CITY RANCH PLAN UNSTUCK ONTARIO DEVELOPER PUMPS IN $30 MILLION.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Staff Writer

PALMDALE - An Ontario development firm has formed a partnership with KB Home to develop KB's 5,000-home City Ranch housing proposal, approved eight years ago but stalled by the 1990s housing slump.

Work on the first 1,400 lots in the west Palmdale project - renamed Anaverde, for the valley in which it will be built - is supposed to start next spring. Builders say the demand is very strong.

``We've been inundated with requests to sell lots,'' said Jim Previti, chief executive officer of Empire Companies and the former owner of Forecast Homes, which has built hundreds of Antelope Valley homes since the late 1980s. ``There's a lot more demand than there is supply.''

KB Home, one of the United States' largest home-building companies, and Empire Land, a part of Empire Companies, formed Anaverde LLC to develop the 1,985 acres, with Empire Land having a controlling interest. Empire paid more than $30 million for its part of the deal, Previti said.

Empire Land will grade the land and install streets, sewers, water pipes and other improvements, then sell the lots to major home builders. The first lots will be available to home builders in fall 2003, and in spring 2004 buyers are expected to start moving into homes priced from roughly $200,000 to $300,000.

As part of the first phase of work, Empire Land will widen Avenue S to four lanes along the two miles between the Antelope Valley Freeway and the project boundary.

Avenue S will be the main entrance to the Anaverde project, which will be built on former farm and cattle land in a valley south of Elizabeth Lake Road and about a mile west of Tierra Subida Avenue.

Using Avenue S as the main entrance puts the development as close as possible for home buyers who will commute to jobs in the San Fernando Valley, Santa Clarita or Los Angeles, said Chuck Colton, Empire Land executive vice president.

The project, approved in 1993 after much debate about the impact on roads and city finances, will contain about 5,000 homes, neighborhood shopping centers, schools, riding and hiking trails, a lake, parks and a public golf course. About 700 acres will be open space.

``It's a master-planned community where all the elements of every community are included as part of the specific plan,'' said Palmdale Mayor Jim Ledford, who called the announcement ``pretty exciting.''

Two parks and a school are planned in the first phase. A neighborhood shopping center on Elizabeth Lake Road near 25th Street East - the project's northeastern corner - is expected to follow in the second phase, after the first homes are occupied.

``The commercial people want roof tops. The commercial will follow on,'' Colton said.

After selling Forecast Homes last year, Previti formed Empire to develop master-planned communities and large-scale commercial projects. Colton, before joining Empire, was vice president of land development with Playa Capital Company LLC, overseeing the residential portion of the Playa Vista development in Los Angeles near Marina del Rey.

Empire's current developments include The Retreat, a 540-home project in Corona featuring an 18-hole golf course designed by Jack Nicklaus, and The Ranch at Moreno Valley, a 1,600-home development; an executive jet terminal in Ontario and a six-story office building with two stories of penthouse apartments in Ontario.

This is the second partnership KB Home, formerly named Kaufman and Broad, has formed to try to develop City Ranch. Three years ago, a partnership was formed with The Newhall Land and Farming Company, the developer of Valencia in the Santa Clarita Valley.

Newhall was to develop streets and water lines and then sell home lots to builders, but pulled out a year after the deal was announced to concentrate on an internal campaign to buy back its own stock, which company officials believed was undervalued and a good investment.

R. Gregg Anderson, Palmdale developer of the Rancho Vista master-planned community where hundreds of homes have been built in the last few years, said the new project is being carried out by two experienced firms and will benefit the Antelope Valley.

``I think it's a good thing for the valley. The City Ranch project is right in the heart of the valley. It's an in-fill rather than something else,'' Anderson said.

Rancho Vista, first proposed in the 1970s, has only about 600 lots left to build on, and Anderson expects those to be sold within two years. Anderson said he expects his company will buy lots to build homes in Anaverde once Ranch Vista is finished.

``We're just selling everything as fast as they can build,'' Anderson said.

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