The Santa Clarita City Council approved an expanded study on the potential environmental impacts of a mixed-use housing development that’s proposed to add hundreds of units off Wiley Canyon Road.
At Tuesday’s meeting, the council voted 4-0 to authorize the study of a fifth alternative for the 31-acre site previously known as the Smiser Mule Ranch. Councilman Jason Gibbs was absent from the meeting.
No details for the new alternative, including the revised number of units, were made available before the council’s vote on Tuesday, and the council did not discuss any details of the plan at the meeting.
The new alternative is “a reduced project alternative,” Jason Crawford, community development director, wrote in an email Tuesday. “It would be located within the same footprint of the analyzed project but would include a smaller project with less residential units.”
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Planning Manager Patrick Leclair shared general information from the revised proposal in an email Wednesday afternoon.
The senior living facility has been reduced from 217 units to 120 units, with all units “proposed (to) be assisted or memory care units. The independent living units are proposed to be removed from the revised project,” according to Leclair’s email.
Tom Clark, the project’s developer, said the for-rent apartment units were being scuttled in favor of a for-sale model.
The 379 apartment units have been replaced with 45 detached single-family condominium units with 29 accessory dwelling units and 179 townhome units.
The commercial component remains at approximately 9,000 square feet of proposed commercial space, Leclair noted.
“We’re reducing the project by half but we’re still doing all the improvements,” Clark said, referring to the addition of trails, sidewalks and roundabouts that have been discussed.
“We’re doing a traffic study update,” Clark said. “I think that study will see a significant decrease in traffic simply because you’ll have fewer houses.”
At least one resident found the revisions encouraging based on a talk she had with the developer Tuesday, but called for more information about the details of the plan.
Annette Lucas, who made it clear she was not speaking on behalf of her neighbors, said she and some neighbors met with Clark prior to the council meeting.
“We said, ‘This looks like a better project, but it is not the project, it is only a conception,’” she said. “We need the details — of how wide this is, what that is, where the fire station is.”
She also joined the call for the city to recirculate the plans for this new project.
“Let everybody come and say their concerns and listen to it and give the time that these people have to comment. This is a new idea,” she said. “You can’t just come through the back door and say, ‘OK, we’re going to add this now.’”
City staff said the project, which originally called for a 379-unit mixed-use development and a senior living facility with another 217 units, is being revised by the developer based on “Planning Commission comments, as well as comments received by the public.”
Due to all the questions, and now a changed plan, Dudek, the project’s consultants, once again asked for more money — specifically, about another $22,000, which would ultimately be paid by the developer — to look at the changes.
Tom Clark, principal for the project’s developer, Royal Clark Development, did not respond to multiple calls seeking comment for this story.
Clark said previously he was trying to build a really special project, with a showpiece fountain and a grand entrance even its neighbors would be proud to see as they pass by.
Neighboring residents have expressed concerns about the Wiley Canyon Mixed Use Project’s traffic impacts, outreach efforts and proportions. Residents questioned whether a project was really “mixed-use” if it’s going to be 668,000 square feet of housing and 9,000 square feet of commercial space, the first floor of the senior living facility.
In September, after a pair of Planning Commission hearings that drew more than 500 comments, the City Council approved an expanded environmental impact review.
The state-mandated report evaluates the potential impacts of a project, which also allows community agencies and stakeholders a chance to register concerns and requires a project response. These consultant costs eventually are taken on by the developer.
However, in the agenda for Tuesday’s council meeting, city staff mentioned challenges the project’s consultants have had in answering to so much concern within the confines of its previously amended contract that it’s now called for a third.
“Since that time, the applicant team, inclusive of the technical consultants, has been unable to provide responses to comments on the technical reports that must be addressed as part of the final EIR,” according to the city staff report from Erika Iverson, senior planner for the city.
The first EIR, as the reports are known, was agreed to in November 2021 for an amount not to exceed $263,956. The contract was formally increased again in August to a maximum of $368,450, after a pair of hearings made it clear there were more questions.
Critics of the project called on Santa Clarita to recirculate the alternative now being studied by city planners, labeling the process as a “bait and switch” by the city, which circulated an environmental impact review with four alternatives last year.
Weston Monroe, who said he works in construction and generally favors projects, has had a difficult time following the city’s approval process and wanted to know why the revisions haven’t been publicly presented.
“At a minimum, the city should require two more alternatives — one being a circulation element plan that shows Wiley Canyon Road as a secondary highway on the alignment,” referring to the traffic study on the county Public Works highway plan for the project. “And the second being what they are proposing now.”
Another resident asked whether such a move was fair to the community, after the project had heard so many concerns during a pair of Planning Commission hearings last year — a process that itself was criticized for not being inclusive enough.
Addressing the legality of the city’s process, City Attorney Joe Montes said the city was not under an obligation to recirculate the fifth alternative.
“City staff have looked at the (California Environmental Quality Act) regulations in connection with this type of amendment. CEQA regulations specifically provide that if there are significant changes to a project, that that would trigger a recirculation,” Montes said, adding that “significant changes” are specifically identified.
The changes would have to create a new unidentified environmental impact, increase the severity of a previously identified impact or make a previously identified mitigation measure infeasible, he added, which does not appear to be the case so far.
Montes also said if the consultant’s work “discloses any of those other triggers” then a recirculation would be required.
Clark led the public outreach over the summer, a process that was initially criticized for not having information in Spanish or a translator available for a community meeting involving a nearby mobile home park that involved a largely Spanish-speaking population.
The next and final stop for the project is another Planning Commission hearing, which could give final approval for the project, unless it’s appealed, Montes said.
