GILROY
– Gilroy was the fastest-growing city in Santa Clara County in
2003, according to estimates the state Department of Finance
released Wednesday.
GILROY – Gilroy was the fastest-growing city in Santa Clara County in 2003, according to estimates the state Department of Finance released Wednesday.
This city didn’t add the most people – San Jose grew by 6,600 compared to Gilroy’s 1,500 – but percentage-wise, nowhere else was close.
Gilroy grew by 3.4 percent between Jan. 1, 2003, and Jan. 1, 2004, closing at 46,200 people. Morgan Hill grew at the second-fastest rate, 2.2 percent, increasing its residents by 750 to 35,500.
With a high-tech economic recession in 2003 and crowded quarters in the county’s northern half, it makes logical sense that home-building would spill out of Silicon Valley into the county’s southern half, where open land is more plentiful.
Gilroy Mayor Al Pinheiro put his city’s 2003 growth in the perspective of its growth-control ordinance.
“It still meets the kind of growth pattern that we have set,” Pinheiro said.
The mayor said he isn’t surprised that people are attracted to his city’s location and friendly people.
“There’s no question that Gilroy is a very desirable place to live in,” he said.
Morgan Hill Mayor Dennis Kennedy had a similar reaction.
“It’s not something that I’m surprised to see,” Kennedy said. “We all know that the North County is running out of space to grow. The 2.2 percent rate, I think that’s consistent with Morgan Hill’s residential growth-control ordinance.”
Nancy Richardson, executive director of the Gilroy-based Land Trust for Santa Clara County, said she didn’t think the cities’ growth works against her group’s efforts to preserve wild and agricultural open spaces.
“The question is not how much growth there is but where the growth is taking place,” Richardson said. “This additional population, as long as it will be taking place within the cities’ 20-year growth boundaries, will not significantly impact (the Land Trust’s efforts).”
Her reaction would be different, she said, if more people were moving to lands outside city limits, but she was reassured to hear that the population of unincorporated county areas didn’t change last year.
The fastest-growing city in California was, by far, Elk Grove in Sacramento County, which went from 85,900 residents to 109,100 in 2003 – a 27 percent leap. The Department of Finance attributed this to Elk Grove’s annexation of the community of Laguna West and its addition of 2,948 new housing units.
The fastest-growing county in the state was Riverside, with a 3.4 percent population jump. Santa Clara County grew 0.7 percent to 1,731,400 people.
California’s population increased by 532,000 people in 2003 to 36,144,000, a rise of 1.5 percent.
The biggest city in California is Los Angeles, with 3,912,200 people, followed by San Diego with 1,294,000, San Jose with 926,200, San Francisco with 792,700 and Long Beach with 487,100.
The state now has 62 cities with more than 100,000 people and 154 with more than 50,000.
