The Santa Clarita’s Planning Department is planning to update the Santa Clarita City Council’s Development Committee on the MetroWalk Specific Plan for land north and west of the Metrolink train tracks and east of Lost Canyon Road in Canyon Country.
The agenda for the public meeting posted Wednesday on the city’s website did not have any details regarding what aspects of the project would be discussed or what the presentation would be 10 a.m. Tuesday at City Hall.
Carrie Lujan, communications manager for the city of Santa Clarita, declined to make the documents available Monday afternoon for publication ahead of the meeting. The public agenda for the meeting states there will be a “presentation and update,” which is scheduled for the committee members to “review and discuss.” The committee members are Santa Clarita Mayor Pro Tem Laurene Weste and Councilman Jason Gibbs.
The developer’s plans for the housing project have gotten a little bit smaller since its first proposal during the middle of the pandemic due to changes in the marketplace, according to the developer, New Urban West.
The state’s California Environmental Quality Act website describes the initial December 2020 proposal as up to 498 residential units on a 20.4-acre site.
The average density of the project was nearly 25 units per acre, with the maximum allowable at 30 units, a mix of market-rate apartments and townhomes (179), townhomes for sale (150), age-qualified apartments (119) and affordable senior apartments (50). A multiuse path touted the project’s future connectivity to the then-unbuilt Metrolink Vista Canyon Station to the east and the Vista Canyon Specific Plan Project to the north.
But market demands can change, and so must the plan, the developer stated in a letter to the city.
Citing the current marketplace, the original project no longer pencils out, according to a letter from The Atlantis Group, a San Diego-based company working with New Urban West on the project.
“It is understood that financing rental apartment construction is not currently feasible and such development is not expected to return to feasibility for the foreseeable future given current economic conditions,” wrote Jonathan Frankel, vice president of New Urban West, in an October 2023 letter to the city. “Therefore, to deliver housing opportunities in a timely manner, we believe the project must be adjusted to respond to the changes in market conditions that have occurred since the (specific plan) adoption by delivering for-sale attached townhome units in lieu of rental apartments.”
In December 2023, the city allowed a reduction of 161 units. Plans for two four-story buildings with 179 market-rate apartments became 93 for-sale townhomes and 119 market-rate senior apartments in a four-story building became 44 for-sale townhomes.
John Musella, a spokesman for New Urban West, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.
