Summary:
Tony Lagiss was interviewed by Julie Sullivan in November, 2004. A Port Costa native, his career in the sale and development of Lafayette real estate started when he was 25, in 1946, when he bought twenty acres of “billie goat land” on Deer Hill Road near Pleasant Hill Road. Tony’s timing was good, as the City was just at the beginning of several decades of rapid growth. He has a unique perspective on how Lafayette took on its present configuration and character.
Oral History:
“My roots have always been here,” Tony Lagiss says proudly. Born in Contra Costa County in what is now Port Chicago in 1921, he graduated from Mt. Diablo High School in Concord in 1938. When World War II broke out, he enrolled in Merchant Marine school at the age of 20. His ship sailed to Hawaii, then ferried troops to the Pacific and carried wounded to Australia.
After the war Tony wanted to stay in the Merchant Marine. “But they were junking all the ships, and I was very young to be a captain.” He was discharged in December 1948.
Tony remembers Lafayette in the 40’s and 50’s as, “Very rural, a lot of open space. Moraga Land Company owned all the land from Glenside Drive for miles into Moraga. They owned thousands of acres which is now homes and subdivisions.” He has a number of aerial photos of old Lafayette landmarks, including Rick’s Drive-in Restaurant on Pleasant Hill Road.
“I thought Lafayette would be a growing area. In the late 1940’s there were only two real estate brokers. One was Colonel Garrett, who built the building in downtown on Mt. Diablo where Postino is now. He wanted to make Lafayette like Carmel. There was one other broker, Captain Sanford, who had an office where Happy Valley Road came into Glorietta Boulevard. He said, ‘You’ve got a good eye for real estate. Why don’t you come to work for me? I’ll teach you.’ I was twenty-five, and I had already bought twenty acres in Lafayette (on Deer Hill Road near Pleasant Hill Road). My family thought I was crazy for buying billy goat land. There was nothing out here then.”
Tony got his real estate license in March 1949. After working with Captain Sanford about a year, he went into business for himself. He had a log building custom-built. It was located on Mt. Diablo Boulevard in front of the Lafayette cemetery. “Mt. Diablo was just a little two-lane road. I had a big neon sign. There was nothing north of Mt. Diablo Boulevard, no freeway, no BART, nothing.”
Tony lived with his widowed mother for several years in Port Chicago, “until the Navy condemned the whole town for the naval base. I commuted back and forth until around 1955.” At about the same time the Navy condemned Port Chicago, Tony learned the county was auctioning a house on the corner of Springhill and Pleasant Hill Roads. “I was the high bidder at $1,000. It was a cheap bid, but it was a lot back then. I had the house moved to my property right under the big oak tree.
“I sold the first acreage owned by the Moraga Land Company on Glenside Drive to two brothers, Paul and Jack Marchant, who came from Berkeley. I sold them little lots before that near what was then downtown. Then I sold them that first acreage from the Moraga Land Company for $2,500 an acre.”
Tony sold the properties where the Plaza Shopping Center is. “I assembled four pieces of property adjacent to each other and sold them to Russell Bruzzone. In the 1950’s I sold two and a half acres for a lumber yard to Elmo Lombardi, who was also from Port Chicago, next to the cemetery (current site of Lafayette Park Hotel). He was a friend of my father’s. That was bare ground at that time. The owner was Larry Curtola, who owned the Diablo Country Club. He accepted a deal for $9,600. Mr. Lombardi thought it was a lot of money.
“I worked with Lucky Stores and got them interested in building the market. I negotiated with Lucky to bring them into that location after Bruzzone bought the property. I sold the property to Bank of America in Lafayette where they are now. It used to be a little Texaco station. B of A really wanted to be on the south side of Mt. Diablo. I went to their office in San Francisco with my maps, and told them there was no property left on the south side. They bought an acre on the north side.
“I liked working with commercial property, but I’ve sold many homes in Los Palos, Happy Valley,” Tony says. “I sold a lot of homes on Willow Pass Road in Monte Gardens in Concord. I was the exclusive agent.”
Tony specialized in service station sites. He sold five sites to Union Oil Company. “The companies respected my judgment, because I knew where things were, and I knew the property owners and was able to make deals. I owned two sites which I leased to what was then Standard Oil and is now Chevron; one was at the corner of Pleasant Hill Road and Deer Hill Road. I leased that for thirty years, and I still own another site in Pittsburg. I’m trying to get the city to give me a permit for a big, modern service station that Chevron wants to build at their former site on Pleasant Hill Road.”
The location of Tony’s office on Mt. Diablo Boulevard was condemned for construction of the freeway and BART. “So I had Trost, the house mover, move my office to the property near my house.” Tony married in 1965. He and his wife are divorced. He has one daughter and two grandchildren. “I haven’t been active in real estate for more than thirty years. I wouldn’t want to be in the game today, although I’m still licensed as Contra Costa Realty.”
He remembers the old days. “Petar (of Petar’s Restaurant) was my best friend. The place I went for lunch was El Nido Rancho Hotel. Good friends of mine were Don and Ruthie Thompson at the Cape Cod House.” In 1958 Tony managed John Nejedly’s successful campaign for district attorney. Tony also ran for the first city council when Lafayette was incorporated.
“The biggest change (in Lafayette) was BART and the freeway,” Tony says. “But even before that there was growth. We had a beautiful little community with builders like the Marchant Brothers, the lumber yard, realtors like me, a chamber of commerce. We all worked together and everybody knew everybody, and there were no problems. Then the city incorporated, and there were a bunch of little box buildings built fronting on the boulevard. I hate to see those little buildings, where people open up businesses with stars in their eyes then don’t make it. I hate to see the continual vacancies. They come and go.
“I miss the fact we were under the jurisdiction of the county, which cooperated with realtors and developers. I don’t think the current city administration is at all cooperative. We need parking downtown. As I look back, we were like a little family here. Everybody knew everybody, and now we know nobody. There won’t be any changes in the downtown. Back to the pioneer days Lafayette’s downtown hasn’t changed that much.”
Excerpted from “Voices of Lafayette” by Julie Sullivan. This book is available for purchase in the History Room.
Great to hear some of the old timers talk about how Lafayette use to be… it was a small rural town with a lot of gas stations when I was a kid growing up in the 50’s and 60’s here… It was safe and no one locked their doors or cars because we all trusted everyone… but back then, no one bothered you or your stuff… I remember Sun Valley Lumber where the Park Hotel is now… there was Western Sand and Brick across the street and down a little… We had Diamond K at the other end of town… Lafayette was a bustling place in the 50’s and 60’s as many from Oakland and San Francisco were looking for a better life to raise their “Baby Boomers”….. great weather, friendly folks, good schools, great shopping and active sports for all the kids to get involved in…. it was great growing up here.