Newhall Merchants Decry Lack of Patrons, but Plans Call for Area’s Revitalization

As downtown centers go, Newhall’s has one foot in the grave. Once the hub of a busy cattle and farming community, where neighbors tipped their hats to one another while shopping at the general store or waiting at Harry’s Reliable Shoe Repair for their cowboy boots to be resown, “Old Newhall” could well be on its way to becoming a ghost town.

The single-story storefronts that face San Fernando Road in downtown Newhall now--with their stucco facades and exposed wood--appear hunched with age, and in the middle of a weekday afternoon, hardly a soul is seen walking its streets.

The transmission shops, hardware stores and barber shops along the main street are having a hard time keeping pace with the glistening sidewalk cafes and trendy clothing stores elsewhere in Santa Clarita. In addition, the area’s rising crime has made downtown Newhall unattractive to new businesses and customers.

But the city of Santa Clarita is unwilling to let this former cow town just fade into the sunset. Plans are underway for redevelopment similar to the successful efforts in Pasadena, Santa Monica and Monrovia.

Old Newhall does have several factors going for it, city officials say, including the emotional high ground.

“I grew up here and this used to be the focus of life in the area,” said Glenn Adamick, one of the city administrators involved in the redevelopment project. “It’s still a huge part of the community. What are we going to do, just let it decay?”

Old Newhall traces its roots back to the 1880s, when it was an oil boomtown, with wildcatters, cowboys and farm workers all seeking their fortunes a day’s ride north of Los Angeles. It was typical Main Street America in the 1940s and ‘50s and hasn’t changed much today.

Jeri Bronstrup, owner of the Way Station Coffee Shop at 9th Street and San Fernando Road, has done business in Newhall for 27 years and believes that even though the surrounding area is run down, the personal service inside has carried over from the downtown’s heyday.

“We need redevelopment,” said Bronstrup inside the Way Station, where vintage license plates and hard hats hang alongside a poster of John Wayne. “But I don’t want people thinking that business is bad because of something the merchants have done. People can still come in here and get the best food and service around.”

Bronstrup said she still does a good weekend business, but it’s the lunchtime crowd that no longer comes around, preferring the dozen or so eateries closer to the new center of town in Valencia.

Phil Lerma of Lerma’s Hairstyling blames the lack of foot traffic and a perception in the community that the area is crime-ridden.

“I hear people say to me, ‘I’m afraid to go into Newhall,’ ” said Lerma, who has run his barbershop in the same spot for 24 years.

“They’re afraid of the day laborers that gather around here. I tell them that the day laborers aren’t going to hurt anyone, but it’s hard to change people’s minds.”

The residential area near downtown has also suffered. City officials blame absentee homeowners who rent out their properties and then put little money into repairs for the area’s shabby appearance.

In 1994, the city began its first attempt at redevelopment, a $1 billion plan that proposed to spruce up the entire Newhall area.

It was killed in its infancy by the Castaic Lake Water Agency, which won a lawsuit last year against the city. The CLWA, a state agency that receives a share of local property taxes, claimed that the city played fast and loose with redevelopment law. State redevelopment law has very specific criteria for what qualifies a neighborhood for redevelopment funding.

After that defeat, the city backed off to rethink its plans for redevelopment. Just Thursday, Santa Clarita announced that it would shrink its redevelopment plan to 897 acres to head off renewed opposition from the CLWA.

Robert Sagehorn, CLWA general manager, was unavailable for comment Friday night.

In the meantime, the city used money from its general fund and federal grants to build a park, community center and sheriff’s substation, and passed an anti-solicitation ordinance that many hope will discourage job-seeking day laborers from congregating on the area’s street corners.

Officials were trying to change the way Newhall residents viewed their own city.

“It worked. People started making improvements to their own houses,” said City Manager George Caravalho. “We started seeing people put up retaining walls, building driveways, paint their houses and fix their yards up.”

Encouraged, the city made plans to widen Railroad Avenue, which parallels San Fernando Road just east of the downtown area, and build a Metrolink station there. The project will cost about $7 million, more than $5 million of it in state and federal grants plus $1.7 million from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

City officials say that it is impossible to know how long the project will take or how much money it will cost before the area is economically viable again.

Ken Pulskamp, assistant city manager, says the city’s efforts alone will not be enough to pull the area out of its nose dive, without help from private property owners.

“Once people and business owners see the improvements, we think that will be sufficient catalyst for them to invest in their own property,” Pulskamp said. “This has got to be a joint effort. It’s not going to work if [business owners] don’t contribute.”

The Way Station’s Bronstrup worries that downtown’s resurrection won’t come in time to save her restaurant. “We need more business now,” she said.

“It doesn’t turn around overnight,” cautioned Glen Cox, city planner for Monrovia, about that city’s efforts to restore Myrtle Street, which once was the center of the community but in the late 1960s fell on hard times, with a third of its buildings vacant.

In 1975, Monrovia embarked on a 25-year redevelopment plan. The city fixed street lights, made available low-interest loans, put in new sidewalks and sidewalk benches and told merchants that the city would continue to make improvements as long as it saw the merchants also spending their own money on upgrades.

“We didn’t show significant improvements until the mid-’80s,” Cox said. “But all the while there was significant investment in the residential area going on as well. Property values have gone up significantly and not just in the [redevelopment] project area.”

In Newhall, the city is looking into the possibility of giving the shops in the redevelopment zone Victorian-era or western-style facades.

Pat Saletore, a member of the Newhall Historical Society, opposes that idea, saying the area has its own character that should be preserved.

“It isn’t Pasadena and Santa Monica. It can be dressed up a little bit but what a shame if we lose the way it looks.”