By Patric Hedlund, TME
The Los Angeles County Regional Planning Commission voted on Wednesday, Aug. 29 to forward the Tejon Ranch Centennial Project to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors with no substantial changes to the plan proposed by the developer.
The project, to be built over 20 years, is projected at this time to be 19,333 homes (single and multifamily) plus 10 million square feet of commercial, industrial and municipal development.
The commissioners requested minor concessions according to our first reports: that 15% of the homes be affordable housing; that a local hire preference provision be implemented to try to cut down on commuting traffic, which is projected to add 75,000 vehicle trips per day; that zero emission school buses be utilized, for instance.
Tejon Ranch Company’s spokesperson said, “We are pleased the Regional Planning Commission is recommending that the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approve the Centennial specific plan. We want to express our appreciation to the County staff for the thousands of hours they devoted to moving the project forward. And we are especially grateful to all our supporters who wrote letters or spoke in support of Centennial.”
Vice President of Corporate Communications and Investor Relations Barry Zoeller also added, “Centennial is consistent with [the] Antelope Valley Plan approved by the Board of Supervisors in 2015 and we look forward to bringing Centennial before them.”
Urban Wildlands Staff Attorney J.P. Rose with the Center for Biological Diversity said, “L.A. County’s Planning Commission just greenlighted the most environmentally destructive sprawl project in recent memory. Centennial will pave over thousands of acres of irreplaceable wildlands, clog L.A.’s already congested freeways and worsen the air pollution burden that our communities suffer.
“We’re hopeful that the L.A. County Board of Supervisors will reject the commission’s recommendation. The county should focus development in existing cities instead of approving sprawl dozens of miles away from jobs.”
The New Mountain Pioneer this week published a report from Ecological Biologist Lynn Stafford of Pine Mountain Club about the loss of Quail Lake wildlife habitat if Village 9 of the Centennial plan is built. He said that grading away the upland habitat surrounding the lake will destroy the miles of forage area necessary to support Tricolored Blackbirds, which nest in colonies of up to 2,000 birds annually in the reeds along the shore at Quail Lake. The Tricolored Blackbird was designated a “threatened” species in April of 2018.
This is part of the August 31, 2018 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.
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