Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : Palmdale Hopes to Revitalize Downtown : Growth: Two groups will seek to deal with vagrants and vandalism and to lure business back to the area.

Amid complaints from business owners that Palmdale’s downtown has become a haven for vagrants, vandalism and vacant buildings, the City Council has agreed to form two groups of residents to help guide the city’s revitalization plans.

The council earlier this week approved a more than $450,000 program to develop a planning blueprint for future activities downtown. To oversee that effort, the council plans to appoint a nine-member advisory committee and convene a broader downtown business owners group.

“This didn’t happen overnight. It’s not going to be fixed overnight either,” said Mayor Jim Ledford, who has pledged to spearhead the efforts to revive the city’s downtown area. City officials said they must find ways to draw residents lured away by a regional shopping mall back downtown.

At the council’s Wednesday night meeting, business leaders urged quick remedial action, saying many of the remaining downtown business owners are on the verge of leaving because of poor business and frustrations over the area’s problems with crime, dumped trash and decay.

Downtown on Sierra Highway used to be Palmdale’s main retail center, its main north-south artery and a gathering spot for residents. But that changed with the openings of the Antelope Valley Freeway in the 1970s and the city’s regional shopping mall three years ago.

Al Beattie, the owner of a Palmdale Boulevard muffler shop, said the economic recession and the opening of the Antelope Valley Mall along the freeway have been “a double whammy” to downtown businesses.

“You have loitering and drunks right across the street from City Hall,” he said.

During the next several years, city officials hope to have several major public projects under way in downtown. The quickest in coming will be the opening next spring of the Maryott Auditorium after a $2.8-million project to convert it into a 348-seat community theater.

City Administrator Bob Toone said the city plans to begin construction of a new city hall--an $8-million, 40,000-square-foot project--by late 1994. And the city wants the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to open a new station in the downtown area by 1996 or 1997.

However, the city’s $450,000-plus planning effort will only produce consultant studies and city goals and policies for downtown activities. And in the meantime, the situation downtown has deteriorated such that many residents are afraid to venture into the area, business owners said.

Council members are discussing responses that include assigning a sheriff’s deputy exclusively to downtown, quicker measures to achieve the removal of trash, expanding the city’s existing Partners Against Crime rehabilitation program and a property maintenance law.