By GORDY HOLT
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Once upon a time in a neighborhood called View Ridge, million-dollar views were available for less than $800 down, $50 a month. That has changed.

Mount Rainier and Lake Washington still hang in many of the picture windows that open to the east, but housing values and those million-dollar views are fast reaching equilibrium. Even where the sight lines aren't so hot, homes that might have sold for less than $100,000 just a few years ago are becoming $300,000 tear-downs.

"If you can find one for sale . . . ," says real estate agent Neale Weaver, a View Ridge resident since 1972. "It's crazy."

Crazy, but for the most part, View Ridge residents love their neighborhood nevertheless.

"We wanted a suburb with a city feel, which is what I think we have here," says Linda Paul. Her family moved from one of Seattle's southeast neighborhoods, Mount Baker, six years ago.

Rosemary Fisher brought her family to the west side of View Ridge in 1986, arriving from no farther away than neighboring Wedgwood.

"We came to View Ridge for the school, not the view," she says.

Klaus and Paula Stern arrived in 1973 after their two children had grown and flown.

"Already the neighbors have changed several times, and we're the old-timers," Klaus Stern says.

Barely a mile square on a hill above the former Sand Point Naval Air Station, View Ridge is a neighborhood of quiet streets, pleasant sidewalks and neatly clipped lawns and gardens.

There are at least three churches and two synagogues in the general area, and the View Ridge Community Club is always on the hunt for active members. But some of the neighborhood's strongest ties are reserved for View Ridge Elementary School, founded in a clutch of portables in 1944 and built 50 years ago this spring.

Narrowly defined, View Ridge ranges north just 10 blocks from Northeast 65th Street, and from Sand Point Way Northeast 20 blocks west to 40th Avenue Northeast.

Within those boundaries, the only two businesses are a PCC grocery at the corner of Northeast 65th and 40th Avenue Northeast and a 7-Eleven on Sand Point Way. Although a pizza take-out joint has opened and a dessert cafe is about to along Sand Point Way, you have to travel south to the edge of University Village to find the neighborhood's cracker barrel -- the Burgermaster.

The Great Harvest Bread Co. at 5408 Sand Point Way also figures as a stop for business and gossip. Visitors may wish to stop just to sniff.

View Ridge is the topographic high point between Wedgwood to the west and Hawthorne Hills to the south. The Sand Point Country Club, its homes and golf course, flank the neighborhood's northern edge.

Like the part on a head of hair, 50th Avenue Northeast serves to separate east from west. Streets to the east offer sunrises with breakfast. To the west it's potluck -- the "other side," where Fisher and her family live.

Continued:

• Area has strong ties to school