Small-Town Feel Planned for Big Centennial Development

The trick, these days, when building a large new city is to think small, or at least small-town.

In the wind-swept high desert of the Antelope Valley, developers hope to construct the largest planned community in Los Angeles County history -- the “new town” of Centennial, with 70,000 residents on the vast expanse of the Tejon Ranch.

Despite its giant scale -- Centennial would have 23,000 homes -- backers are promoting its seven so-called village centers, clusters of shops, restaurants and community services that divide the huge project into identifiable neighborhoods.

“We’re creating a place in the tradition of small-town America,” said Randy Jackson, whose Costa Mesa planning firm is putting the finishing touches on Centennial. “It’s really about people wanting to get away from the sprawl of large-scale suburbia.”

Yet critics say Centennial could add to that sprawl if plans for jobs and transit services in the far-flung development fall short. Those issues are sure to be examined when the project is considered by the regional planning commission this fall, and by the Board of Supervisors next year.

Centennial stands out, said county Planning Director James Hartl, not only because of its size, but because it is not an extension of a metropolitan area.

“The project is out there 30 miles by itself, so it will have to have all of its own infrastructure and services as a stand-alone town,” he said.

While Centennial planners boast that the community would create 30,000 jobs for 23,000 households, Hartl notes that “you can’t force people to live and work in the same location.” And employment opportunities often lag years behind home and retail construction.

That means traffic on southbound Interstate 5 could snarl as it reaches Santa Clarita, Hartl said, especially when the nearly 21,000-home Newhall Ranch project, already approved by the county, is included in the mix.

“So when you add the Centennial traffic, we’re going to be interested in how they propose to solve that,” he said.

Greg Medeiros, project director for Centennial, said van pools and express buses would take the new community’s residents to jobs in Santa Clarita and Lancaster.

And Medeiros said he’s already talking with biomedical and light-industrial companies about relocating to Centennial. Sites have also been set aside for a college, hospital and civic center.

Planner Jackson said a large Eastern university has expressed interest in building a West Coast campus at the proposed town. Consider the economic jump-start UC Irvine gave that community, he said. “Here, they’re starting Day One to recruit the jobs.”

But even some of the nation’s most renowned planned communities -- such as Reston, Va., and Columbia, Md. -- initially struggled to lure large employers. And it took the Newhall Land and Farming Co.’s developments in Valencia nearly two decades to bring many jobs. Now, its jobs-to-housing ratio is almost 3 to 1, and Los Angeles companies regularly relocate there, said company spokeswoman Marlee Lauffer.

Recognizing the importance of up-front employment, some local governments have begun to force new town developers to produce jobs with each phase of housing. But there are no guarantees.

Mountain House, a new town under construction 60 miles east of San Francisco, is about to begin the second phase of its 16,000-home project but has yet to lure a big employer. The project, though still in its early stages, is envisioned as a self-sustaining community with 22,000 jobs.

To keep a lid on sprawl, a development agreement prohibits any of the 700 acres zoned for business from being turned into housing if commercial tenants can’t be found. San Joaquin County officials also will analyze the project every time 2,000 homes are built to ensure that it is living up to its promise of affordability and job creation.

Historically, communities have evolved step by step, with construction of thousands of homes finally producing enough customers to lure large retail centers. Then, after many years of growth, the cities are large enough to attract big private employers.

Berkeley-based planner Peter Calthorpe, a guru for self-sustaining “new urbanist” communities that promote pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods, said new towns should provide plenty of jobs up front, an efficient transit system and far more dwellings per acre than the typical suburban tract of single-family homes.

“I don’t like projects that candy-coat what is essentially a bedroom community with the patina of urbanism without the reality of urbanism,” Calthorpe said. “There has to be a true mix of uses, higher housing densities and a jobs-housing balance.”

Centennial supporters say their project meets those criteria. Housing would be varied and affordable: About 10,000 of its dwellings would be condominiums or apartments. And its 14.2 million square feet of commercial space would support about 30,000 jobs in two decades, planners say.

Centennial and Newhall Ranch, the two largest residential developments proposed in Los Angeles County history, are the latest incarnations of the post-World War II planned community -- a type of development in which an entire new city is designed before construction begins.

The movement’s changing forms are reflected in Southern California by the mass housing production of Lakewood in the 1950s; university-centered Irvine and youth-oriented Mission Viejo in the 1960s and ‘70s; and the trail-connected neighborhoods of Valencia over the last four decades.

Increasingly, planned communities are throwbacks to the norm just 60 years ago: sophisticated versions of American towns that stood apart from big cities and sustained themselves.

From a regional planning standpoint, Centennial could make a lot of sense, several planners said. With 6 million more residents projected for the Southland in the next 25 years, growth must be absorbed not only by new projects in existing cities, but by new housing in undeveloped areas.

“We’ve reached a point in Southern California where the next round of development can only occur on the other side of a mountain pass -- whether it’s Castaic or El Cajon,” said USC scholar William Fulton, who co-wrote “The Regional City: Planning for the End of Sprawl.”

Centennial could be the Irvine of the 21st century, Fulton said, because that Orange County city was also part of a huge landholding planned for development over decades.

“Both Irvine and Valencia are excellent examples of good suburban planning for their era,” he said. “Centennial also could be.”

Mark Pisano, executive director of the Southern California Assn. of Governments, said Centennial could fit well into an expanding metropolitan region that will stretch from Bakersfield to Tijuana, and from Los Angeles to Phoenix, by 2050.

The Southland already is the U.S. center for receiving, assembling and distributing foreign goods -- handling about 40% of the nation’s total, Pisano said. That volume could double in a few decades, he said.

And California 138, adjacent to Centennial, could become an important bypass around the Los Angeles Basin for cargo bound for the Central Valley from San Diego and from expanding airports in Palmdale and Ontario.

“To really understand the Centennial project you must understand the economic forces molding this region,” Pisano said. “Centennial, we think, is going to become a very important linkage between Kern and San Diego counties.”

Centennial developers -- Tejon Ranch and three large housing companies -- agree the proposed city’s location could be a great benefit in drawing employers.

But they’re concentrating mostly on how to make their city feel like a batch of small towns while providing high-tech urban amenities to families, single professionals and retirees.

These new communities would emphasize walking and socialization. Front porches would return. Bike and hiking paths and lanes for electric carts would meander along tree-lined trails linking neighborhoods. There would be abundant open space.

Augmenting the village centers would be two larger town centers -- one for a civic center and another for larger retail stores.

“We just want to break it down in small enough pieces so people can feel a part of it,” Jackson said.

But Calthorpe, who has designed dozens of new towns in several countries, said the most difficult task for developers -- and one of the most important -- is to bring jobs early. That not only cuts commuter traffic but allows workers to buy houses in the new town before it becomes popular and prices soar.

“The problem with new towns, even if you build them with urbanist principles,” Calthorpe said, “is that if people are still driving huge distances to work, then you’ve created a bit of a monster.”