Proposal Links Housing and Retail Center With Commuter Rail Station : Santa Clarita: The project, which would be built on a 1,000-acre site east of Saugus Speedway, would feature an outdoor escalator.

A 3,000-unit housing project and retail center would be linked to the Santa Clarita commuter rail station by an outdoor escalator under a proposal announced Wednesday by a developer.

“It’ll be like the escalator at Universal Studios, with plazas at different levels, only softer, less high-tech looking,” said Salvatore J. Veltri, the planning director for the Anden Group of Santa Ana.

Veltri announced Anden’s plans at a city-sponsored luncheon Wednesday attended by 40 local business leaders, homeowners and growth-control advocates to discuss the future of Santa Clarita’s as-yet undeveloped downtown business district, known as the City Center.

Santa Clarita’s recently completed General Plan calls for high-density residential and commercial development on 2,200 acres of largely vacant land, roughly in the center of the 43-square-mile city. The City Center would extend along Soledad Canyon Road from the Valencia Corporate Center on the west to the former Saugus Rehabilitation Center, owned by the city of Los Angeles on the east.

Anden’s project, known as Porta Bella, would be built on a 1,000-acre parcel east of Saugus Speedway that is owned by the Whittaker Corp. of West Los Angeles. The parcel is known as the Bermite site because the Bermite Powder Co. formerly operated an explosives factory there.

Anden wants to develop a “restaurant row,” a movie theater complex, boutiques and 1,500 single-family houses and 1,500 condominiums on the property, Veltri said. The property is zoned for up to 6,600 housing units. The company also plans to build four miles of new roads, Veltri said.

An extensive environmental report on the proposal will be completed next spring, and a public hearing will be held before the City Council decides on the project, said Lynn Harris, Santa Clarita’s deputy city manager in charge of planning.

The city intends to lease--and may eventually buy--up to 10 acres of the Bermite site for a railroad station. Rail service between Santa Clarita and Union Station in Los Angeles is scheduled to begin in October, 1992.

The railroad station would be located about 200 feet downhill from the retail and residential areas. Harris said she likes the idea of an outdoor escalator linking the project to the station because “if you want people to take the train, you have to make it easy for them to get to it.”

But others attending the luncheon at City Hall expressed strong reservations about the project’s effect on air quality and traffic. Ed Dunn, a member of a citizens group trying to get a growth-control measure on the April ballot that sets an annual cap of 475 new housing units, questioned whether the public even wants a City Center.

“It’s a handful of people who decided to do this,” Dunn said.

The Bermite property borders a 238-acre parcel owned by the city. Santa Clarita intends to build a civic center complex on the parcel. Other projects in the City Center include a regional shopping mall, which the council granted Newhall Land & Farming Co. permission to build.