Truck-Stop Town on a Growth Curve : Castaic: A county plan predicts that as the community expands, big rigs will go elsewhere, probably to Gorman.

By TRACEY KAPLAN

July 8, 1991 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Castaic. Isn’t that the sleepy little truck stop by the lake?

Not anymore. Now you can order out from two pizzerias, worship at three new churches and subscribe to the first hometown newspaper.

OK, so the Castaic Light is really a one-page newsletter printed on a Macintosh and hand-delivered to some of the area’s 9,000 residents by its publisher, J. J. Jackson.

But as Jackson, former business and features editor for the Newhall Signal, wrote in June’s first edition: “Every town the size of Castaic deserves a newspaper. Although some may question whether a newsletter such as this qualifies as a newspaper, I expect it to grow.”

Ditto for Castaic, an ever-lengthening swath of fast-food restaurants and housing tracts bisected by the Golden State Freeway north of Santa Clarita. In the past decade, Castaic’s population nearly doubled, from about 5,000 residents to 9,014, according to the 1990 census.

The 1990s are expected to be even more hectic for the area, given the proper economic climate.

A Los Angeles County plan estimates that 25,000 people will eventually move to Castaic, undeterred by the 40-mile commute to Los Angeles. More than 5,000 houses and the county’s largest industrial park have already been tentatively approved by the County Board of Supervisors.

The county’s area plan acknowledges that Castaic will develop into an urban community and that trucking uses will move elsewhere, probably to Gorman, said Lee Stark, the county planner for the area.

“L. A. is moving up the freeway, just like it did out in Agoura, Westlake and Thousand Oaks,” said Ed Gallo, owner of the McDonald’s franchise, which opened two summers ago. “The boom hasn’t quite hit yet, but everybody in business is trying to get in now while the getting is good.”

With impending development comes inevitable squabbles over the environment, but growth is also expected to bring the amenities that new residents desire, such as schools and parks. It has also spawned a drive against absorption by the city of Santa Clarita, which has sought to annex Castaic.

Most of all, growth is expected to drive out the truckers, who first came under siege three years ago when some merchants complained to the California Highway Patrol about 18-wheelers double- and triple-parking along Castaic Road.

The community has been a rest stop for truckers and other travelers since 1914, when Sam Parsons built a general store to supply the workers building the Ridge Route, the original highway through the Santa Clarita Valley, local historian Jerry Reynolds said.

“Eventually, truckers will get forced--no, make that squeezed--out of town” as land becomes increasingly valuable, said Jeff Preach, a local real estate agent and president of the Castaic Chamber of Commerce.

One truck stop, Dixie Diesel, has already been sold, victim of the cookie-cutter houses that march up the hillsides on the west side of the freeway.

“As soon as my wife and I saw the new houses, we said, ‘Goodby truck stop,’ ” said Jeff Sandifer, a driver for a moving van company who has visited Castaic twice a month for the past 13 years.

Even McDonald’s, which built a two-acre parking lot for 45 trucks, eventually plans to sell its lot to a shopping center developer, Gallo said.

But for the time being, diesel fuel is still commonplace. A motorist driving downtown where trucks park after dark still feels “like a little mouse among the elephants,” says one resident.

And as long as it rains enough for the State Water Project to fill Castaic Lake, the local economy will prosper from 1.3 million visitors who annually stop by on their way to swim, boat or angle for world-record-size bass.

In fact, there has been a virtual invasion of fast-food restaurants and motels in Castaic in the past two years as the number of vehicles increased on the Golden State Freeway. Traffic, most of it to Castaic and Pyramid lakes, has been growing by about 7% a year since 1983--from 43,000 vehicles a day to 69,000 in 1990, according to the state Department of Transportation.

There’s also been an influx of businesses catering to residents, including a dry cleaner and the town’s second pizzeria, Domino’s, which opened last month.

“What we look for is growth areas,” said Duncan Drechsel, assistant marketing director for Domino’s Pizza. “And Castaic is definitely a growth area.”

Competition for residents’ dollars is so intense between Domino’s and Checker’s, the other pizzeria, that Checker’s owner, Jim Pankiewicz, is offering a 28-inch pizza in hopes of carving himself a bigger slice of the sales pie. In turn, Domino’s offers free delivery.

But man cannot live on pizza alone.

“I’ll do backward somersaults when we finally get a supermarket,” said Krystyna Ghahremani, 26, a clerk typist for the city of Santa Clarita who, like most residents, commutes about seven miles south to do her grocery shopping.

