GROWTH LIMITS LAND CHOICES FEW IDEAL PARCELS LEFT TO DEVELOP.

Byline: SUE DOYLE Staff Writer

SANTA CLARITA -- Once a land vast and empty, Santa Clarita's landscape has changed dramatically over time, mainly by three features: homes, homes and more homes.

With five major housing projects on the way -- expected to bring more than 62,000 homes, apartments and condos -- there are fewer ideal parcels to build on.

Now developers are taking second and third looks at land first overlooked when the picking was prime, making property on rougher grounds, next to flood plains, hillsides and old oil fields hot commodities.

``There's still plenty of land to develop, it's just the more difficult land due to the terrain and location,'' said Dennis Hunter, assistant deputy director and in charge of the land development division for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works.

As property prices increase, Hunter sees more people these days looking at land considered less desirable for development 10 years ago and finding new ways to make the property work.

Developments along flood plains, for example, would seem nothing but trouble, given winter's long and mighty downpours. In the past decade, the Santa Clara River flooded, wiping out a chunk of Soledad Canyon Road.

Since then, developments have gone up, adjacent to the river's flood plains. But they are built with special flood protections, such as with a high-tech soil cement buried in the ground that protects the homes and remains sensitive to the environment, Hunter said.

Hillside developments face other challenges.

A 250-acre parcel heavy with hills off Sierra Highway and Vasquez Canyon Road may soon be home to 75 single-family homes -- on only about 25 percent of the property. At least 70 percent of the land had to be left as open space, a requirement for hillside developments, said Susan Tae, acting supervising regional planner for the county.

While land gets squeezed for more homes, school districts are also finding themselves getting crushed in the land hunt. Golden Valley High School, for example, stands on land in the heart of Santa Clarita that once was surrounded by heavy industry, including an oil field.

``Prime land, or easy-to-develop land, is come and gone. From here on out, you're developing what could not be developed economically in the past,'' said Robert Lee, consultant for the William S. Hart Union High School District and former member of the Santa Clarita Valley Facilities Foundation, a nonprofit developer spun from the district.

The district needs to build three new high schools to accommodate students moving to the area, and the property pickings are slim.

Ideally, school districts work hand-in-hand with developers, who typically want to have schools in the works because they're a selling point with new buyers. The relationship frequently occurs with major developers who sit down with school districts and plan where schools will sit in the new neighborhoods.

But Lee, a former Hart superintendent, said it's a harder sell with smaller developers building fewer than 100 or so homes, because it's not always economically or conceptually feasible for them to think in terms of schools on their limited acreage.

That leaves school districts searching for nearby land for schools. The district is finding this difficult on the east side of town.

``We want a school close to our students and short of going in and buying homes and condemning them, you're not going to get there,'' Lee said.

sue.doyle(at)dailynews.com

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