Boom Forecast and Builders Ready
Cowboy movie hero Harry Carey bought a ranch in this sprawling canyon as a getaway for his pals Clark Cable, Will Rogers and Gary Cooper. These days, locals call it the “Farmer John” ranch after the meat-packing family that purchased the land in the 1950s.
But developers of a 1,795-acre housing development there have given the ranch a new moniker: Tesoro del Valle, “Treasure of the Valley.”
And it appears that home builders, on that ranch and throughout the Santa Clarita Valley, are expecting that treasure will be abundant indeed.
Although the Santa Clarita Valley was among the state’s fastest-growing areas during the 1980s, the California recession has slowed its sprawling growth since 1992. But with some economists saying the state has begun at least a modest recovery, developers are laying the groundwork for an explosion of growth when the next upswing begins.
The Southern California Assn. of Governments (SCAG) has predicted that by 2015 the population of the unincorporated parts of the Santa Clarita Valley will increase more than eight times, from 40,410 in 1990 to 342,886. When the city is included, the total population of the valley is expected to grow to 552,796, almost four times the 151,051 in the 1990 census.
Although it is not certain that all the projects on which builders have begun the paperwork will be constructed, all those involved expect large increases. After all, this is the area that grew 900%--from 15,000 inhabitants in 1960 to 151,000 in 1990--an explosion that provoked residents annoyed at county land-use policies to create the city of Santa Clarita to gain more control.
Even the County Department of Regional Planning, which expects far less growth than does SCAG, predicts the population will nearly double, to 270,000, by 2010.
One project alone--Newhall Ranch--is expected to add 70,000 people; it is believed to be the largest single housing project in Los Angeles County history.
The enormous project by the Valley’s most prominent developer, the Newhall Land & Farming Co., may foretell a more prosperous future for developers. Despite the recent recession, the Newhall company’s profits jumped 75% to $27.3 million in 1995, compared to $15.6 million during the same period a year earlier.
With the recession’s grip weakening, the California Building Industry Assn. predicts that the number of housing units built in the state will top 100,000 this year for the first time since 1991.
“[Developers are] trying to get their entitlements now so whenever the market roars again they can turn on the spigot,” said planning expert William Fulton, editor of the California Planning & Development Report, a Ventura-based newsletter that tracks the industry.
“[It] is going to be a surprise to people.”
Count Nancy Fretheim among those surprised.
She hadn’t really worried about future subdivisions until she awoke one morning last year to the low rumble of bulldozers grading the hillside beside her ranch to prepare for a Newhall Land & Farming Co. project.
The petite equestrian trainer watched as workmen hung dead rattlesnakes on a rail beside the road after pulverizing the hill into a compacted pile of dirt. She soon noticed that coyotes fleeing the bulldozers seemed to show no fear of humans, as the destruction of their habitat forced them closer to her front door.
“I did nothing to stop it,” she said with dismay. “So, it’s like if you don’t vote, you can’t complain.”
But Fretheim and her neighbors learned from the experience.
She began to wonder about the Christmas cards she had started receiving two years ago from representatives of her neighbors across the canyon.
Here, in the horse country of unincorporated northern Los Angeles County, ranchers cherish their privacy and keep to themselves. Only the closest neighbors know each other well.
Fretheim had never had so much as a nod from the Clougherty family, the owners of Farmer John Meats and the massive site proposed for development.
And she knew nothing about Evans-Collins Community Builders, the Orange County firm that plans to transform the scrubby hills of the Farmer John Ranch, just north of the Santa Clarita city limits, into the 3,000-unit Tesoro del Valle project.
“All of a sudden, we’re getting these cards from this Newport Beach development firm, [saying,] ‘Hi Neighbor,’ ” she said. “Unless something has geographically changed, we’re about 100 miles from Newport Beach.”
Then came the gift calendars, and the community meetings with coffee and cookies. Fretheim and her neighbors asked questions.
The site was zoned for agricultural uses, and Fretheim says she didn’t object to development within those parameters.
But when the plans for the project became public, through the company’s request to amend the county’s general plan to permit 3,000 dwelling units there, the 43-year-old rancher decided it was time to fight.
“I grew up in the San Fernando Valley when it was horse country. Canoga Park was bean fields. I remember when Woodland Hills was considered the outskirts of the Valley,” she said.
“I have seen and lived through what can happen. We’re starting that downward spiral into that kind of environment.”
Yet even as growth looms, the county has slashed the number of officials monitoring development, reducing staff in the county Department of Regional Planning in Los Angeles during the last decade from 219 to 85 as it struggled with budget shortfalls.
To cope with a mounting workload, and fewer hands to deal with it, “what we’ve done is slow the processing down,” said John Schwarze, the county zoning administrator.
Although the temptation exists to work faster and less carefully, Schwarze said, “I don’t think we’ve succumbed to that yet.”
But he allows that pressure on his department is building. A draft environmental impact report submitted in June for a housing development near Santa Clarita known as Westridge showed that 52,258 units were churning through various stages of the city and county’s development process at that time.
And that figure didn’t include the 24,700 units of the Newhall Ranch project, which is so big that Newhall Land pays the salary of a Los Angeles Regional Planning Commission official whose sole duty is to monitor it.
