BUSINESS PARK SEES GROWTH; LANCASTER PLANNING TO SELL 3 MORE LOTS FOR FUTURE DEVELOPMENT.

Byline: Jim Skeen Staff Writer

After nearly 20 years of sporadic sales and financial struggles, the Lancaster Business Park is showing signs of becoming a hot property.

On the heels of a deal that will bring in a sheet metal company, the city is planning to sell three more lots in its business park for $708,081 to developers planning to build ``spec'' buildings - buildings constructed in speculation they will draw a tenant.

``The park is moving,'' said Vern Lawson Jr., who markets the park for the city of Lancaster. ``What has happened is the San Fernando market heated up, and now we're heating up.''

With the sales, the city will have 18 parcels remaining of the 41 it acquired in the business park last year.

L.A. Textile Source, a Los Angeles clothing company, is planning to buy two lots in the Lancaster Business Park. The first, just over 3 acres at Business Center Parkway and Federal Drive, is being offered by the city for $387,897, according to a city staff report.

The second lot, 1.6 acres at Business Center Parkway and Federal Drive, is being offered for $205,873.

The second transaction being considered is to sell a 1 acre lot at Avenue K-8 and Market Place to Doug Anderson, an Antelope Valley Realtor, for $114,311.

In both deals, Lancaster will make a profit. The city owed $392,957 in Mello-Roos assessments on the land being bought by L.A. Textile and $82,106 on the land being sold to Anderson.

In October, the city announced a sheet metal company, Robert F. Chapman Inc., was planning to build a $2.1 million, 62,000-square-foot plant in the business park.

The business park was created by the Lancaster Economic Development Corp., a nonprofit organization, in the early 1980s. The idea was to spur industrial development in the city and lessen the region's dependence on aerospace.

The city stepped in a number of times in the past to help the LEDC. It gave the group a $738,000 start-up loan in 1979 and $111,000 to get the business park going. The corporation failed to make its city loan payments on time in the early 1980s because sales of industrial park lots did not meet expectations.

The payment issue was resolved in 1986 when the city accepted three lots as payment for the remainder of the loan.

Last year, the LEDC disbanded, turning over its economic development duties to the newly created Greater Antelope Valley Economic Alliance. The city acquired LEDC's assets, valued at $1.7 million, in the business park.

The transaction also included the city's assuming $3.1 million in bond debt and obligations of $100,000 in county taxes and a $250,000 payment to two previous general partners in the LEDC.

The 240-acre business park now contains about 80 companies or government offices with 1,400 workers.