Newhall Ranch to Put ‘New Urbanism’ to Test

It will either be a prototype for the way people will live in the next century, or an abomination. A place where a variety of people will be welcome, or an enclave for the rich. A community that will threaten Southern California’s last wild river, or help save it.

Opponents and proponents don’t agree on much about Newhall Ranch, but what is clear is that this proposed mini-city of 70,000 people planned for the Santa Clarita Valley could herald significant changes in the way the suburbs of the future will be built.

The theory behind Newhall Ranch is that the lure of small, rural towns tucked away in scenic foothills and valleys will be strong enough to draw urbanites far from the city.

Developers say they will re-create elements of the lifestyle prevalent in Southern California before World War II: shops, restaurants and recreation within walking distance of home; relaxed zoning laws that allow small add-ons to houses for relatives and boarders; proximity to mass transit; and simple luxuries, like a covered porch.

In Newhall Ranch, five distinct villages will be carved between the hillsides of the Santa Susana Mountains and the woodlands near the Santa Clara River.

“What we have the opportunity to do here is to take what we learned in Valencia [a 1950s master-planned community nearby], take a brand new piece of vacant land, and take new information and new regulations to come up with a new design that will be a model for future communities,” said Lee Stark, a planner with the county’s Regional Planning Department who has worked on the project for two years.

The Newhall Ranch development--if approved--would be the largest master-planned community in Los Angeles County history. Over the next 25 to 30 years, the project would extend the sprawl of Los Angeles over another 19 square miles into an area that is now mostly open space, but is also used for farming, oil drilling and ranching.

Portions of the area along the river and in the mountains have been declared significant ecological areas by the state and include the habitats of two federally endangered species, a bird and a fish. The planners say they will largely avoid those areas.

But what has also raised the concerns of opponents is that plans call for building homes into portions of the Santa Clara River’s flood plain.

So while environmentalists worry about losing the area’s last wild river, local residents fear the possibility of flooding during heavy storms. And downstream, everyone from farmers to surfers have voiced concerns about the quality of water and the kinds of material that may wash out onto beaches in Ventura County.

“The river valley,” said Ron Bottorff, president of the Friends of the Santa Clara River, “is a regional resource of exceptional value: for its agriculture, for its scenery and for its wildlife. Massive urban projects simply do not belong in this valley.”

Newhall’s environmental concerns have been questioned before: In 1991, the company agreed to pay nearly $400,000 in fines and repair costs after it altered the course of the river above the proposed development and two tributaries and disturbed the habitat of the two endangered species.

Opponents of the project have also raised concerns about traffic, earthquakes, air pollution and the availability of adequate water sources to support a town that could grow to be triple the size of Agoura Hills or San Fernando.

To undercut the environmental criticisms, the owners of the property--Newhall Land & Farming Co.--have pledged 5,852 acres of the land as permanent natural space and also promised to donate the Asistencia San Francisco Xavier site to the national Archaeological Conservancy once the project is approved. The Asistencia was a small mission outpost that was the first European settlement in northern Los Angeles County.

The Newhall Ranch project is now pending before the county’s Regional Planning Commission, which rarely rejects developments. But even if the development gets quick county approval, it might take several years before various state and federal agencies sign off and construction could begin. The politically influential Newhall firm hopes to break ground in 2000.

The developer is banking on the design of Newhall Ranch both to help win approval and to attract people to what will be some 25,218 single-family homes, estate houses, condominium and town home units once it is finished in about 2030.

Newhall plans to spare all but 4% of the area’s 16,314 oak trees, and company officials say they will use the river as the centerpiece of the development--meaning they will neither divert it nor encase it in concrete.

Further, Newhall says the development will actually expand the habitat of the endangered Bell’s vireo, a bird that lives in the young willow trees along the river, and the three-spined stickleback, a fish that lives upriver, by replacing the farmland along the river banks with open space.

Newhall, which has owned the property for more than a century, delayed development until the Southern California housing market began to recover.

And because the construction of the vast tract would push some 30 years into the future, company executives knew they needed to find out what the homeowners of tomorrow want.

