Covering twelve thousand acres along the Santa Clara River, it’s one of the largest single residential developments ever undertaken in California. Over the next 25 to 30 years, the Newhall Land company proposes to turn the undeveloped land just west of Magic Mountain into a community of up to 70 thousand residents, with schools, retail and commercial space as well as the attendant homes, apartments and condos.
The project, known as Newhall Ranch, has already passed several administrative hurdles in its fifteen years of planning and litigation, including approval by the Fish and Game department and most recently, tentative go-ahead by L.A.’s County Board of Supervisors. Ground is expected to break within a few years on Landmark Village, the first of four separate communities that will comprise Newhall Ranch.
But the project is encountering strong resistance from environmentalists, Native American groups and neighbors in nearby communities. They say the area won’t sustain that many new homes, that the impact on water quality is untenable, that traffic on I-5 will be unbearable. Most importantly, they say, the project will have a devastating effect on the ecology of the Santa Clara River – Southern California’s last major “wild river.”
The developers say the environmental impact will be minimal. And along with quaint, small-town living, front-porch homes and corner stores, they promise to deliver over sixty thousand new jobs and an avalanche of tax revenue. Detractors call it a planning disaster, urban sprawl at its worst.
WEIGH IN:
In the midst of what is arguably the worst housing climate since the Great Depression, do we need to build more homes? If you live in the area, will you welcome new neighbors along with the promise of new jobs? Should we be annexing our undeveloped acreage at the expense of whatever wild terrain still exists in our backyard?
Guests:
Lynne Plambeck, president of Santa Clarita Organization for Planning and the Environment (SCOPE)
Marlee Lauffer, vice president of Corporate Communications for Newhall Land