SUN VALLEY : New Name Proposed for La Tuna Canyon

Residents of La Tuna Canyon have started a petition drive in recent weeks to rename their community Rancho La Tuna Canyon, divorcing themselves from Sun Valley.

“We’ve always referred to our area as La Tuna Canyon,” said Vickie Chemleski, a resident who has been a leader in the drive for the name change. “Now we’d like to make it official.”

The new community would run along La Tuna Canyon from Sunland Boulevard to the Foothill Freeway at Tujunga and the Los Angeles border with Glendale. It would be bordered on the north by Shadow Hills, with Burbank on the south.

“We are so very different from the rest of Sun Valley,” Chemleski said. The La Tuna Canyon area is an equestrian neighborhood with a rural feel, whose 450 homes are spread throughout the area. Outside of La Tuna Canyon, Sun Valley is more commercialized and densely populated. But not everyone in Sun Valley wants to see La Tuna Canyon leave.

“It’s like the first-class passengers renaming their deck of the Titanic,” said Jan Liptak, president of the Sun Valley Residents Assn. “I feel that as a society we rise and sink together.”

Liptak said she had hoped the residents of the La Tuna Canyon area would be more interested in helping Sun Valley than to secede from it.

Chemleski said she hoped the new name would give residents more leverage in preserving the equestrian nature of La Tuna Canyon.

“La Tuna Canyon is not a throwaway community,” Chemleski said, adding she wanted the residents who own horses to band together to keep development out.

Residents started lobbying for the name change about three years ago, inspired by the success Sepulveda had in changing its name to North Hills, said Arline DeSanctis, chief field deputy for Councilman Joel Wachs.

But neighbors began pushing harder for the change in the last few months after learning that the city was planning to redraw city maps that show community boundaries, Chemleski said.

DeSanctis said she has met with community representatives about the name change. But she said Wachs has not yet decided whether to support it. His decision, she said, will depend on the impact of the change on planning and zoning issues.