The Santa Clarita City Council approved a plan Tuesday intended to keep up maintenance for a parking structure, with plans for future development in the area and efficiencies from city management to create savings on the project in the long term.
In the short term, the city has seen the developer’s tax payments that covered the structure’s upkeep become delinquent.
The Cooper Street parking structure in the Vista Canyon development was the subject of the consent-calendar vote — a spot on the agenda for items the city does not anticipate generating City Council discussion.
The consent calendar was approved on a unanimous vote.
Jim Backer, principal for Vista Canyon’s developer, JSB Development, did not return a request for comment on this story.
The problem for the development for the last several years has been the failure of demand to meet the expectations for the project when it was approved, according to city officials.
Brittany Houston, the city’s finance manager, explained the city staff recommendation eliminates the parking structure’s current parcel number from its community facilities district and creates a new facilities district by annexing three parcels into the old one.
Houston said the plan was intended to improve the current situation in two ways: The city’s assumption of parking-structure maintenance will restore it to the expected service level, which wasn’t being met because of the delinquent taxes — and the city expects to be able to run the structure more efficiently; and the tax burden, which remains the same under the new parcels, now shifts to three parcels, with plans that that parcels’ future developments with the new assessment will eventually generate the revenue to cover the city’s costs.
“So, what we’re doing is the special taxes that were charged on the one parcel are now going to be charged to the three parcels, so the dollar amount that is going to be charged, that that total amount is the same — it’s just a charge on one parcel versus three — and at the cost that the city would maintain the structure,” Houston said in a phone interview Wednesday. “The idea was that as things developed in the area, the special taxes could be charged on those items that developed, and that development has not developed as initially anticipated, and so as things develop, there will be a shifting of the special tax that can go on some of those developed properties.”
The next step of the plan is for Backer, the property owner, to formally approve the changes at a council hearing next month.
It’s the second time the city has become involved in the Vista Canyon development.
Santa Clarita City Council members unanimously approved a staff recommendation to assume the design of a bridge for Vista Canyon, the mixed-use transit-friendly development on the east side of town, in February 2024.
During the discussion Tuesday before the City Council, City Manager Ken Striplin, said he couldn’t recall a precedent for such a move in the city’s history, but said it was necessary to protect the city’s interests in the project.
The staff’s recommendation called on the City Council to approve the city loaning itself up to $1.1 million from its general fund so it could assume the completion of the design of a bridge that will connect the intersection of Soledad Canyon Road and Lost Canyon Road to the Vista Canyon development, including the recently completed Vista Canyon Multi-Modal Transit Center.
The city was projected to lose $20 million in L.A. County Metropolitan Transportation Authority Measure R funds by the end of this month, if the city had not made that decision in 2024.
The loan is scheduled to be repaid with future bridge and thoroughfare fees generated by the Vista Canyon development project, according to the city’s agenda for that item.
