The city grew out of a hotel. A railway-era development called Mound City failed here in the 1880s, and in the late 1890s Los Angeles businessmen and physicians reopened its hotel as a health resort named Loma Linda, Spanish for pretty hill. The Seventh-day Adventist Church bought the property in 1905 for a sanitarium and nursing school, added a school of medicine in 1909, and the city was not incorporated until 1970. That order is written into the concrete here.
The building record backs it up. Of about 10,180 homes here, 21 percent went up in the 1970s but nearly 17 percent were built between 2000 and 2009, a higher share of recent construction than any other town on our list. So we are as likely to be finishing a yard the builder left bare as we are to be breaking out a 50 year old apron, and the two jobs share almost nothing but the mixer.
Permits go to the Building and Safety Division at the Civic Center, 25541 Barton Road, and are submitted through the city's online portal. The counter itself opens 8 to 10 in the morning, Monday to Thursday, eight hours in the week, which is the best argument there is for letting a contractor file rather than taking a morning off. Work at the walk or the curb is a separate file with Public Works Engineering, further along the same road at 26000 Barton.