Most weeknights after 5 p.m., a line of patrons snakes around the Olive Garden restaurant in Palmdale, where hungry diners face an hourlong wait. The story is the same at the El Torito next door and the Red Lobster up the street, where the wait on Friday and Saturday can last two hours.
Just about every sit-down eatery in the west Antelope Valley has a line at the dinner hour because there are not enough sit-down restaurants to meet demand in the fast-growing region.
"I don't even consider it anymore," said a frustrated Barbara Lods, 43, a marketing representative from Lancaster.
In the newly minted subdivisions and gated communities on the fringes of Southern California, residents express concern about traffic, schools and crime.
But what really gets them going is the lack of sit-down dining and upscale shopping.
Cities and towns in the Antelope Valley and Inland Empire have long been among the fastest-growing in the nation. Once written off by retailers as lower-middle-class "starter" communities, these areas are rapidly going upscale.
Now, former metro Los Angeles and Orange County residents weaned on gourmet grocers and glittering fashion emporiums want their California Pizza Kitchens. And their Nordstroms. And their Banana Republics.
The clamor has spurred local leaders into action as they try to convince skeptical high-end retailers that a formerly blue-collar town such as, say, Palmdale can support such enterprises.
"Perception is reality," said Mark McGaughey, a vice president with commercial real estate firm CB Richard Ellis in North Hollywood. "In their minds, the Antelope Valley is still a remote blue-collar, high-crime, backwoods kind of area."
McGaughey was hired by the city of Palmdale to try to lure retailers -- and acknowledges it has been an uphill battle. "Some of these restaurants, tenants and service providers, they want their brand associated with Santa Monica and Brea and Brentwood," he said.
Of course, inland cities are nowhere close to Brentwood and Santa Monica when it comes to property values or income levels. Still, the inland areas have seen major increases in spending power.
In 1990, the median annual income of households in both Riverside and San Bernardino counties was roughly $33,000, but by 2005 those figures had climbed to $52,000 and $49,000, respectively.
