The city of Santa Clarita granted a developer another year for the entitlements on a 93-acre property in Placerita Canyon, nearly three years after the Santa Clarita City Council approved the plans for a potential billion-dollar soundstage project there, according to city planning officials.
Shadowbox Studios, which Santa Clarita’s Planning Division spent more than a year on before council approval in August 2023, was planned to be a full-service film and television studio with 19 soundstages and supporting facilities, before work essentially stopped on the project the following spring.
Industry sources speculated that funding was an issue for the project that had been expected to add 1.3 million square feet of development in conjunction with a host of planned improvements.
Since the project was scuttled, a several-hundred-home project was forecast for one of the parcels on that property, based on a previous school-population report obtained by The Signal.
Jason Crawford, the city’s director of community development, said Thursday that no new plans have been formally submitted for the Shadowbox parcels.
That means the entitlements being extended for a year could still be exercised to build such a studio project.
During the Shadowbox discussion, it was repeatedly mentioned that if the studio project fell through, a home builder could put 1,000 or more units on the lot, due to potential density bonuses and other state housing laws.
The one-year extension for the studio plans was approved ministerially by the city’s Planning Division, which grants the entitlements until Aug. 22, 2027.
There are other extensions available that the applicant can request in the future, Crawford said.
