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Document 4 of 13.

June 7, 1998 Sunday, FINAL EDITION

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. A1

LENGTH: 1398 words

HEADLINE: 'Gated' living inspires debate

BYLINE: ALAN SCHER ZAGIER, STAFF WRITER

BODY:
Debbie Leonard grew up behind a white picket fence. It wrapped itself around her family's house in East Durham, its manicured lawn and all the other trappings of a secure suburban life in the '50s.

Four decades later, Leonard still enjoys suburbia - from behind a wrought-iron gate, guarded by a security camera and a brick wall.

She is one of about 8 million Americans who live in gated communities, partly out of a sense that walled enclaves are safer than traditional neighborhoods. "There's a sense of security in a gated community," said Leonard, 48, a single woman who recently purchased a home in Lattamoor, a Durham County subdivision on Guess Road near the Eno River.

"I feel like I could walk out of my house and through the whole development without locking the door."

Whether for security, prestige or a bit of both, gated communities are spreading across the Triangle. Though marketed largely to well-to-do retirees, gates and guardhouses can now be found surrounding Durham apartment complexes as well as new homes near Falls Lake. In Garner, visitors to Indian Creek Overlook must pass through a gate to enter a subdivision of mobile homes.

As they multiply, gated communities are triggering fierce passions. Some urban planners say they symbolize how America is isolating itself from problems rather than dealing with them head-on. Others contend that gated neighborhoods create an illusion of security while causing other problems for the community.

In the past two years, Cary and Carrboro have passed ordinances banning gated communities. Both ordinances were approved because of concerns that such communities were exclusionary and that they could delay the responses of fire trucks and ambulances.

"If people want to live in a community that's walled off from the rest of town, then they'll have to find it somewhere else," Carrboro Alderman Alan Spalt said after the aldermen voted last month to prohibit gated neighborhoods. "We're a community of interconnected neighborhoods. Walls are unfriendly."

Although hard numbers are elusive, researchers estimate there are as many as 30,000 gated communities across the country. The Triangle is home to at least 20, including Governors Club in northern Chatham County, Adams Mountain north of Raleigh and Olde Raleigh, the Capital City's only gated subdivision.

That number is small compared with the gated communities in crime-wary, retiree-heavy states such as Florida and California. But interest among Triangle homeowners is growing, according to local builders.

"We had a group of people come to us, mostly older, who wanted to live together [in a secure environment]," said Lou Goetz, a commercial developer who entered the residential market with Lattamoor. "We felt there really was a need here."

The methods of restricting access by outsiders can vary. Some communities hire guards. Others use an electronic gate that opens with the proper security code.

Either way, residents of gated communities are bound to feel safer, said Rocky Manning, developer of La Ventana, billed as "an exclusive estate community of Falls Lake" in northern Wake County.

"It doesn't stop people that absolutely want to get in a place," he said. "But it's a general deterrent."

Intruders don't always need to be persistent or crafty, either. At the Governors Club, visitors have been known to enter after telling the guard there was a pizza delivery in the car. And at Olde Raleigh, a well-dressed visitor waiting outside the security gate was ushered inside by a departing resident, no questions asked, on a recent afternoon.

The access code at Neuse Colony Estates, a Johnston County gated community, is an open secret, one resident said. "The gate comes down in the evening," Fran Poropatic said. "But most everyone around here knows the combination."

The perception that gates reduce crime is just that - a perception, said Mary Gail Snyder, a University of California at Berkeley researcher and co-author of "Fortress America: Gated Communities in the United States."

"They have a marginal effect at best," she said in an interview. "Gates are not hard to get by. They're not going to stop professional criminals."

A 1990 study by the Fort Lauderdale Police Department showed that barricaded neighborhoods in that Florida city were no safer than "open neighborhoods," with savvy criminals easily eluding the security gates and street blockades.

Snyder and Edward Blakely, her co-author and dean of the School of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Southern California, argue that gated communities promote discrimination and segregation and place a private value on public space.

"What is the measure of nationhood when neighbors require armed patrols and electric fencing to keep out other citizens?" they write. "Regardless of the motivation or mode, gated communities are in effect sealing themselves off from the outside world."

But for Rebecca Talbott, the gates that surround her Olde Raleigh subdivision in northwest Raleigh promote a heightened sense of community, not a sense of isolation.

Restricted access means fewer cars taking short cuts through the neighborhood and more walks around the block, Talbott said. Parents worry less. And who could possibly object to the absence of aluminum-siding salesmen?

"It actually promotes neighborliness," said Talbott, who has lived in Olde Raleigh for four years. "We have not found that being a gated community has been a negative at all."

Goetz, the Durham developer, says gated communities are getting a bad rap. At Lattamoor, homes start at $ 140,000, hardly exorbitant in today's market.

"I don't think elitism has anything to do with a gate. It has to do with the price of the house," he said. "If you build $ 60,000 homes, and they're gated, would you call it an elitist community? A gate has to do with security and safety. If someone puts in an alarm system in their house, is that elitist? I don't see any difference."

Using that standard of home prices, several of the Triangle's gated communities are unabashedly elite. Governors Club, where multimillion-dollar homes easily blend together, counts among its residents Phil Ford, former basketball star and current assistant coach for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and former UNC-CH Chancellor Paul Hardin.

Keith Hills, a gated community built on a golf course in Harnett County, boasts a collection of the political, business and social elite, including Secretary of State Elaine Marshall, professional boxer James "Bonecrusher" Smith and Dr. Norman Wiggins, president of nearby Campbell University.

It's those kinds of residents that the developers of Willowbend Plantation, under construction near Jordan Lake, hope to attract. The security gate is central to the company's efforts to sell the dozen 10-acre lots with horse stables, said Kevin O'Neal, project developer for Chatham Development Co.

"We wanted an upscale community," he said. "A security gate is part of what gives you that image."

Even so, it's not an image that all Triangle homeowners - or town leaders - embrace.

Jack Smith, a Cary Town Council member, said he once visited the Olde Raleigh subdivision. He doesn't want to go back.

"It looks like a fortress," Smith said. "All that's missing is a chain-link fence around the gate with a master lock attached. It doesn't send a message of welcome to all."

Smith said the Town Council wanted to promote a welcoming atmosphere when members voted unanimously last year to ban gated subdivisions. But they had other reasons as well.

"The primary reason was safety," he said, meaning easy access for emergency vehicles. "Secondary is the issue of what are you keeping out and what are you keeping in."

Prestige and protection aside, some homeowners are finding that sometimes gates just aren't worth the fuss.

In Durham's Hope Valley neighborhood, residents of The Valley subdivision balked at activating their security gate after finding out how much their homeowners' dues would increase to hire a private guard.

"We decided it was a nuisance to open and shut the gates," said Aubrey Fletcher, a former president of the homeowners association. "It was dropped like a hot potato."

So, at least in The Valley, the gate remains open.

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(Staff writers Stuart Leavenworth and Manya Brachear contributed to this report.)

GRAPHIC: c graphic; A spate of gates; Staff

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

LOAD-DATE: June 7, 1998