Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : Council Expected to OK Home Depot for Santa Clarita

A deal to bring a Home Depot to the city is ready for City Council approval, with plans to open the discount retail store as early as the end of the year, officials said Friday.

To secure city approval, the Atlanta-based Home Depot agreed to pay for improvements surrounding the project, including street-widening, curbs and gutters, street and traffic lights, landscaping and a right-of-way crossing, city officials said.

The required improvements will cost $1,061,520, according to the tentative agreement. The city agreed, as an incentive, to reimburse the retailer up to $690,000 over seven years.

The council is expected to approve the agreement at its meeting Tuesday.

Securing the home improvement retailer gives the city a jump on Los Angeles County’s efforts to open a discount shopping center--called Valencia Marketplace--just outside the city limits, said Deputy City Manager Lynn Harris.

Now, sales tax proceeds from local do-it-yourselfers will stay in the city, officials said.

“Home Depot provides a service and a level of merchandising that is not now available in other parts of Santa Clarita,” Harris said. “The people who buy at Home Depot currently go outside of this valley to shop.”

The store will be located on Golden Triangle Road, west of Isabella Parkway.

Attracting Home Depot to Santa Clarita before a similar store opens in the unincorporated county area allows the discount retailer to establish customers first, Harris said.

“When the county opens up a store in the Santa Clarita Valley, there’s no guarantee that the county will spend the revenue in the Santa Clarita Valley,” Harris said. “When the city opens a store, we can guarantee that the tax revenues will be spent here.”

The city estimates the city will reap $1.8 million in sales tax revenues over 10 years from the Home Depot’s projected $180 million in sales, Harris said. The estimate is conservative, Harris said, and is based on the opening of a competing store in the planned Valencia Marketplace.

The store will provide about 125 jobs in the area, Harris said.

Marlee Lauffer, spokeswoman for Newhall Land & Farming, which is developing Valencia Marketplace in partnership with shopping mall builders Riley/Pearlman, said they are not worried about competition from Home Depot.

“There is plenty of room in the Santa Clarita Valley for additional retail services,” Lauffer said.

Valencia Marketplace still must win county approval before it can be built, Lauffer said.