Santa Clarita, Builders Exchange Accusations Over Stalled Project

Tensions between Santa Clarita and the developer of the controversial Santa Catarina project have been heightened by the exchange of stinging letters between the developer and city manager, each accusing the other negotiating in bad faith.

“In your letter, you allege that the city has negotiated in bad faith,” City Manager George Caravalho wrote to Dan and Geoff Palmer of G.H. Palmer Associates. “This is totally inaccurate, and I find it appalling that you could make such a statement.”

In their letter, the Palmer brothers charged that the City Council misled company officials who thought city approval of the Santa Catarina project was virtually assured. Instead, the developers wrote, a timid City Council was cowed by the protests of homeowners and refused to approve the development proposal.

“The fact that the city may no longer have the political will to live by the results of its own planning process is certainly not a justifiable basis for denying the project,” the Palmers wrote.

Caravalho responded that the city negotiators never guaranteed that the project would be approved. “A comment such as this is presumptuous and naive,” Caravalho wrote.

The letters, exchanged last Thursday and Friday, are the latest developments in the lengthy debate over the proposed Santa Catarina development in Canyon Country. Palmer Associates originally proposed 1,452 condominiums on 135 acres north of Soledad Canyon Road and southwest of Ermine Street. The council members said they would approve a maximum of 800 units.

The Santa Catarina project is part of a larger development agreement that would allow Palmer Associates to build three housing projects in return for millions of dollars in road improvements. Negotiations over that agreement, started a year ago, have reached a stalemate.

The City Council is scheduled to discuss the agreement tonight.

In their letter, the Palmer brothers offered the city two alternatives. The company could build 1,292 units and in return extend Golden Valley Road between Soledad Canyon Road and Sierra Highway. Under the second plan, the company would build 1,000 units but not complete Golden Valley Road.

In their letter to Caravalho, dated last Thursday, the Palmers said they would never have entered into negotiations with the city if they had known the city could recommend an economically disastrous project of 800 units.

“The council’s counter-proposal cuts project revenues by over $100 million while increasing estimated road construction costs by 140%,” the Palmers wrote.

The developers also had harsh words for homeowners who said the project would inundate the neighborhood with traffic and would destroy a valuable wildlife habitat near the Santa Clara River.

“The opponents’ hackneyed, NIMBY criticisms were misunderstood by some members of the council as factually legitimate, ignoring the obvious political motivations behind both the criticisms and the repeated and deliberate attempts to confuse the council,” the letter said.

In their seven-page letter, the developers portrayed themselves as victims of city politics. “Some council members have matched our good faith cooperation with a disappointing degree of what appears to us to be crowd pleasing speeches and political posturing,” they wrote. “We are not politicians nor are we a charitable foundation.”

Caravalho, in his letter dated last Friday, replied that the city was not a foundation either, and was not “in business to make money for developers.”