San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Neighborhood Spotlight
Lafayette is home to famous athletes, serene views.
Once a station for the Pony Express, Lafayette was an agricultural village for generations and only became incorporated in 1968. Now it has its own BART station and a total area of 15.4 square miles.
It’s known for its rolling, bucolic hills and placid setting. Mixed woods and oak woodlands pepper the verdant landscape. Lafayette Reservoir resides in the southwestern part of town, while Briones Regional Park occupies the northern portion.
Lafayette sits between Moraga, Orinda and Walnut Creek and is considered to be part of Lamorinda, a combination of Lafayette, Moraga and Orinda. The Berkeley Hills separate Lafayette from Oakland and Berkeley.
It can get considerably hotter during the summer in Lafayette than in other parts of the Bay Area, though it’s still considered to have a Mediterranean climate. The record high temperature is 115 degrees, which the mercury reached one sweltering day in July of 1972.
Roughly 24,000 people call
Lafayette home. A little more than a third of all households have children younger than 18 in them, while about 9% of the population has someone 65 years or older living alone, according to 2019 census data.
One of the sights associated with Lafayette is the Cross of Lafayette Memorial, a hill covered in crosses representing soldiers who have died in the war with Iraq. There are around 6,000 crosses positioned on the hill as of January 2014. The site has been vandalized on several occasions and sits on private property.
Lafayette has its share of famous residents, both in the past and currently. Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback and Super Bowl icon Joe Montana used to reside in town, and former Golden State Warrior and NBA Finals Most Valuable Player Andre Iguodala also has a home here. Buster Posey of the San Francisco Giants resides in Lafayette as well.
Lafayette’s architecture features a blend of custom residences, Ranch homes and hillside abodes. A Victorian surrounded by pear orchards on Deer Hill Road is one of the town’s older residences and Lafayette experienced a boom in housing in the 1950s and ‘60s.
New housing in Lafayette consists of developments catered to young professionals and empty nesters. With its proximity to mass transit and the city center, the Town Center development is geared toward youthful, active buyers, while the Woodbury is more for older residents downsizing from singlefamily homes.
About 500 units of multifamily housing have been approved here during the last 20 years. And Lafayette has averaged the approval for eight multifamily units for every singlefamily home during the last five years.