Once-sleepy area springs to life with new homes, restaurants and retailers.

The narrow strip of the San Fernando Valley that would one day become Valley Glen was, for muchofthe 1800s, part of the vast collection of wheat fields ownedby the wealthy Lankershim family.

Those fields would give rise to the small hamlet of Lankershim, whichwould in turn grow intothe tracts and commercial stripsof NorthHollywood.Thatneighborhood remained virtually intact until its western thirdsplit off in the 2000s to become Valley Glen.

Decades beforethe split, however, the area became amajor drawthanks to the film industry. Studiosbegan to migrateoverthe hill, with Universal Pictures, Walt DisneyPicturesand Mack Sennett among the production houses to set up shop on the north side of the Hollywood Hills.

By the 1930s, this migrationof the entertainment industryhad increased the Valley’s diversityto the point whereits firstJewish house of worship,Adat Ariel, was founded in asmall area near North Hollywood called Valley Glen.

World WarIIacceleratedthe growth of the Valley’s othergreat economic engine, the aerospace industry.AsBurbank became a center of aircraftmanufacturing, demand for housing for the workers who toiled on the assembly lines exploded, and the final push to develop the Valley began in earnest.

During the war, the Valley’s populationdoubled, and it would increase fivefold afterthe war. The vast tracts of suburban ranch homes that typify the Valley in the popularimaginationwerebuilt in the postwarperiod to house this influx of people.

To provide higher education opportunities for these newresidents, Los Angeles Valley College wasfounded in 1949 in VanNuys, and movedtoits currentlocation in what is nowValley Glenin1951.

The collegeprovided something of anew center of gravityfor the area, and the constructionof the second phase of the Hollywood Freewayin1968,whichcut ahuge swath of the neighborhood off from NorthHollywood proper, eventually led residents thereto vote on anew name for the region.

They choseValley Glen, after the historic Jewish community. Soon, portions of eastern Van Nuys, whichhad already lost its southernmost tracts to Sherman Oaks, joined them.

In 2004, the cityratified the change, making Valley Glen one of the city’snewest neighborhoods.

Neighborhood highlights The GreatWall of LosAngeles:

This 2,700-foot long mural in the Tujunga Wash, which depicts scenes from California history, is one of the longest in the world.

Higher education: LAVC is a true community college, boasting an art gallery, a theater complex, and a museum dedicated to the history of the Valley.

NoHo redux: The neighborhood’s proximity to upcoming retail mega-development NoHo West means the shopping is about to get a whole lot better in Valley Glen.

Neighborhood challenges

Awork in progress: Valley Glen’s relatively short history as an independent neighborhood hasn’t produced a unique, definable character for the area as of yet.

Expert insight Chrishell Stause, a Realtor with John Aaroe Group, recently purchased a house in Valley Glen. She said the neighborhood, after flying under the radar for years, is “really starting to take off,” with new home construction, restaurants and retailers on the way.

“Everything that was old is being turned around, renovated and re-leased,” she said. “You can see the whole area going up.”

She predicted Valley Glen’s trajectory would be like that of Sherman Oaks, which started off sleepy before becoming a popular Valley neighborhood.

With inventory in Valley Glen low, there’s not a lot of room for negotiation for home buyers, particularly when it comes to brand-new homes, Stause cautioned.

Market snapshot In the 91401 ZIP Code, based on 22 sales, the median sales price for single-family homes in April was $755,000, according to CoreLogic. That was a 5.6% increase in median price compared with the same month the previous year.

Report card Public schools within the boundaries of Valley Glen include John B. Monlux Elementary, which scored 827 out of 1,000 in the 2013 Academic Performance Index.

Coldwater Canyon Elementary had a score of 824 and Kittridge Street Elementary scored 810. James Madison Middle scored 737 and Ulysses S. Grant Senior High had a score of 704.

hotproperty@latimes.com