What makes a city a great place to live and to visit? Why do so many people want to live here in Santa Clarita? As we continue to grow, will it always be a great place to live?

At the root of every good city is a good plan. If you want to wreck a place, just ignore a good plan, throw out checks and balances, and allow developer interests to be the only thing that dictates your decisions.

You wreck a good place one bad project at a time, and the Santa Clarita City Council is the last one who can stop a bad project.

A five-story apartment building with 5,200 square feet of commercial space is being proposed in the block next to the Canyon Theatre Guild. This is a bad development by Serrano Development Co.

It violates the Downtown Newhall Specific Plan by going to five stories, almost twice the allowed height. The only time this large of a project is allowed (Chapter 4, page 83) is when the project is a “full block” development. An example of a “full block” development is Newhall Crossings, two blocks away, also built by Serrano. When I sat on the City Council, I reviewed that project and was told by the Planning Department, very clearly, that was the only time you could go to that height was when you developed the entire block.

The developer is calling the proposed project a full-block development but it is only HALF of a block. The plan clearly defines a FULL block: “the aggregate of private lots, passages, common drives and lanes, circumscribed by thoroughfares” (Chapter 4, page 121).........

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