OK Expected on 2,545-Unit Housing Plan

The Los Angeles County Regional Planning Commission today is expected to approve another large housing project near Santa Clarita--the 2,545-unit Westcreek development on the west bank of San Francisquito Creek.

The development has long been decried by local environmentalists who have all but conceded defeat on the project destined for county land just outside the city boundary. The 966-acre site will include homes, apartments and condominiums, a 180,000-square-foot shopping center, a “paseo” system of pedestrian walkways and a 15-acre public park.

If the project is approved by the commission, it will go before the Board of Supervisors for final approval.

Westcreek’s developer, Newhall Land & Farming Co., has requested a zoning change from an agricultural designation where homes can be built on a minimum of 5-acre lots to a Residential Planned Development zone that allows increased density--up to 27 units an acre.

Westcreek is to be bordered by Copper Hill and Decoro drives and the San Francisquito Creek. A little more than half the project site, about 558 acres, is to be open space.

For Newhall Land, Westcreek would be the final phase of its North River communities, part of the Valencia master plan, said Marlee Lauffer, company spokeswoman. In April, the company’s North Valencia II project, which is on the other side of the creek and will feature 1,900 homes, was approved by the city of Santa Clarita.

Local environmentalists say Westcreek’s approval would further burden the city.

“We have had 30,000 units last year in the Santa Clarita Valley approved,” said Lynne Plambeck, first vice president of the Santa Clarita Organization for Planning the Environment. “We’re way overbuilt for the infrastructure--the roads, the open space and the schools can’t take it.”

Many of the elementary schools are on year-round schedules to ease high enrollment, and Plambeck said animal habitats are giving way to crowded neighborhoods.

The environmental impact report for Westcreek does identify the loss of riparian and other habitats, said Ellen Fitzgerald, principal planning assistant for the county Regional Planning Department. And the San Francisquito Creek is a county-designated Significant Ecological Area. Fitzgerald said Newhall Land hired experts to survey the project boundary and they determined Westcreek would not impact the Significant Ecological Area.

The new Decoro Drive bridge that will be built by Newhall Land, however, is identified as having an adverse impact on the ecological area. Its presence, when built, may affect the movement of the federally endangered unarmored three-spined stickleback fish, Fitzgerald said.

Historically, the site also has been home to other now-endangered species, including the arroyo toad, the red-legged frog and the least Bell’s Vireo and southwestern willow flycatcher birds, said Teresa Savaikie, a member of the San Fernando Valley chapter of the Audubon Society. The chapter, she said, opposes Westcreek as well as the North Valencia II development.