Developers Expect OK on Office Park Plan

Developers of a proposed 117-acre office park on the site of a former oil refinery and historic travel route expect approval today of the project by the Planning Commission.

The Valley Gateway project, which is south of the intersection of Sierra Highway and San Fernando Road, is to include 860,000 square feet of office space. Developers predict that the complex will provide Santa Clarita with 2,500 jobs.

“It really will be the first major employment center on the east side of the valley,” said consultant Dave Armanetti of Envicom Corp., a firm coordinating the project for the landowners, Hondo Oil and Gas Co.

The project also calls for a 40-acre park to preserve Beale’s Cut, a 19th-Century transportation route.

“It was the only way to get out of Los Angeles to the north from 1863--when it was carved out--to 1910, when the Newhall Tunnel was built,” Santa Clarita historian Jerry Reynolds said of Beale’s Cut. “It was sort of the Interstate 5 of its time.”

If the project is approved, Hondo Oil must clean up contaminated dirt left by the Newhall Refinery, which operated from 1928 to 1989 on 44 acres at the site.

Spilled crude oil and asphalt material has seeped several feet underground, Armanetti said. Hondo Oil plans to insert a bacteria into the soil that will break down and eat the unwanted material.

Armanetti said the Valley Gateway would open around the end of 1996, if approved.