Two properties that are being eyed by city staff for Santa Clarita’s Open Space Preservation District were on Tuesday’s closed-session City Council agenda, with a pair of separate negotiations reported to involve a pair of local movie ranch owners.
Santa Clarita City Manager Ken Striplin is identified as the city’s negotiator in a pair of potential transactions that could add more than 556 acres to the city’s green belt. There was no report out of the closed session Tuesday.
State records online indicated the properties were associated with LLCs tied to addresses also owned by local movie-ranch operators.
One property owner confirmed the involvement of his movie ranch property in the deal in a phone interview Tuesday. He declined to discuss any specifics of the deal pending its approval. City officials declined to discuss additional specifics regarding the parties involved, due to the nature of property negotiations.
If both lots are acquired — land deals are allowed to be negotiated in closed session under state law to protect the interests of both sides — the move would convert millions of square feet surrounding Tapia Canyon Road and Vasquez Canyon Road to open space, according to city officials.
The acquisitions would not change the city’s physical boundaries, according to Lujan, but would only add to its Open Space Preservation District.
“In July 2007, city of Santa Clarita property owners voted in favor of creating the Open Space Preservation District (OSPD),” according to the city’s website. “The district is designed to expand the city’s existing Open Space, Park and Parkland Program in order to preserve natural land from development, create more parks for community usage and protect rare biological and geological regions.”
Flying R LLC
The first negotiation listed on the council’s agenda involves two parcels of land totaling around 100 acres in Castaic surrounding Tapia Canyon Road.
The land is owned by Flying R LLC, which is a business registered to 31583 Castaic Road, Suite G, which also is the registered address for Truck Stunts, a company run by longtime Hollywood stuntman Mike Ryan.
Ryan was listed as the online owner of Castaic Film Ranch, which is located at 26530 Tapia Canyon Road, according to the Santa Clarita Film Office.
The lots listed on the city’s agenda include property south of Tapia Canyon, and reaching east almost to Avenida Rancho Tesoro, which is part of the Tesoro Del Valle development.
In a public post on LinkedIn last year, Ryan lamented the challenges for the local filming industry, which has seen the estimated local impact go from more than $30 million to about $19 million last year, according to city figures.
“Last year’s Writer and Actors Guild strikes, added to COVID and its negative effects on people going out to the movies, has sent many production companies to Canada or overseas to England and Europe, Australia, New Zealand and South America,” he wrote. “The trade unions may have won the battle, but we all seem to be losing the war. They still office here, but foreign tax breaks and far lower labor rates have taken our careers, and short of moving to Europe or Australia, I’m not sure what to do.”
Vasquez Canyon Ranch
The second item on the agenda involved more than 450 acres in Canyon Country listed to an LLC in care of James Combs, who also owns Agua Dulce Movie Ranch.
The properties are listed to Vasquez Canyon Ranch LLC and Pacific Encore, a separate LLC listed out of Palm Springs.
William Fix, who coordinates filming on the property for the owners of Agua Dulce Movie Ranch, referred questions to James Combs, who was not immediately available Tuesday afternoon to discuss whether the land involved in the negotiations would impact Agua Dulce Movie Ranch.
The parcels include land from east of Lost Creek Road to near the terminus of Esguerra Road, which is all part of vacant land in Canyon Country.
Industry trends
There have been a number of moves lately that haven’t pointed to good news for filming in California. The 400-acre Sable Ranch, another longtime filming spot in the city of Santa Clarita’s Movie Ranch Overlay Zone, was put on the market in October.
Local sources indicated the filming slowdown also was associated with the announcement last summer that the Shadowbox Studios project was dead. The development would have put hundreds of millions of dollars of investment to build sound stages in Placerita Canyon.
