Setting sights closer to home: public-private deal flourishes.

For years, no one wanted the 240-acre parcel in the center of Santa Clarita.

It would cost too much to develop, and even if you did, there was no roadway connecting the property to the main arteries of the city.

None of that stopped Larry Rasmussen, the president of Centre: Developer Partners With Public Sector Spirit Properties Ltd.

He moved about six million yards of earth to stabilize and fill the parcel, relocated pipes and storm drains, built streets and opened Centre Pointe Business Park, a $270-million industrial complex in the northeast corner of Santa Clarita at Soledad Canyon Road.

And oh, along the way, Spirit also helped build a road that connects the industrial park to Soledad Canyon Road and will eventually become part of a major cross connector that will traverse the city from east to west, and it helped to build a new high school due to be completed in the next year.

The project, accomplished through a partnership with the city of Santa Clarita, the school district, and dozens of other agencies, has saved the city millions and, when it is completed, promises to bring about 10,000 new jobs to the area.

Thanks in part to the role Spirit played, the League of Cities just awarded the city of Santa Clarita its prestigious Helen Putnam Award for Excellence in the area of public works, infrastructure and transportation.

"A private partner brings to the table things the public sector cannot," said Gail Ortiz, spokeswoman for the city. "And with Centre Pointe so successful, this adds to the city's sales tax revenue."

Since development began on the property in 2002, Spirit has built and leased or sold six buildings totaling over 200,000 square feet, and about 100 acres of land.

Tenants and owner users include a diverse range of companies from Homemakers Furniture and Val-Pak Products to Creative Graphic Services and Auto Tech Accessories.

Another 700,000 square feet in what will eventually be a 3-million square foot business park is planned or under construction.

Rasmussen had retired sometime earlier when a friend called and suggested he take a look at the property.

The parcel laid fallow since its previous owners defaulted on the property in 1982 because of the massive infrastructure improvements needed and the lack of access to the major roadways that serve Santa Clarita.

"If anybody thought about it they would never do it," said Rasmussen. "It was too much work."

Rasmussen, a heavy construction contractor by trade, knew the work involved, but he also had the expertise to do it.

What he didn't know, was how to make the whole project work as a viable commercial center, so he sat down with the city's then manager and the superintendent of the school district and, over lunch, they hammered out a plan.

"With the three of us working together, we built the road that provided access to the school so the school could get built, alleviated traffic and got access to Centre Pointe," Rasmussen said.

Spirit designed the roadway, helped with grading and ponied up about $9.5 million to the city to help with construction costs.

"We saved about $4 million on our road project because we were able to move dirt from one place to another that needed it," said Ortiz. "Normally, you have to haul dirt in where there's not enough and haul it out where there's too much. So little thing like that, the willingness to do whatever it takes to make the whole big picture work, those are the things that were beneficial to the road, the school and the business park."

The initial road project connected Centre Pointe Business Park and Golden Valley High School, located next to the park, to Soledad Canyon Road. Eventually, Golden Valley Road will tie into a cross-town connector that will provide Santa Clarita with a second east-west roadway through the city.

"One of the things people notice when they come to Santa Clarita is there's only one way to get from one end of the city to another, Soledad Canyon Road," said Ortiz. "When freeway congestion causes people to use city streets that one road gets blocked and it's impossible to get across town, so it's very important that we have another access road."

Rasmussen's previous experience gave him an edge when it came to preparing the infrastructure for development, but making the park marketable was another matter, what with Newhall Land and Farming Co.'s powerful marketing machine and behemoth industrial parks nearby.

What Spirit did was to design lots of one and two acres, a size that wasn't available at the rival parks and was especially suited to small and mid-sized distribution and warehouse companies that make up the lion's share of businesses in the Santa Clarita and San Fernando valleys.

"The competition, their smallest lot was three acres," Rasmussen said of Newhall. "You don't have to be a rocket scientist. We wanted to come in under the radar screen and not compete with them."

The project so far has been so successful, Spirit has sold out of the available inventory in less than two years, and will now begin building out the remaining acreage.

"It wasn't a small price," Rasmussen said, "but it was what was required to be done, and when we stand back and look at what we've done, we've accomplished a lot. We changed the center of the city."