Council Scraps 8 Plans, Offers Its Own : Housing: Santa Clarita patches together a development plan on a controversial housing tract.

The Santa Clarita City Council set aside eight plans for a controversial housing development in Canyon Country that has dominated city politics for months and patched together its own plan, apparently confusing many of those involved.

One of the rejected alternatives would have required a developer to build an estimated $55 million in roads that city traffic planners said Santa Clarita cannot afford.

The council, after hearing 4 1/2 hours of testimony Wednesday night, directed city planners and the developer, G.H. Palmer Associates, to explore the possibility of building between 600 and 800 residential units on 135 acres north of Soledad Canyon Road and southwest of Ermine Street.

Palmer Associates originally hoped to build 1,452 condominiums there.

But in an effort to appease nearby homeowners, who complained that the project was too big, the company, working with city planners last week, hastily drafted seven alternative plans for the council to consider.

The new plans for the project, called the Santa Catarina development, ranged from 1,292 condominiums to 385 houses, plus various combinations of single-family houses and condos.

Santa Catarina is one of three Palmer Associates projects the company hopes to have included in a development agreement that would freeze city building codes governing the projects for 10 years. The company and city officials have been negotiating the pact for a year.

In return for approval of the agreement and the three projects, the company would pay for road improvements inside and outside the Santa Catarina project.

The council and city officials have wrestled with the issue at four public meetings and in several negotiating sessions with developer Dan Palmer and the opposing homeowners.

At the council meeting Wednesday night, discussion quickly bogged down as the council discussed the merits of the eight plans. “We’re not getting anywhere with this,” Mayor Jo Anne Darcy said at one point.

The council members began drafting their own plans, adding and deleting road-building requirements from earlier proposals. When council members asked Palmer to comment on one of their new proposals, he replied: “I don’t know what you’re asking me to do.”

Darcy jokingly responded: “I don’t think we know what we’re asking you to do.”

Councilman Howard P. (Buck) McKeon said the council had reached a stalemate because it was trying to please all critics and supporters of the project.

“When you really think about it, we’re trying to satisfy everybody in the audience,” he said. “And that’s great, but we can’t do it.”

At the urging of Councilwoman Jan Heidt, the council finally voted 4 to 1, with McKeon dissenting, to have Palmer draw up a plan for 600 to 800 units, a mixture of houses and condominiums.

The council said the new plan should try to spare a lush canyon that would be destroyed under earlier proposals.

The eight plans also called for extending Golden Valley Road through a ranch that has belonged to the same family since the early 1900s. The new plan should try to avoid a route through the ranch, the council said.

Palmer said it was too soon to say whether he could comply with the new directives.

“I’m totally confused,” Palmer said at the end of the hearing. “I’ve never been through anything like this.”