Santa Clarita Tussles With Idea of Boom in Future Jobs

By the year 2010, the number of jobs in the Santa Clarita Valley will skyrocket by 417%, a boon for the valley’s tax base but a potential bust for motorists who must fight the added traffic.

Some Santa Clarita leaders fear that workers holding these new jobs--many of them low-paying, entry-level positions--will commute from the Antelope or San Fernando valleys because they will not be able to find affordable housing in Santa Clarita.

Other Santa Clarita Valley business leaders predict an opposite scenario. More local jobs, they say, means more valley residents working closer to home, thus reducing traffic jams and bottlenecks.

Such were the conflicting views voiced in Santa Clarita last week after the employment projections were unveiled in a study by the Southern California Assn. of Governments.

Examining Patterns

The study, a year in the making, examines employment, housing and traffic patterns through 2010 and recommends dozens of building projects, ordinances and policies to help prevent or relieve gridlock in the Santa Clarita Valley.

An advisory committee composed of elected officials, traffic experts and business leaders from Santa Clarita and Los Angeles County will discuss the study’s recommendations today. The aim is to provide a sound statistical base for Santa Clarita and county officials as they launch plans for the fast-growing area’s future, said Bijan Yarjani, the study’s project manager.

The study focuses on traffic but also predicts the dramatic growth of the Santa Clarita Valley job market.

The Santa Clarita Valley is primarily a bedroom community that produced only 23,370 jobs 3 years ago, the study says. By 2010, the study predicts, the valley will provide 120,978 jobs--a 417.7% increase.

By comparison, the number of jobs in Los Angeles County should rise 21.7%, and 18.6% in the city of Los Angeles during the same period, Yarjani said.

The study did not break down the expected jobs in the Santa Clarita Valley by category. But, Yarjani said, planners anticipate more light manufacturing and aerospace plants, along with data processing, management, accounting and banking services.

Jobs Welcome

These jobs will be welcome, Yarjani said, because the Santa Clarita Valley has less than one--only 0.69--job for each household, a ratio well below other Southern California regions.

In 1988 the city of Los Angeles had 1.87 jobs for each household, and Los Angeles County had 1.34 jobs per household, the study says.

With few jobs close to home, more people must drive to the San Fernando Valley and elsewhere to find work, Yarjani said. As the Santa Clarita Valley’s job market grows, “we hope we can keep more people living and working in the valley,” he said.

Members of the Los Angeles County Regional Planning Commission echoed such hopes Nov. 2 when they agreed to increase the amount of land in Castaic that is set aside for industry. The industrial land expanded from 384 acres to 1,528 acres.

Gloria Casvin, a vice president with Newhall Land & Farming, said the new industry will bring many intangible benefits to the valley. Major firms often support the local chapters of charitable organizations such as the Boy Scouts and YMCA, she said.

Casvin added that Newhall Land alone expects to create 53,000 jobs by 2010 through industrial projects, a new hotel complex and a shopping center.

Difficult Problems

But Connie Worden, a Santa Clarita city planning commissioner and co-chairman of the transportation study, said more jobs will create tough problems--and decisions--for leaders of the fledgling city.

“That many new entry-level jobs will create a need for affordable housing,” Worden said. “People making $5 or $6 an hour can’t afford to live here.”

At least not in single-family houses. Apartment living would be an alternative. But, as the study points out, the Santa Clarita housing market is dominated by single-family homes, not apartments.

By 1985, single-family homes constituted 76% of the area’s housing stock. Comparatively, in Los Angeles County, 53% of the available housing was made up of single-family homes.

Worden said Santa Clarita may have to consider ways to create affordable housing in new developments as well as in older neighborhoods that might be ripe for revitalization. Perhaps, she said, the city should explore subsidized housing programs.

J.J. O’Brien, a director of the Canyon Country Chamber of Commerce and co-chairman of a chamber transportation committee, said he anticipates more benefits than problems from industrial growth. But O’Brien also expects a “demand for low-cost housing,” he said.

Some residents, many of them refugees from the apartment-filled San Fernando Valley, will oppose apartments or low-cost housing, O’Brien said. “People are going to say, ‘There go my property values,’ ” he said.

The debate over low-cost housing will be a ticklish one for the Santa Clarita City Council, he predicted, saying: “That’s going to be an interesting contest.”

Other policy debates will undoubtedly touch the futures of new employers coming to the valley, Yarjani said.

The study recommends, for example, that new businesses be required to stagger working hours. It also recommends limiting the amount of employee parking to force employees out of their cars and into buses and car pools.

PROJECTED JOB GROWTH 1985 TO 2010

1985 2010 Difference % Change Santa Clarita Valley 23,370 120,978 97,608 417.7 Los Angeles City 1,825,063 2,243,064 418,001 18.6 Los Angeles County 3,980,219 5,084,634 1,104,415 21.7

Source: Southern California Assn. of Governments