City’s planning offers Costco, cinema project site plan

Rendering shows a portion of the proposed Costco as part of the Patios Connection project at Westfield Valencia Town Center. The $100 million investment plans were scuttled not long after they were announced, in part due to the pandemic that followed not long after. Courtesy of Westfield
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The Santa Clarita Planning Commission has released site plans for the proposed Patios Connection project, which includes a new Costco, ahead of a Tuesday public hearing. 

Westfield Valencia Town Center’s $100-million investment proposes to replace the former Sears building with a new destination area that extends the mall by adding a luxury cinema, fitness center and Santa Clarita’s second Costco with a gas station.

Here’s a breakdown of the site plan: 

A new Costco

The proposed project would demolish the nearly 130,000-square-foot Sears building and construct a 153,000-square-foot Costco and four-bay tire service center. 

Entry to the Costco, as well as the proposed gym and existing mall area, would be taken from a new exterior courtyard, which would connect to the current Patios locale and proposed cinema via an escalator and elevators, according to the plan. A portion of the courtyard will be used for a Costco food court, new retail and restaurant spaces. 

On the northeast portion of Costco, or adjacent to Citrus Street, a 30-pump gas station was designed with a shade structure over the fueling stations and a queuing area with a capacity of 100 vehicles. Cars would access this area from the south, with queuing moving north. Tanker trucks would have access to the fuel tanks via a turnout to minimize impediments to vehicles in the area, according to the project description.  

Parking

Plans show a rooftop parking lot of 275 spots, 9-foot-by-18-foot spaces atop the Costco building. The deck would level with the existing Patios area to offer pedestrians a direct path, as well as offer escalators and elevators.  

The project would also reconfigure the existing surface parking lot in the east portion of the Costco. These new parking spaces would measure 10 feet by 19 feet, which surpasses the city’s standard of 9-feet-by-18-feet, as requested by Westfield. A total of 65 slots would be designated as electronic vehicle charging stations and seven would include fully installed chargers. The project also includes more than 40 lockers for bicycles.  

Other features

The project also includes a 34,185-square-foot health and fitness center, a 32,000-square-foot cinema, a 2,138-square-foot expansion of the existing Canyon music venue and more than 7,400-square-feet of retail and restaurant use. 

The Planning Commission is expected to discuss the project in its entirety, including concerns posed by some members of the public regarding the possibility of increased traffic congestion to an already busy location, and vote on whether to approve, deny or amend the project after a public hearing. 

City staff, in collaboration with mall officials, have looked into six possible mitigation measures as the proposal would generate 3,700 more daily trips and “create significant traffic impacts at six intersections within the community,” according to a city traffic analysis. Among them include reconfiguring major city roads by adding lanes. 

The public hearing is scheduled to take place during the Planning Commission meeting, which commences at 6 p.m. Tuesday at City Hall, located at 23920 Valencia Blvd.

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