Santa Clarita Firm Offers Land Exchange for Growth Permit

A Santa Clarita developer Wednesday offered to donate 190 acres dotted with walnut trees to a conservation agency in exchange for permission to expand a huge housing tract onto 90 acres of an officially designated sensitive oak woodland.

The proposal by Dale Poe Development Corp. surfaced a month after a Los Angeles County advisory committee recommended a formal policy requiring that developers who degrade any of the county’s 61 Significant Ecological Areas, or SEAs, acquire and preserve replacement lands of similar habitat value.

Poe officials Wednesday said the company’s proposal predated the recommendation by the Significant Ecological Area Technical Advisory Committee.

“It’s our favor to the environment,” said Jeff Stevenson, a company vice president.

But members of the county Regional Planning Commission expressed concerns about the proposal during a public hearing Wednesday and postponed their decision until after they tour the two sites Aug. 3.

Under Poe’s proposal, the developer would build 1,119 additional housing units on an 857-acre parcel next to its Stevenson Ranch housing project, which is west of the Golden State Freeway and south of Magic Mountain.

Poe already has approval from the Board of Supervisors for 4,378 units in Stevenson Ranch but has built only about 800 units so far, company officials said.

About 80 of the 1,119 newly proposed housing units would encroach on SEA No. 63, an oak woodland known as Lyon Canyon.

An eight-acre school site and part of a 12-acre park would also be in the ecological area, and McBean Parkway would be extended about a quarter-mile south and bisect it.

The project would require the removal of about 252 oak trees, about 85 of which are in the ecological area, said Daryl Koutnik, a county biologist.

Planning commissioners said they were concerned about the feasibility of the proposal partly because the developer does not own the 190-acre site it wants to donate to an unspecified conservation agency.

Poe has acquired options to buy only about a quarter of the land, which is located southwest of SEA No. 63 in Sulphur Canyon, and is negotiating with several property owners to buy the rest, said David H. Breier, an attorney for the company.

Frank Hovore, a biologist and chairman of the SEA advisory committee, said in an interview Wednesday that he has seen written reports, prepared by Poe consultants, that indicate that the 190 acres may be a better habitat than the current ecological area.

The 190-acre site is located near SEA No. 20, an 18,380-acre area located about half a mile south in the Santa Susana Mountains.

If the Board of Supervisors ultimately approves the Poe proposal, the SEA advisory committee has recommended that SEA No. 20 be extended north to include the 190 acres Poe would donate.

“The public might be better served by doing that than by having a small, isolated island of an SEA surrounded by Stevenson Ranch,” Hovore said.