Newhall Land & Farming Co. plans to open a retail shopping center on the northeast corner of Lake Hughes and Castaic roads early next year that will include a Ralphs supermarket. But construction has been delayed because the supermarket’s ailing parent company has filed a reorganization plan in U. S. Bankruptcy Court. Ralphs Grocery Co. itself is not in Chapter 11 and is still negotiating with Newhall Land to lease the Castaic market, said Marlee Lauffer, a spokeswoman for the developer.

A supermarket will be convenient, admits Donna Chesebrough, whose family helped settle Castaic in the mid-1800s. But in general, growth has “ruined a beautiful way of life,” she said.

First, the state flooded 1,700 acres of her family’s cattle ranch in the late 1960s to create the lake, the upper part of which is a reservoir. Now, the number of cattle her father can raise is shrinking as new houses reduce the amount of land he leases for grazing.

“All of those city people who have moved up here are turning the country into the city and bringing their bad habits with them,” Chesebrough said. “Before, you could take a walk at 10 at night and not worry. Now, you see kids hanging out under the street lights.”

There would be even more building in Castaic if it weren’t for the statewide slump in the real estate market, developers and county planners say. For instance, Larwin Co. has only built 38 of 1,400 houses in its Hillcrest Park development and recently had to auction off 20 of them because of the slow market, said Monty Polson, senior vice president of the firm.

But the slump is a boon to the Castaic Union School District, which will be able to buy a new school site for a bargain price, although it will probably have to pass a bond measure to finance it, Supt. Scott Brown said. Enrollment in the district has tripled to 1,450 students since the mid-1980s, and the middle school is housed entirely in portable trailers, he said.

The district will also get two new school sites when Cook Ranch Associates builds up to 4,000 houses and a golf course in its Northlake project on 1,400 acres east of the freeway. The county tentatively approved the project at the behest of residents after the developers promised to donate land for a library, fire station, at least one religious institution and several parks, said Dirk Gosda, one of the partners in the project. The community’s two neighborhood parks opened only a year ago after resident Michele Edmonson successfully lobbied Supervisor Mike Antonovich.

Castaic’s new churches--the community’s first in 60 years--are vying for the Northlake sites. They now hold services in school auditoriums rented from the district.

Attendance was light one recent Sunday morning at services held by Castaic Community Church, which is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. But officials said they do not regret moving to Castaic from Ventura and founding the church a year ago.

“I saw what was happening in Santa Clarita and knew everything would move up this way and mushroom,” said George Babich, the church’s administrator.

But there are limits to how much Castaic can grow. Just north of the community are 220,000 acres of Angeles National Forest, where development is prohibited. And the county has placed limits on building in the many canyons in the area, although developers continue to unsuccessfully propose high-density housing developments, according to a review of applications.

Most of the growth will occur along the freeway, starting just north of California 126. Among the projects that have received tentative approval from the county is Newhall Land’s giant Valencia Commerce Center, which will employ 18,000 people in 12.5 million square feet of industrial development. The county itself intends to develop the Golden State Business Park on a two-mile strip east of the freeway.

In anticipation of the growth on its northern border, the city of Santa Clarita has tried to annex the area but, so far, has failed to win approval. That effort may not be renewed, said Santa Clarita council members Buck McKeon and Jo Anne Darcy, if Castaic does not want to be part of the 3-year-old city.

Michael Kotch, a Castaic resident and president of SCOPE, or Santa Clarita Organization for Protecting the Environment, supports annexation because it will put control over land use in local hands. Kotch, who owns a 10-acre ranch off a dirt road in Castaic, says the city is more likely to preserve the small-town, semi-rural character of the community.

But a group of business leaders and developers in Castaic, who prefer to keep government at arm’s length, have been organizing against annexation. When the local Chamber of Commerce surveyed 3,000 households two years ago, 641 people opposed annexation and only 132 supported it, said Preach, the chamber’s president.

“Castaic has always been kind of the tail of the dog in the Santa Clarita Valley--everybody has looked down at us,” said Gosda, the Northlake developer who lives in Castaic. “If I could pull out my crystal ball, I’d say Castaic will stay a community in its own right, apart from Santa Clarita.”

Major Developments Proposed for Castaic

Commercial

Name: Valencia Commerce Center

Developer: Newhall Land & Farming Co.

Description: Largest industrial park in Los Angeles County, 12.5 million square feet on 750 acres, west side of Golden State Freeway, north of California 126.

Golden State Business Park

Los Angeles County and private developers

Industrial park on two-mile strip along east side of Golden State Freeway north of California 126.

Housing

Northlake

Cook Ranch Associates

Up to 4,000 housing units and a golf course on 1,400 acres east of the Golden State Freeway, north of Lake Hughes Road

Hillcrest Park

Larwin Co.

1,036 houses and condos or apartments on west side of Golden State Freeway

Housing tract

Newhall Land & Farming Co.