusing on Rancho Bernardo’s early housing developments and the other dealing with three key community institutions: the Rancho Bernardo Swim and Tennis Club, the Rancho Bernardo Inn, and the Rancho Bernardo Community Presbyterian Church (RBCPC).