In closed session Tuesday, the Santa Clarita City Council is expected to discuss the status of the city manager’s negotiation with Lennar Homes of California before its regular meeting.
The city has identified approximately 57 acres of land, east of Santa Catarina Road and Leon Court — about 1.5 miles northeast of Bouquet and Plum canyon roads — owned by Lennar Homes, which has corporate affiliation with a couple of local developments on the market.
“The city is considering the potential acquisition of property for use as open space,” Carrie Lujan, communications director for the city of Santa Clarita, wrote Monday in an email.
She declined to address whether the property acquisition was associated with a 40-acre commitment the developer made in 2020 when the project was approved.
When asked if the land could be used for a planned Saugus library, she said the only discussion about the land so far has been in the context of open space. She said that a plot of land for the library has not yet been identified.
The lot is next to a series of parcels owned by Lennar Homes that previously have been approved for a more than 375-home development known as the Bouquet Canyon Project, according to previous reports in The Signal.
Lennar’s plans for the Bouquet Canyon Road Project northeast of the intersection of Plum Canyon Road and Bouquet Canyon Road in Saugus included the construction of 371 dwelling units, including 175 single-family attached dwelling units, 136 detached condominium dwelling units and 60 single-family detached dwelling units. The plans were on the agenda but the discussion was delayed during a William S. Hart Union High School District meeting last September that looked at fee assessments for the new homes.
The plans initially approved by the Santa Clarita City Council in November 2020 included the developer, Lennar Homes of California, donating 40 acres of land. It’s not clear if that pledge is associated with the closed-session discussion.
An L.A. County Assessor’s Office representative said Friday the lot in question was assessed at having a value of $420,000 in 2021, when it was transferred to its current owner. The assessor does not release the sale price, only the assessed value.
A nearly 70-year-old company, Lennar is the major shareholder of Five Point Holdings, the successor agency of The Newhall Land and Farming Co., but Five Point is not involved in this development, according to a Five Point official.
Lennar has developed more than 1 million homes across the country since it was founded in 1954, and has two communities on the Santa Clarita Valley’s west side.
Tesoro Highlands is a single-family home community from Lennar that’s offering houses in a community for adults age 55 and older in the $1 million to $1.4 million range, south of Magic Mountain Parkway and west of The Old Road. Valencia FivePoint, the development formerly known as Newhall Ranch, is also listed on Lennar’s website.
