About three months on, proprietors in two Bouquet Canyon Road shopping centers say Santa Clarita has put them on a path to going out of business, due to an 11-month road closure the City Council authorized as part of the development plan for nearby homes.
The Santa Clarita City Council approved a development agreement with Lennar back in November 2020 for the Bouquet Canyon Road Project, which will add 375 attached and detached two-story homes.
The problem for Bouquet Canyon Road business owners: In order to construct all those homes in a floodplain, the developer, Lennar, had to widen the area’s floodplain and said it needed to close their Bouquet Canyon Road traffic for nearly a year to do so.
The hundreds of new residents are sure to provide new customers for Bouquet Canyon Plaza and the neighboring shops on Plum Canyon Road.
But Mik Prajapati, who owns the Mail and Stamp Center, said the city needs to do more, because he and all his neighbors have serious concerns about the 11-month closure.
Unaware of the pending closure, Prajapati said he opened his business just months before a major arterial for his convenience-based retail location was cut off. He said he was not the only one who found out from concerned residents who had seen the information going around about the pending closure toward the end of last year.
The closure has basically cut off access to the businesses from traffic heading south from Bouquet Canyon, and the gate at Benz Road restricts a lot of their local customers from convenient access, including from Copper Hill Road.
He mentioned efforts the city has taken on social media to promote the businesses, but it can’t bring customers through a closed road, he said. With the cost of gas, many who could have come there have been cut off, and he worries he’ll lose them forever.
“Since my last visit last month, not enough has been done,” Prajapati said, speaking on his own behalf, as well as for some of his neighbors. “Reduced access and traffic have affected customer flow, visibility and daily operation for small businesses like mine. We’re asking that the city continue to work towards the solution that help businesses survive and recover from this disruption. We highly suggest that you can work with Lennar builder to come up with some sort of financial support to compensate businesses.”
Vincenzo’s Pizza, a popular Italian restaurant at the corner of Plum and Bouquet canyon roads, was the latest entity to share its concern.
A letter sent to customers, which was published by others online, talked about the challenges the longtime local business has faced since the road closure.
“The owners and property management in this center do not reside in the area and in fact weren’t aware of the road closure until we notified them. We have been negotiating with them for quite some time and just over a week ago we believed we had come to an agreement,” according to the letter, which was addressed from “Vincenzo’s Pizza, Saugus.”
The letter continued to say the agreement fell through, and now the business’ future is uncertain.
“At first, we were not overly concerned with the closure but were unaware that the city would also close Benz Road, therefore allowing no access for customers to reach us from the north unless traveling all the way to Haskell. This has created a huge problem for our customers, including those who live in Agua Dulce, Acton and beyond,” according to the letter.
A representative of Vincenzo’s verified the letter’s authenticity this week but declined to comment on the situation further at this time.
John Meshriky, who opened a convenience store at the intersection, shared a similar frustration.
Santa Clarita Mayor Laurene Weste was on the City Council when the closure was approved in 2020, and also indicated she would be seeking re-election to represent District No. 4, which includes Bouquet Canyon Road.
When asked about the decision to approve the closure, she said she was “not a traffic-engineering expert, but they have a lot of specific criteria to deal with,” in a phone interview last month.
She acknowledged that the city can’t guarantee anything with the planned 11-month timeline, but that the city would do everything they can to keep people up to date with the construction timeline, which also was a promise made at a City Council meeting on the issue.
When asked about the potential to help the businesses financially with a grant or loan program, Weste said the city was “not allowed to have a gift of public funds — on anything,” but said the city had several plans it was working on.
“In regard to the businesses on Bouquet, we hear you guys,” said City Manager Ken Striplin at last month’s City Council meeting. “We’re in constant contact with our economic development program with the businesses, we’ve come up with a couple new programs that we’re trying to put together for consideration here shortly, but we are working on it. We are trying our best to come up with creative solutions in a very difficult situation. But we do hear them, and we will continue to work on those programs.”
Prajapati said it’s been barely three months since the city instituted the closure and already, “the turmoil from this has been really bad,” he said in a phone interview this week. “To save one business,” he added, referring to Lennar, “they’re drowning all of us.”
He said that, after he spoke at the previous Santa Clarita City Council meeting, one of the recommendations from city staff was to contact the county’s Small Business Development Center, but even that organization has said there’s been little they can do.
A number left with the business owners by Lennar was not responded to in a request for comment. John Musella, a local spokesman for Lennar, did not respond to a request for comment as of this story’s publication.
Bill Khalil, who runs the convenience store in Bouquet Plaza, said his business continues to be hurt by the closure. He didn’t know if business loans would be a viable solution. Prajapati said that could be a “rabbit hole.”
This week, city officials said they’re still working on the issue, in addition to a cosmetic effort — a lane restriping is planned for Bouquet Canyon Road meant to make the businesses on the corner look “more inviting” for drivers heading north toward Plum Canyon.
