Grand Stand in Googletown - Page 4

"They were buddies," Frank Tripiano says of his dad and Joe Eichler. "They talked together, laughed together, shared all their stories about their past, and they had lunches together and dinners together, and went to affairs together."

Frank still lives in his Eichler home, which was next door to his dad's. Frank, a lively man with a broad smile, is a piece of Mountain View history. He grew up on an apricot orchard a few blocks from his current house, and recalls when downtown Mountain View was a Navy town with wooden sidewalks.

The neighborhood occupies what used to be fields of tomatoes and apricots; a creek that has never flooded runs past some of the homes, including Frank's.

In some ways the neighborhood is one of Joe's most urban. Miramonte is a through road that, north of El Camino Real, becomes Shoreline Boulevard, providing a straight shot towards the freeway and Google.

"Part of the reason we chose this house is the proximity to downtown, and I don't think any Eichler neighborhood has this advantage," says Yaar. Downtown's Castro Street might be the liveliest dining destinations in the South Bay, especially since traffic was replaced by permanent outdoor dining. "Super cute," Joyce Yin says.

"Everyone likes going downtown," says Stephen Carney. "It's walkable. It's maybe 15 minutes to get to the closest restaurants, up to half an hour to get all the way to the other end of Castro. You can have any cuisine you want."

Indeed, Eichler originally wanted the tract to be even more urban than it has become. He planned to build the 'Hopkins Townhouses' on at least part of the site, as seen in the archives of architect Claude Oakland. The townhouse plan was in the works from 1969 to 1971, but it was never built.

And just a block to the south Eichler hired Oakland & Associates to design 'Miramonte Avenue & Starr Way House Studies' for multi-unit residences, perhaps townhouses again. This project too was never built.

Despite its urbanity, there is a sweet wildness about the neighborhood, thanks to other animals in addition to dogs, and thanks to one original couple who have become legendary. It's hard to talk with neighbors and not hear about Rick and Irm Ibara.

"Rick is our Dr. Doolittle, really," Joyce says, meaning the literary and screen character who speaks the language of animals. "He's raised wild scrub jays that will, if he calls them, come and land on his finger."

"He used to have a cat named Cashew, who wasn't his cat, but loved him so much. It would come over every day, and he would return the cat to the owners. And finally, they're like, 'You know, this cat wants to be with you, just keep the cat.'"

And this is the same cat that used to play with a wild squirrel.

"Rick would feed the squirrel peanuts," Joyce says, "and the cat would not harm the squirrel. And one day they actually touched. And after that, they just started to kind of play. Isn't that unusual?"

This Eichler tract has not seen much drama over the years, but when danger arose, the neighbors got on it quickly. Arnold Soderberg, who has served on the city's planning commission, was a leader of an effort a few years ago to fend off plans for large, two-story homes to be built behind the Eichlers on Trophy Drive.

"And if the buildings behind us had any rear-facing second-story windows, they'd be able to look all the way through our houses to the front door," Peter Stahl says.