Valencia Opening Its Door for PGA

The most tangible sign of community preparedness for the Nissan Open this week in Los Angeles’ most far-flung suburb is, appropriately enough, a white picket fence.

Erected along Magic Mountain Parkway and the Golden State Freeway, it helps welcome players and visitors to the Valencia Country Club in avidly wholesome Santa Clarita.

Snagging the PGA event, the former Los Angeles Open which was held at Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades more often than any other course in its 72-year history, was an indisputable coup for the 10-year-old city.

Organizers and community leaders have trumpeted it as the area’s big-league sports debut, predicting it will draw more than 100,000 spectators and pump significant tourist dollars into the local economy.

“People are saying this may be the biggest thing to happen in Santa Clarita in 50 years,” said Judy Belue, development director for the local Boys & Girls Club, one of three Southern California charities that will benefit financially from the Nissan Open. “It’s unbelievable. It’s all people are talking about.”

But the effects will not last long after the bright white tents come down and the cargo trucks leave town Sunday evening, because the Nissan will return to the Riviera next year.

Accordingly, fanfare for the tournament has been somewhat limited. Red-white-and-blue banners announcing the event hang only within a mile of the golf course. Billboards promoting the tournament as “just a short drive away” appear in the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys, but not in Santa Clarita.

“We see this as an opportunity to showcase Valencia to the Los Angeles area and a national television audience,” said Marlee Lauffer, spokeswoman for Newhall Land and Farming Co., the developer that launched Valencia as a planned community in the 1960s.

Arnie Wishnick, executive director of the Pacific Palisades Chamber of Commerce, said the area has realized no discernible economic benefit over the years. The publicity is invaluable, he said, but from a profit standpoint, hosting the Nissan Open and other golf events amounts to a wash.

“When the [PGA Championship] came here in 1995, we thought, ‘Boy, this is it. We’re going to make a killing,” Wishnick said. “People are going to spend money and put this place on the map.’ But it just didn’t happen.”

He blamed the disappointment in part on the spread-out terrain of greater Los Angeles.

“People just get in their cars and off they go,” he said.

Mike Haviland, Santa Clarita’s marketing and economic development manager, said that because the event is a one-shot deal, neither the PGA Tour nor the city has a precise estimate of its economic impact. The city has devoted only a tiny fraction--less than $10,000, Haviland said--of its $85 million annual budget to preparing for the event, he said.

Most of the landscaping and roadside improvements have been paid for by Newhall Land.

But Haviland stressed that all local hotels are booked and, barring inclement weather, hosting the event is a no-lose proposition.

“It’s putting this community on the map for sure,” he said.

Some residents doubt Newhall, Saugus and Canyon Country, the city’s other three communities, will be part of that map.

Asked if she was looking forward to the tournament, Lynn Dye, a Canyon Country resident waitressing at the Way Station Coffee House in downtown Newhall, responded: “When is that, in April?”

Fellow waitress Geni Hill said the golf tournament shows that recently incorporated Santa Clarita is like other California cities--a seemingly unified whole divided into many parts.

“If there’s any money over here, it’s old money,” said Hill, who lives in Canyon Country. “Over there [in Valencia], you’re talking about new money. Golf is an expensive sport and they’re catering to that new money.”

“Yeah,” Dye cracked, “and we’re definitely old money.”

At a nearby table, Gary Tucker of Valencia and Pat Boss of Newhall talked about the tournament between bites of the Way Station’s truckstop fare.

They were not in a welcoming mood.

“I don’t want this to get too big. Then people might come up here and change this community,” Tucker said. “Traffic is already getting bad . . . next thing you know, everything here will go from fried food to saute.”

Boss said many residents feel alienated from the private Valencia Country Club, whose members pay well into six figures for the privilege of playing there.

“It’s not a place a lot of people get to go,” he said.

Haviland countered that bringing the entire city together is not the purpose of the Nissan Open or other events in Santa Clarita, such as the annual marathon or Cowboy Poetry Festival.

“It’s a national event,” Haviland said of the Nissan. “Wherever they do these, they draw people internationally. This is big-time. It will have a very positive draw to bring people into the community. The event isn’t staged to benefit the local community. That’s an added effect.

“From my point of view, we want dollars from other economies coming into our economies. Those are the good dollars.”