Mall Rankles Santa Clarita Planners : Development: Officials will recommend that the City Council oppose the planned county center and, if it is built, request 80% of its tax revenues.

City planners say an 860,000-square-foot shopping center proposed west of the Golden State Freeway just outside the city will divert customers from Santa Clarita businesses, add traffic to local roads and needlessly destroy native oak trees.

They will recommend Tuesday that the Santa Clarita City Council oppose the Valencia Marketplace project with a resolution aimed at the Los Angeles County Regional Planning Commission. The commission is scheduled to review the project at a 9 a.m. public hearing Wednesday.

Riley/Pearlman/Mitchell Co. has proposed the mall on an 83.7-acre site between McBean Parkway and Pico Canyon Road, near the Santa Clarita city limit.

“We feel that with the magnitude of this development and the amount of impact on the area, this should be taking place in the centralized, urban area, not the western fringe,” said Deputy City Manager Lynn Harris, head of Santa Clarita’s Community Development Department.

Pending City Council approval, a letter has been drafted to both the Regional Planning Department and Supervisor Mike Antonovich outlining city planning objections.

Many Valencia Marketplace shoppers will be Santa Clarita residents who now shop elsewhere, Harris said, and they will use city roads to travel there, but will be filling county--rather than city--tax coffers with their purchases.

The proposed city resolution asks the county to commit 80% of the tax revenue from the shopping center to pay for various Santa Clarita Valley infrastructure needs--to improve roads and for police protection, parks, libraries and other public services.

Tax revenue projections are unavailable for the shopping center, but Santa Clarita’s existing regional mall--the slightly smaller Valencia Town Center--includes 750,000 square feet and generates about $1 million a year in sales tax revenue for the city.

The diverted tax money--at least $800,000 annually if it does comparable business--also would help make up for other developments in the county portion of the Santa Clarita Valley that have impacted city services, Harris said.

“We’re suggesting that this project will have such a regional impact that here’s a chance to make up for decisions made in the past,” Harris said.

City planners also object to the proposed removal of 105 of the 141 oak trees on the property.

“We feel that is an unnecessary destruction of an irreplaceable resource,” Harris said.

The desire to have the shopping center within Santa Clarita’s boundaries--and the accompanying tax revenue in its general fund--is the real reason city officials are opposing the project, said Bill Mitchell, vice president of project development for Riley/Pearlman/Mitchell.

“They said they would support it if it was annexed into the city,” Mitchell said. “Really, I think the issue is that.”

Harris said city officials did ask both the developer and the Newhall Land & Farming Co., which owns the land, to consider annexation into Santa Clarita and both declined.

Even if the project were in the city, there would be opposition over its environmental impacts, Harris said.

The nearby Stevenson Ranch community, the most vocal opponent of the project when it was first presented, is now offering conditional support for the shopping center.

After 14 months of negotiations, the developer agreed to provide a 27-foot-high land mound between the Valencia Marketplace and the community to shield it from noise, reconfigure the extension of The Old Road away from Stevenson Ranch and provide an amphitheater, community center, play park and tennis courts.

Riley/Pearlman/Mitchell expects to break ground on the shopping center in the summer of 1994, with the center opening its doors in 1995.