Local News in Brief : Agua Dulce Residents Favor Growth Limits, Survey Shows

Agua Dulce residents favor by a wide margin a plan to limit housing development to two-acre parcels and to require Old West-style architecture in new commercial buildings, according to county planners who are counting the results of a mail-in survey.

The survey, ordered Nov. 11 by the county Regional Planning Commission, was sent to 1,625 property owners in the rural Santa Clarita Valley community last month to find out if residents support creating a community standards district to maintain the area’s rural character.

David S. Vannatta, a spokesman for the Department of Regional Planning, said that, of 675 responses mailed back so far, “the overwhelming number are in favor of the plan.”

He said no official results of the poll will be announced until county planners can analyze the results on a computer to find out whether major non-resident landowners feel differently than local homeowners.

However, Vannatta said, most of the respondents favored a minimum residential lot size of at least two acres, turn-of-the-century architecture in business areas, limits on expansion of the local airport and street widths of no more than 24 feet.

The privately owned airport has been the subject of controversy because county airport officials have asked the Board of Supervisors to purchase the property and expand the airport for regional use.