Amenities Planned for Commerce Center

Valencia Commerce Center, the next commercial project from the developer with the highest profile in the Santa Clarita Valley, will bring to the area such features as a child-care center, a business hotel, retail uses and food courts among the industrial and office buildings.

That is the word from Donald L. Puente, senior vice president of commercial and industrial marketing for the Valencia Co., a division of Newhall Land & Farming Co., developer of Valencia Industrial Center (VIC) at the northeast quadrant of Interstate 5 and California 126.

The 1,500-acre park, valued at $500 million, has about 100 acres remaining for sale; it has 225 companies employing about 8,500 workers and absorbed a record 1,026,269 square feet of space last year, Puente said.

Valencia Commerce Center will be built beginning in mid-1989 at the northwest quadrant of California 126 and Interstate 5.

Equestrian Trails

The 1,665-acre, project will include the retail uses, office space for doctors and dentists, child-care facilities, equestrian trails and picnic areas, restaurants and a hotel, uses that were not envisioned when the earlier industrial park was planned more than two decades ago, he said. He added that like the VIC, the Valencia Commerce Center will be developed in phases.

“Long-range planning projections for this new center show a build-out of 12 million square feet of space and employment opportunities for 15,000 to 20,000 people,” according to Thomas E. Dierckman, vice president commercial and industrial real estate for Newhall Land & Farming.

The build-out projection compares with about 6,400,000 square feet of space built or under construction so far in the Valencia Industrial Center. This total will grow as the park nears its expected 1990 completion.

One of last year’s major improvements to the VIC was the addition of new on- and off-ramps linking the park to Interstate 5. The connections were 10 years in the planning and discussion stages, but took only a few months to construct, Puente said, adding that Newhall Land & Farming Co. paid for the ramps.

Outside City Limits

Although the two parks are just across the freeway from each other, the new commerce center is outside the city limits of the new city of Santa Clarita, while the VIC is within the city limits.

Tom Lee, president of both the Valencia Co. and Newhall Land & Farming Co., doesn’t expect the slow-growth movement to interfere with the 4,500 houses still to be developed within the city, not to mention the 100-acre regional mall planned for a site adjacent to the companies’ headquarters on Valencia Boulevard.

“The city council recognizes that growth is inevitable in Santa Clarita and also recognizes the planning efforts that went into making Valencia the outstanding planned community that it is,” he said.