Tejon Ranch’s Centennial gets green light, 4-1, by Los Angeles County supervisors

UPDATE:  GORMAN and NEENACH, CA (Tuesday, April 30, 2019 at 3 p.m.)— The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 to give final approval to the Tejon Ranch Company’s Centennial project today. Although the item was on the board’s consent agenda along with about five dozen other issues, three citizens asked to speak before the vote.

Western Antelope Valley’s Susan Zahnter, vice president of the Three Points Town Council and president of the Association of Rural Town Councils (ARTC), spoke bleakly about the high winds of the arid grasslands to be transformed into the nine villages for Centennial’s proposed 19,333 homes. Zahnter spoke of what will greet new residents of the area, including traffic jams, wildfires, earthquakes and 20 years of exposure to valley fever during the project’s build-out.

On the other hand, the press release by the Tejon Ranch Company said that Centennial addresses the serious need to develop additional housing that’s within the reach of middle-class families in Southern California. “The specific plan for Centennial includes 19,333 residential units and more than 10.1 million square feet of commercial space. A full 18% of the housing units at Centennial will be officially designated affordable units,” they said.

Centennial Final Vote on L.A. County Supervisors’ Consent Agenda for Tuesday

GORMAN and NEENACH, CA (Monday, April 29, 2019 at 9 a.m.)— Mitch Glaser of the Los Angeles County Department of Regional Planning confirmed this morning that the LA County Board of Supervisors has on its consent agenda for Tuesday, April 30 the final approval for the historic Centennial development.  Tejon Ranch Company of  Lebec is the developer. The project is projected to build 19,333 homes and a series of commercial / industrial parks.

It is reported that this fairly low-key roll-out of the 20-year phased project that has already been in development for two decades was accompanied by release of about 800 pages of documents by the county on Thursday night, April 25, clearly not intended for allowing the public adequate time or notice to comment on this final step in the county’s approval process.

 

 

This is part of the April 26, 2019 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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