Cities Join to Fight Housing Project

Officials in Santa Clarita and Los Angeles are gearing up to fight a developer’s plans to build a 5,800-home community in the hills above one of California’s biggest freeway bottlenecks, where the Golden State and Antelope Valley freeways merge.

The unusual partnership comes amid a major building boom in north Los Angeles County that is expected to add 400,000 residents in the next 15 years, growth that some fear would further clog the region’s already congested roads.

The battle over the Las Lomas project underscores the lengths to which local governments are willing to go to control growth as new home construction proliferates on the edges of the Southern California megalopolis.

“This really is an example of two cities saying, ‘Enough is enough,’ ” said Los Angeles Councilman Greig Smith, a leading critic of the project whose district is adjacent to it. “There’s a long history of cities doing something to another to the detriment of regional participation.... I think the fact that the two cities are working against it signals a death knell for the project.”

Critics say the development at the gateway to the northern part of the county would overburden the freeway system and make it harder for residents in the new developments farther up Interstate 5 to drive to and from work in the Los Angeles Basin.

At Smith’s urging, the L.A. City Council recently voted to begin the process of gaining planning authority over a portion of the Las Lomas property, which is now under county control.

Santa Clarita officials are working to place another portion of the property within their “sphere of influence.” The city has not taken a position on Las Lomas, although officials have expressed strong reservations about traffic and whether it is geologically safe to build homes there.

“A development of this size raises major concerns,” said Santa Clarita Mayor Cameron Smyth.

Las Lomas is the brainchild of Santa Monica-based developer Dan Palmer, who wants to transform the rolling hills between the San Fernando and Santa Clarita valleys into a “mini-city” that would include 2.3 million square feet of commercial space, a 300-room luxury hotel and a Metrolink station.

Palmer argues that the development makes sense because the property is many miles closer to Los Angeles than some of the other major projects underway, including the 20,000-home Newhall Ranch and the 23,000-home Centennial community, the latter of which is 30 miles north in Tejon Ranch.

“It’s better to build here, close in to Los Angeles, than out in Palmdale or Lancaster, where you’re creating more suburban sprawl,” Palmer said as he stood on a promontory where he plans to construct a piazza and terrace overlooking the freeway nexus.

Stephanie Pincetl, visiting professor at the UCLA Institute of the Environment, said it was rare for two cities to join to block a development.

“Usually, they’re competing for projects,” she said.

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The area from roughly Santa Clarita north to the Kern County line has about 600,000 residents. But the Southern California Assn. of Governments expects the population to reach nearly 1 million by 2020, fueled by the Newhall and Centennial developments as well as several smaller projects in Palmdale and Lancaster.

Developers also have several large commercial, office park and retail projects in the works aimed at providing shopping and jobs for the new arrivals.

But officials worry that the public infrastructure, notably roads, can’t keep up with the exploding growth. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority estimates that north county will need $5.4 billion in road improvements in the coming decades -- including an east-west freeway linking Centennial to the Antelope Valley -- but only a fraction of that sum is available.

Las Lomas alone is expected to add at least 44,000 vehicle trips a day to the Golden State and Antelope Valley freeways. That stretch of the 5 already carries more than 225,000 vehicles a day, according to Caltrans.

“You’re still dumping 11,000 more cars on the freeways when there’s no capacity for all the cars they have now,” said Bart Reed, a resident of nearby Sylmar and executive director of the Transit Coalition, an organization that works for road and freeway improvements and mass transit.

Taken together, Las Lomas and the other developments would take a toll on commuters. SCAG estimated that commuters on Interstate 5, who now travel an average of 26 mph during rush hour, would otherwise be slowed to 11 mph by 2020.

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The Las Lomas property sits south of Santa Clarita and north of Sylmar, a Los Angeles neighborhood. It is set amid electrical power lines, railroad tracks, cellphone towers, the Sunshine Canyon Landfill and the California Aqueduct, as well as the freeway junction.

But Palmer sees an upscale community with three schools, parks, trails and a wildlife corridor. Palmer, who has built several other subdivisions near Santa Clarita, is working on behalf of the six landowners who currently control the Las Lomas tracts. While the land is now in unincorporated territory, Palmer would like to develop it though the city of Los Angeles.

But Santa Clarita and Los Angeles have independently embarked on an approach that would make building the development far more difficult. Santa Clarita officials are looking at possibly gaining planning authority over 75% of the proposed project area while the remainder would be in Los Angeles’ sphere of influence.

The result would make the development far more difficult to complete, because the real estate would fall under two separate jurisdictions.

Additionally, critics want a closer examination of whether it is safe to build thousands of homes in the hilly area. A county report commissioned in 2002 found some of the steep hillside areas “geotechnically unstable” and questioned how dense construction would perform during a major earthquake.

Palmer’s firm has threatened to sue the cities, and he questioned why officials would want to block the development.

“Last time I checked, there was a housing shortage and a job shortage in Los Angeles County,” said Hilary Norton Orozco, vice president of community development for Palmer Investments. “The effect of this project on the economy and on residents could be really positive.”

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Smith and other Las Lomas opponents say they see the 17-year-long effort to kill the Ahmanson Ranch development as a model. The property owner wanted to build thousands of homes on land straddling the Los Angeles County-Ventura County border.

Surrounding cities, including Los Angeles, sued to block the project, and community groups attempted to gather funds to preserve the land. Last year, the state agreed to buy the 2,800-acre ranch from Washington Mutual in a $150-million deal that will keep it as open space.

There has been talk of preserving the land on which Las Lomas is planned, though no money is now available. The property is included in a preservation bill sponsored by Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank) that would protect a large swath of land between the Santa Monica Mountains and the San Gabriel Mountains.

Critics are holding out hope that the project can be stopped.

“We call it the Ahmanson of the north,” said Mitchell Englander, chief of staff to Councilman Smith.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

More homes, more traffic

A developer is proposing to build 5,800 homes and amenities at the junction of the Golden State and Antelope Valley freeways. Four other major developments are planned in the region.

1 Centennial: 23,000 homes

2 Newhall Ranch: 20,885 homes

3 Las Lomas: 5,800 homes

4 Ritter Ranch: 7,200 homes

5 Anaverde: 5,200 homes

Sources: Las Lomas Land Co.; Times reports

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Population explosion

The northern Los Angeles County area will nearly double in population over the next 25 years, according to projections.

*--* 2005 2020 2030 Lancaster 142,043 215,468 259,696 Palmdale 145,995 259,712 337,314 Santa Clarita 169,793 211,367 231,846 Unincorporated areas 156,671 280,840 350,372 Total 614,502 967,387 1,179,228

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Source: Southern California Assn. of Governments