So, the company hired marketing firms to conduct surveys of thousands of people. Futurists were consulted. Psychographic data were collected.

What Newhall Land found is that people did not want their parents’ suburbia--but a suburbia of their own.

“They are looking for a hometown America in a sense, though maybe some have never seen it,” said Toni Alexander, president of Newport Beach-based InterCommunications Inc., which performed the marketing studies for Newhall Land. “So we asked them, ‘What do you need here to make you feel good about living here?’ ”

Ninety-eight percent said they wanted to live close to nature. Nearly half said they wanted a real community that provides chances to interact with neighbors. Vast majorities said they wanted entertainment opportunities, to feel safe and to avoid the homogeneity of many of today’s suburban tracts.

“What we found,” said James Harter, executive vice president of the project, “is that people wanted to live in a small town with all the amenities of a big city, including lots of entertainment choices.”

Van Stephens, a planner for the Orange County-based Forma firm, which was a consultant on the design concluded: “Old values are coming back strong as a trend.”

So, Newhall Land is marketing Newhall Ranch as “a community by nature”: In addition to the river, there will be an extensive trail system, 274 acres of parks and an artificial 15-acre lake surrounded by the spectacular Santa Susanas--where coyotes can still be heard howling at night.

The inhabitants will live in villages with names like Riverwood and Oak Valley. There will be a community organizer to arrange events for adults, many housing sizes and styles to add variety and an 18-hole golf course.

While each village will be densely populated, planners say their design will leave neighborhood streets as quiet as the placid suburbs of days gone by. For the young and the restless, there will be action a short jaunt away at the town center in the form of shops, restaurants and night life.

“The villages are specifically sized for the lifestyle of the future,” said Stephens. “We took into account the number of people and the perfect-sized village is one mile in diameter, so everyone is only half a mile from the center.”

Business parks will be placed adjacent to most of the villages, and residents will be encouraged to walk or bike to work via the trails, or to work at home instead of commuting. For those who need to travel to Los Angeles, there will be plenty of links to public transit, as well as easy access to the Golden State Freeway and California 126.

Newhall planners say many elements of the development are borrowed from the New Urban style--modern city planning principles that emphasize community. New Urbanism, proponents of the style say, is in many ways a reaction against the way in which suburbs have drained some of the best and brightest from the central city.

But critics doubt the New Urban style can work effectively so far from the central city.

“The focus on suburbs needs to be counterbalanced by a focus on the city,” said Jerold Kayden, associate professor of urban planning at Harvard University. “The New Urbanism cannot address all of society’s ills. And many of the [New Urban] suburbs mirror the makeup of existing suburbs, though the planners may claim differently.”

For instance, Laguna West, a New Urban-styled suburban development south of Sacramento, is having trouble filling its homes.

Even marketer Alexander said people have their doubts.

“Twenty-five to 30% of the marketplace loves the New Urbanism and the high density center,” she said. “But there’s still a lot of others who still want a cul-de-sac.”

Closer to home, critics have focused less on theory, and more on the specifics of Newhall’s plans.

For instance, while Newhall says it is seeking a diverse populace for its suburb of the future, the company has already angered some by attempting to place Newhall Ranch’s seven planned schools in the whiter, wealthier Newhall School District instead of allowing some of the schools to join the more diverse Castaic School District.

Newhall officials say they simply want all the Newhall Ranch kids to be in the same district to add greater community.

Also skeptical is the city of Santa Clarita, which is bracing for the introduction of 70,000 people to an area with a population of 150,000.

“There’s a substantial concern about the number of units in this project and others that would have a cumulative effect on the quality of life, the infrastructure and the river,” said George Caravalho, city manager for Santa Clarita.

In Ventura County, officials are concerned enough about the project to spend $80,000 to study the development’s potential impact. Officials at the county and some cities that are conducting their own reviews are questioning the project’s effect on everything from air quality and traffic to affordable housing and urban runoff.

Despite the opposition, Newhall is confident.

“We think this is a very good project and we believe that it addresses all of the concerns, environmental and otherwise,” said Marlee Lauffer, a Newhall spokeswoman.