Officials Link Runkle Canyon, Upscale Stores

The desire of some Simi Valley officials to lure a Macy’s or a Robinsons-May to the city has entered into the debate over the future of the 550-home Runkle Canyon golf course development being discussed by city leaders.

Mayor Bill Davis said a combination of home sizes at Runkle Canyon--smaller ones for seniors and larger ones for affluent residents--would make Simi Valley more attractive for retail development.

“It’s a juggling act to try and do something like that for each segment of the community. It’s a tough balancing act, but we have to do it,” Davis said.

But some neighbors of the Runkle Canyon development, who jammed this week’s City Council meeting, care little for the development regardless of the size of the homes. They said it would jam their streets and schools and destroy the city’s ridgelines.

GreenPark Group executives assured council members they have no plans to build on the ridgelines. But the City Council rejected the company’s request Monday to split 20 one-acre lots into 40 half-acre lots because council members want those so-called estate lots to attract more expensive housing.

Just because some lots are large doesn’t mean homes there would sell and, in turn, lure upscale stores, some business analysts said after Monday’s meeting.

Jamshid Damooei, a professor of economics at Cal Lutheran, argued that Simi Valley should try to attract more affordable housing because the area’s homes are too expensive to buy or rent.

The city has plenty of department stores, but not the more upscale ones--Nordstrom, Macy’s or Robinsons-May--that some residents and officials want. That’s because Nordstrom and other upscale department stores are nearby in Thousand Oaks or Northridge, some experts said.

Still, it’s a good sign that Macy’s and Robinsons-May executives are scouting Simi Valley, said Dan Blake and Shirley Svorny, economic professors at Cal State Northridge. And if the city continues to add homes, it increases chances of attracting those types of stores, they said.

But the area is facing a lack of affordable housing because the upscale stores already in Thousand Oaks have driven up property values, even in Simi Valley, Damooei said.

Runkle Canyon could alleviate both problems, Davis said, if it had smaller, more affordable condominiums and larger homes.

Svorny said many cities skew their finances by trying to attract malls instead of homes, because California cities tend to get more money from sales taxes than from property taxes--a legacy of Proposition 13, the landmark 1978 ballot initiative that limited property taxes.

Although it would be more convenient for some San Fernando Valley residents to drive to Simi Valley than to go to the Northridge Fashion Center mall, trying to manipulate a housing development to lure a mall might not be wise, Svorny said.

Changes in how Americans shop, such as going online, may make malls less attractive in the future, Svorny said, and Simi Valley could end up using yesterday’s solution for tomorrow’s challenges.