Drive just west of Sun City Roseville, and you’ll glimpse the endangered species of these recession-addled times—construction workers.

It’s nothing like at the peak of the market, but in the massive master-planned developments in west Roseville known as WestPark and Fiddyment Farm, new homes are – somewhat surprisingly – still being built.

“We’re doing well relative to this environment,” said Chris Robles, community development manager for the city of Roseville. “We have the inventory they can build on, and we have a market.”

Through the end of July, developers applied for 290 permits to build single-family homes in the West Roseville Specific Plan, the 3,200-acre area annexed by the city in 2004 that includes WestPark and Fiddyment.

That’s about 70 percent of all single-family development in the city, and is 75 permits more than through the same period last year, according to city data.

Slated to include 8,500 units and an eye-popping 20,000 residents at build-out, WestPark will be more populous than the city of Auburn and town of Loomis combined. So far, officials estimate 1,730 units have been completed or are under construction in the West Plan. Residents began taking ownership in 2007, just as the market tanked.

The sales are off dramatically from projections made years ago, thanks to the recession and high inventory of existing homes, many in foreclosure.

And if this year proves better than last, it’s a small victory. That’s because 2008 was the most lackluster for new-home construction since the 2003 peak, with just 675 building permits, according to city estimates. In 2003, 1,462 were pulled citywide.

In both developments, enormous tracts of land, crisscrossed by tidy landscaped sidewalks, stand vacant, as most builders wait for buyers before starting work on home sites.

Yet things here are better than elsewhere.

“When we moved here, things pretty much stopped,” said two-year Fiddyment Farm resident Jason Patrick, who was out with his daughters at Daulton Park last week. “Then in May or June of this year, things started picking up again.”

One sign of that are kids. The school district was caught off guard earlier this year when 100 more elementary students than anticipated registered. That sped the hiring of a full-time principal at the area’s sole public school, Junction Elementary.

Donna O'Connell, a spokeswoman for the largest builders in WestPark – Pulte and Centex, which recently merged – said buyers are coming back for a simple reason: price.

“We are seeing a lot of young families and first-time buyers that have previously been priced out of the market,” she said. “You’re not seeing the huge incentives we’ve seen a few years ago, but that’s because we’ve reduced prices.”

As the population increases, the West Plan community is developing in intangible ways, too.

Loren Cook is the president of the West Park-Fiddyment Farm Neighborhood Association. The group operates a Web site with active forums and has seen significant interest by residents in getting involved; its National Night Out earlier this month had 400 people attend, Cook said.

“We were a little shocked,” he said. “We thought we might get 100.”

For Patrick, the Fiddyment resident, things felt a bit lonely after he moved his family from Antelope. When he’d order a pizza, “delivery drivers could never find us,” he said.

Today, “we have a lot more neighbors,” he said.

Still a sore spot with residents are the lack of commercial amenities, parks and schools within the West Plan.

* A Safeway on the project’s outskirts seems to be delayed indefinitely.

* A much ballyhooed “village center” – a European-style town square with shops, restaurants and a park – is for the most part on hold.

“When there’s enough rooftops to support additional commercial development, it will come,” O’Connell said.

* Barbara Chilton Middle School won’t open to public-school students for at least another year, because too few middle-school aged kids live in the area. It’s currently leased to St. John’s School.

* A planned high school won’t be built until at least 2014 – “if housing picks up,” said Tony Monetti, superintendent of the Roseville Joint Union High School District. Until then, most students will go to Oakmont High.