Castaic Residents Fear Impact of Major Industrial Park on Quiet Neighborhood

Patricia Elward and her family moved to a secluded street near Castaic six months ago to escape a noisy boulevard in Reseda where trucks rumbled by their home day and night, shaking the house as they passed.

“I had cracks all down my ceilings and walls,” Elward said of her old house. Today, Elward fears she may be in for much of the same.

Elward, her husband and two young sons live in Live Oak, a housing tract a few miles north of Six Flags Magic Mountain near the proposed Valencia Commercial Center, a giant industrial park planned by the Newhall Land & Farming Co. for 1,436 acres west of the Golden State Freeway and north of California 126.

The county Regional Planning Commissioners, who will hold a hearing on Newhall Land’s proposal Wednesday, toured the site Monday in response to complaints from neighbors.

A major entrance to the park, Backer Road, would pass directly behind Elward’s home. She and other members of the Live Oak Community Assn. say they are concerned about noise, traffic and the possible dangers of locating manufacturing plants within 750 feet of homes and an elementary school.

Lester Freeman, president of the homeowners association, charged Monday that parts of the project’s environmental impact report, such as a noise study, were based on incomplete data. The group has compiled 64 pages of complaints challenging the findings and methodology of the environmental report.

Marlee Lauffer, a spokeswoman for Newhall Land, said the project is well planned, would not harm the nearby homes and would benefit the surrounding Santa Clarita Valley by creating as many as 20,000 jobs.

The industrial park would have 12 million square feet of manufacturing and office space and would house only clean industries compatible with the area, she said.

Among the major tenants will be the U.S. Postal Service, which purchased 62.4 acres for a $26.8-million processing center to handle mail in northern Los Angeles County.

Newhall Land already has received permission to begin grading about 100 acres of industrial land adjacent to the proposed park, and giant earthmovers kicked up clouds of dust as they carried loads of dirt across the barren site Monday.

Among the chief concerns of homeowners is Backer Road, which currently comes to a dead-end behind a row of houses. Backer Road, which connects to The Old Road, would be extended in a long arc until it reached California 126 to the south, cutting through the length of the industrial park.

Newhall Land wants to widen Backer Road from two lanes to four and possibly six lanes.

In an effort to appease homeowners, Newhall Land has offered to move Backer Road 40 feet north, build extra berms to cut down noise and erect a bridge for pedestrians. Freeman called the offer unacceptable, saying an alternate route should be developed.

Some residents are angry not only at Newhall Land for proposing the park, but at other developers and real estate brokers who, the residents insist, never told home buyers that a major industrial park was planned next door.

“I moved here six months ago and I was never told,” Elward said.

“They kept it hush-hush,” said Paul Ball, another resident.

Local home builders, meanwhile, have been assuring homeowners in recent weeks that they too were unaware of Newhall Land’s plans.

Lauffer countered that “it’s certainly been no secret on our part.”

She said Newhall Land has been working on the project for a decade, noting the industrial park was the focal point of a two-year effort to revise the Castaic General Plan, which acts as a broad blueprint for development.

The general plan designated the industrial park site, once farmland, as suitable for industry. That plan was approved by the Regional Planning Commission two years ago after lengthy and often well-attended hearings.

When the debate over the industrial park is finally over, many residents will want real estate brokers and developers to explain why they failed to disclose the plans for the industrial park, Elward said. If her family had known, she said, they never would have purchased their home in Live Oak.

“I wonder how many lawsuits are going to result from what happened here,” she said.