Newhall Ranch’s Plan for Open Space Opposed

Dissatisfied with the developer’s plan to transfer 6,000 acres of open space in the Newhall Ranch to a private group, a panel of city officials and members of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy said Thursday that it will ask the County Board of Supervisors to ensure that the land is placed under public ownership.

At a special meeting at City Hall, the four members of the Santa Clarita Watershed Recreational and Conservation Authority unanimously agreed that Newhall Land & Farming Co.’s plan does not guarantee public access to the land.

Newhall Land has proposed turning over the open space to the Center for Natural Lands Management, a Sacramento-based private nonprofit organization. Under that scenario, the land transfer would be tied to the number of homes built in the planned Newhall Ranch project and would occur gradually.

A company spokeswoman said Thursday that Newhall Land had no intention of denying public access to the property and that the Sacramento center was ideally suited to manage the land.

But members of the authority expressed frustration that prolonged negotiations with the center have yet to yield substantive changes in the plan.

“We are opposed to a private organization having title to the land,” said Santa Clarita City Manager George Caravalho, a panel member. “It should be dedicated to a public agency.”

The authority called for a closed-session meeting next Wednesday to discuss the possibility of purchasing the ecologically sensitive land.

“In my opinion, [the center’s] proposed memorandum of understanding is non-responsive to our concerns,” Caravalho said, referring to a document received by the panel in May. “I had hoped that during the mediation process they would have been more responsive.”

Newhall Land is trying to win approval to erect a city for more than 70,000 inhabitants along the Santa Clara River in an area west of the Golden State Freeway between Valencia and the Ventura County line. The project, which would be built over 30 years, calls for more than 24,000 homes, a water reclamation plant and schools. If approved by the Board of Supervisors, it would be the largest residential project in Los Angeles County history.

The Los Angeles County Regional Planning Commission’s unanimous approval of the project in December has been appealed by the cities of Santa Clarita, Santa Paula and Moorpark and by Ventura County.

Because Newhall Ranch would be built outside city limits in an unincorporated area of the county, Santa Clarita officials have only limited power to influence the development. Unlike Ventura County and other government entities that have threatened legal action to block the project, Santa Clarita officials have said they prefer to negotiate with the developer to reduce the scope of the project and its potential adverse effects on the city.

In May, the Santa Clarita City Council drew up a list of its 13 main concerns about the development and presented it to the Board of Supervisors. The list addressed issues ranging from transportation and traffic to schools and the environment.

One of the city’s principal environmental concerns was over the management of just under 6,000 acres of Newhall Ranch that under current plans would be set aside as permanent open space.

Most of that land, nearly 4,000 acres, is in the so-called “high country” area of the development. Located in the southern portion of Newhall Ranch, the hilly acreage would connect to the Santa Clarita Woodlands, a 3,500-acre parcel owned by the conservancy. Together, the parcels would provide an open-space corridor stretching from the Golden State Freeway to Ventura County.

Most of the remaining 2,000 acres of open space called for in the Newhall Ranch plan would be located along the Santa Clara River, where it would serve as a buffer zone between the waterway and nearby development.

Conservancy officials have said that Newhall Land “hand-picked” the natural lands center for the project because the small agency could “easily be bullied into doing Newhall’s bidding.”

Newhall Land officials strongly disagreed.

Company spokeswoman Marlee Lauffer said the company had been in discussion with the center’s management for two years about overseeing the open space on Newhall Ranch.

“We let the biology dictate the plan,” Lauffer said. “They are biologists by trade, and they have the expertise to deal with both the high country and the river corridor.”

Lauffer said Newhall Land is willing to continue negotiations. Under one option, she said, the center would own the property and the conservancy would be responsible for its upkeep.

But conservancy Chief Executive Joseph Edmiston said that the arrangement worked out between Newhall Ranch and the center, which would receive $200,000 per year to manage the property, was inadequate.

“Do we really think this is going to be used as a recreational park under those conditions? Of course not,” Edmiston said. “Can $200,000 per year manage 6,000 acres? Sure it does. But only if you close it off to the public.”