Saugus residents who are upset that a developer’s plan is closing their main arterial for 11 months have taken to bright-yellow signs protesting the closure, which is planned for “mid-January,” according to a community notice posted by the builder.
Lennar, the company leveling a hillside for 375 homes off Bouquet Canyon Road near David Way, announced it’s planning to tell residents at a Jan. 7 meeting about the details of its closure planned for later that month, as reported in The Signal on Tuesday.
The reaction from canyon residents was immediate.
A post on social media of the protest signs led to more than 20 comments from residents asking where they can get their own and suggesting residents protest at City Hall and next month’s meeting with them.
Through spokesman John Musella, Lennar has declined to make any public comment on the plans, referring questions to the city.
However, the developer is the one setting the timeline and order of operations for construction on the project, said City Engineer Damon Letz, when reached by phone Tuesday.
City officials said there’s not much that can be done at this point, as the developer’s plans —which began to be implemented with grading work this fall — were part of conditions the Santa Clarita City Council approved more than five years ago.
This is the second attempt Lennar is making at community outreach, after the first meeting in November resulted in dozens of angry residents writing letters and showing up to City Hall with their concerns.
City Manager Ken Striplin told the City Council that he had heard their concerns, but residents say there are no significant changes in the plan as it stands online.
What residents really want, said Cheryl Redmond, who lives just north of the project, is to have the new Bouquet Canyon Road route completed before the old one is closed.
The plans being presented also do nothing to support Bouquet Canyon Plaza, she said, expressing concerns for the viability of businesses people will have a hard time getting to.
“There’s nothing in there to support the business on Bouquet that are going to be the most affected by that closure,” she said, adding people with horse trailers who have homes throughout the area are going to need to take 30- to 45-minute detours.
“And you know (Vasquez Canyon Road) has had issues, so if anything there happens, we’re stuck here,” she said, referring to the detour.
“There’s just too many things that they didn’t look at when they did this,” she said, adding part of the problem is the notifications are only required to go to property owners within 1,000 feet of the project’s boundaries, but this work impacts the entire canyon, and many are still learning about the project.
Letz said that, after the first community meeting, there were two main revisions to the plan: The right-turn lane on southbound Bouquet north of Centurion Way is now being extended all the way up to Haskell Canyon Road to accommodate traffic turning into Saugus High School; and the city is “reconfiguring the lanes to provide better through traffic movements between Bouquet and Plum canyon roads.”
When asked about the feasibility of the residents’ request, Letz said, “the developer is going over that in detail at the public meeting.”
“That’s all on the construction side,” he said. “All of that timing and how that all has to happen is based on construction.”
Letz also was asked whether enough residents could change the path, so to speak, at this juncture.
“Well, the project was approved,” Letz said. “The conditions are set, so it would be hard to go back and change conditions.”
The project was originally proposed in 2018 as a 461-unit plan with two- and three-story buildings, according to previous reporting on the plan.
The story from the 2020 City Council approval notes that one of the conditions in the 4-0 approval, with then-Councilman Bob Kellar recusing himself, was a request by current Mayor Laurene Weste for the developer to grant the city several dozen acres of open space.
“Give the city the open space property located south of Bouquet Canyon Road where those units were proposed. It is approximately 40 acres,” Weste said, according to the 2020 article, which also stated she told the developer to work with city staff to provide a “top-notch” trailhead for the community and a wildlife crossing “which will traverse throughout 40 acres and connect through the open space.”
