Palmdale OKs Housing Development, Community Theater : Council: The 5,200-unit City Ranch would be built over two decades. Officials also approve rehabilitation of 40-year-old Maryott Auditorium into a 347-seat facility.
In dual decisions likely to change the face of Palmdale, the City Council has approved a planned 5,200-home development that would be one of the city’s largest and also agreed to build a $2.8-million community theater that has been debated for nine years.
City lawmakers, at their Thursday night meeting, voted 4 to 0 to authorize Kaufman and Broad Home Corp.’s planned 5,200-unit, 1,985-acre City Ranch community. The project now needs only final decisions to annex its unincorporated county area into Palmdale, expected later this year.
The council also voted 5 to 0 to approve the rehabilitation and reconstruction of the 40-year-old Maryott Auditorium into a 347-seat, 11,000-square-foot municipal theater. The council awarded a nearly $2.2-million contract to begin the work.
Palmdale Mayor Jim Ledford said the decisions represent “a revitalization of the old and hopefully state-of-the-art planning for the new.” Both projects had been years in the planning, and there was virtually no opposition to either one from residents.
The City Ranch project, if built as planned by Kaufman and Broad, California’s largest single-family residential builder, will span over two decades. And it will help transform the largely undeveloped areas west of Palmdale into almost another city within the city.
The City Ranch area adjoins Palmdale’s western boundary. And just to the west of City Ranch is the planned 7,200-home, 10,625-acre Ritter Ranch project that the city approved and annexed last year. Former La Costa resort builders Merv Adelson and Irwin Molasky are its backers.
Neither project has started construction, though both developers say they hope to begin soon. The two projects are expected to be competitors in the emerging new home sales market on the city’s west side.
But there is no guarantee that either will be fully developed as planned.
The council approved a development agreement locking in Kaufman and Broad’s development rights for 20 to 25 years. In addition to the houses, the project’s plans include 42 acres of commercial development, nearly 160 acres of parks, 36 acres for schools and hundreds of acres of open space.
In concessions to the city, the developer agreed to pay $2.9 million toward construction of a new city hall, to build and equip a city maintenance yard, provide a fire station with a pumper truck and medical vehicle, and develop an 18-hole golf course to be reserved at least 25% of the time for public use.
The theater project represents the culmination of a campaign begun in 1984 to develop such a facility for the city. Along the way, however, the exact plans for the theater and its location changed about a half-dozen times before the city finally settled on the current community theater concept.
The plan calls for renovating about 6,500 square feet of the Maryott Auditorium, an old school building that has been boarded up for years, and incorporating about 4,500 square feet of new construction. City officials said they hope to complete the project in about a year.
“It’s the project I’ve always wanted for the city,” Ledford said. He said Palmdale’s theater will be oriented toward community theater groups. In contrast, the 758-seat Lancaster Performing Arts Center, which opened in late 1991 at a cost of more than $10 million, often hosts professional acts.
City officials also see the Maryott, on 10th Street East, as part of a campaign to restore the city’s dying downtown area. The formal name of the planned theater has yet to be selected. A private group, the Antelope Valley Cultural Foundation, plans to pay $500,000 of the total cost.