So rapid is the area’s predicted growth that Tesoro del Valle is becoming a test case.
It is the first massive project to come to the fore as the recession lifts to test the inevitability of development in unincorporated areas bordering the city. The city has already written the regional planning commission with its complaints.
A committee of the Southern California Assn. of Governments discussed the development Thursday, an unusual move for the agency, which reserves such consideration only for projects that may have extensive impact on the region. The committee requested that county planners address the city’s concerns about the possible impact on area traffic congestion and water supply.
“It’s a classic example of a type of development that we don’t want,” said Ken Pulskamp, Santa Clarita’s assistant city manager.
“It’s exactly the type of leap-frog development that made the people of Santa Clarita want to form a city in the first place,” he said, referring to the birth of the city as a vehicle to fight locally unpopular county land-use decisions.
Pulskamp cites the concessions the city wrenched from the developer of Porta Bella, a separate project sputtering toward approval. That project, located entirely within the city’s boundaries, has promised many concessions, including the construction of $100 million in roads.
Sam Veltri of Marina del Rey-based Northholme Partners, Porta Bella’s developer, says those concessions have pushed the edges of the project’s profit margins.
“We are on the cusp of infeasibility,” he said.
Tesoro’s developers, by contrast, insist the city has been unwilling to sit down with them and iron out their concerns, despite their overtures.
In asking for a zoning change and amendment to the county’s general plan, developer John Evans said, “We’ve gone to great lengths to do things other developers won’t do.”
“I am not in their jurisdiction,” Evans said of Santa Clarita. “It has to be processed through the county.”
Evans says his proposed development will be a beautifully designed series of neighborhoods that will incorporate the natural beauty of the land and will supply a product very much in demand: homes in a range of prices.
The city may be suffering from the past excesses of unrestrained development, Evans said, but that is not his fault.
Meanwhile, the battle lines are being drawn.
Santa Clarita City Council member Jo Anne Darcy, who is also the field representative for Supervisor Michael Antonovich, has traffic and environmental concerns.
She wants to know why so little of the land was zoned for commercial use, and why the developers opted to propose a tennis club rather than an equestrian center in a development smack in the middle of horse country.
“I think it’s going to be a test case all right,” she said. “If they get through with triple the original [density], what do you think the rest of them are going to do? The whole infrastructure will collapse.”
Despite the projections of massive growth, Schwarze, the county regional planning official, notes that there is still a possibility that at least some of the building proposals may never be carried out.
The recent recession stalled other projects that had weathered the planning process, only to fail to attract the necessary financing as the economy waned.
“An awful lot of guys were left land-rich but had absolutely no money,” Schwarze said. Still, he added, “there’s an awful lot of inventory” of plans for projects, simply awaiting the investment money expected to materialize as the recession lifts.
Said Pulskamp: “If neither the city nor the county approved another project ever, there is still going to be a lot of new homes built in this area.”
The recession, however, also gave Santa Clarita civic leaders a chance to organize and define goals.
Environmentalists such as Lynne Plambeck, vice president of the Santa Clarita Organization for Planning the Environment, for the moment have dropped hopes of passing a managed growth initiative, an idea tried in 1992.
“SCOPE pushes very hard for sustainable development,” Plambeck said. “That is not to tell people not to develop, but to direct people to areas where it is not so environmentally damaging. As you do that, you will limit some of the housing developments.”
The scale of proposed development is also pressuring community leaders to move beyond the open warfare with county planning officials that characterized its formation as a city in 1987.
Some have even hinted--quietly, to be sure--that it may be time to consider moving to a different level of negotiation with the county, adopting a stance that may not be chummy but is at least not as openly hostile as before.
But city officials insist their eyes are on the prize: keeping Santa Clarita unique.
“When it’s all said and done, people clamor for a city that is different than the San Fernando Valley,” Pulskamp said.
“I think if you look at the San Fernando Valley you see an area with a lot of density, a lot of crime, not enough infrastructure. A lot of those problems are fundamentally based in land-use decisions . . . and we want to be able to make land-use decisions to avoid the problems they’re experiencing now.”
Fretheim is encouraged by the city’s efforts to oppose the Tesoro project. But it remains to be seen how much of an impact the city of Santa Clarita can have on an area beyond its borders.
The city has twice lost an effort to expand its sphere of influence, a legally defined zone outside the city limits where the city has a voice in development decisions by the county.
As it is now, if the project is on county turf, the city can cajole, write protests or sue, but in the end, has no power to stop it.
That raises the stakes for Fretheim and her husband, Gene. They sank their life savings into their ranch 11 years ago and now have a boarding stable for 30 horses. If the trails that ring the canyon are cut off by developments, their entire business could wither and die.
“I’m going to do everything I can to prevent that,” she said.
But a vastly more populous Santa Clarita appears to be inevitable, says Ruth Newhall, the 85-year-old matriarch of the family whose former 75-square-mile ranch continues to transform into a thriving suburb dotted with such communities as Newhall, Saugus, Canyon Country and Valencia.
“I don’t think Los Angeles has much to grow except in this direction,” said Newhall, who has shares in the family’s company. “I guess this is the last frontier.”
* TURNING A PROFIT: Newhall Land & Farming outdoes its competition, but not without controversy. D2
