Swing by the Los Cerritos home of longtime Long Beach officeholder Jeff Kellogg and his wife Pam and you’ll suddenly feel like raising a family.
It has something to do with the white picket fence, the twin gabled dormers on the second floor and the all-around traditional architecture that comes right out of Hollywood as a location scene of Someplace in Middle America in the 1950s. All you need is Dad (maybe played by Fred MacMurray) walking down the path to his car after breakfast while his wife, two small children wave and the family dog yips happily and trots out to escort him to the gate.
Soon, Jeff and Pam will be leaving the home at 212 E. Bixby Road where they’ve raised their son and daughter, and heading to a golden-years home on the water in Naples at 193 Rivo Alto Canal.
Kellogg, 68, is leaving the neighborhood of his youth. In fact, his family has a long history in the area, going back to his grandfather settling on a home on Virginia Road in the 1930s and his parents making the short hop from the Wrigley neighborhood to Bixby Knolls in 1953. Jeff attended Long Beach schools, including Jordan High, where he excelled in sports and scored a football scholarship to the University of Oregon.
He represented the 8th District on the Long Beach City Council from 1988 till 2000 and then three terms representing Area 1 on the Long Beach Community College Board of Trustees.
For the Kelloggs, it was a do-it-now-or-never decision.
“We’ve always wanted to live on the water,” Jeff told me, though he hadn’t taken the plunge until fairly recently. Just weeks ago he was doing a lot of work on his home that he and Pam bought in 2000, and a neighbor asked if he was doing the work so he could sell the house. Kellogg looked at him like he was crazy. “I said, ‘Why would I want to do all this work to make my house perfect and then move out?’”
But then the opportunity to buy a canal-front home at 193 Rivo Alto Canal came up and the couple talked about it. Could they afford it? Are they crazy? Should they do it? If not now, as they tiptoe into their 70s, then when?
So, it’s off to the jewel of the 3rd District for the life-long 8th District resident and his wife for a chance to live where you can go paddleboarding in the morning and—if there’s any loose change left over—maybe buy a Duffy boat and catch some sunsets in the electric boat that they can park in their front yard.
In some ways, the Naples home mirrors the Kelloggs’ Los Cerritos home: Both are white two-story houses with fenced front yards, and the Naples place even has the same two gabled dormers. The big difference, of course, is location. The Naples house, still in escrow, was listed at $3.75 million, while the Bixby Road went up for sale last weekend, listed by Dick Gaylord at $1.595 million.
The Kellogg home has three bedrooms and two baths in 2,738 square feet. Recent improvements to the home include a metal roof and updated bathrooms.
The living room is inviting, with a fireplace, and the handsome formal dining room with hardwood wainscoting below elegant patterned wallpaper.
The kitchen includes glass-and-wood cabinets and top-end appliances, and its dining area opens fully to a waterfall terrace and outdoor fireplace along with a backyard bar and barbecue.
Other interior offerings include the three spacious bedrooms capped by a primary suite with an elegant en suite bath, an adjacent office/library/nursery, a laundry room and a two-car garage with room in the driveway for two additional cars.
It’s a fine family home in a great walkable neighborhood with brisk strolls to Steelcraft, Jongewaard’s Bake n Broil and all the offerings of the Atlantic Avenue retail and restaurant corridor.
The home’s only drawback is: If you’ve always wanted to live on the water, this isn’t your dream house.
