TOP LOCAL STORIES OF 1998.Byline: Patricia Farrell Aidem Daily News Staff Writer Things happened in a big way in 1998 in Santa Clarita Santa Clarita, city (1990 pop. 110,642), Los Angeles co., S Calif., suburb 30 mi (48 km) NW of downtown Los Angeles, on the Santa Clara River; inc. 1987. Situated in the Santa Clara valley and nearby canyons, Santa Clarita includes the former towns of Canyon Country, . Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. County's largest ever housing development got the go-ahead, promising to bring 21,000 homes to the area in the coming decades. Rainfall set a record, ensuring the El Nino of '98 a place in our memories. The economy bounded - with record home sales in the last three months of the year. Everywhere, bulldozers rumbled across the horizon. Santa Clarita's first full-service hotel opened, and the city's much-anticipated Skatepark and Sport Complex came to life. Work began on Central Park, one new movie theater opened and ground was broken for another. ``I think what we did was we kept moving forward as a community to enhance the things they like most about Santa Clarita, the thinks that make this community special, the things so many communities have lost,'' Assistant City Manager Ken Pulskamp said. Hart High School Hart High School may refer to:
And with the good came the bad, as details unfolded surrounding the worst homicide in Santa Clarita history, a city that nevertheless maintained in 1998 its status as America's fourth safest city. Four young sisters were found asphyxiated as·phyx·i·ate v. as·phyx·i·at·ed, as·phyx·i·at·ing, as·phyx·i·ates v.tr. To cause asphyxia in; smother. v.intr. To undergo asphyxia; suffocate. July 1 in their Valencia home, their mother charged with their deaths. Newhall Ranch OK'd In the No. 1 spot for the second consecutive year was the story of Newhall Ranch, a city-size development guaranteed to change the face of the Santa Clarita Valley The Santa Clarita Valley is the valley of the Santa Clara River in Southern California. It stretches through Los Angeles County and Ventura County. Its main population center is the city of Santa Clarita. The valley was part of the 48,612-acre (19,672. . Last year, the development advanced through the hearing process. Then last month, the county Board of Supervisors The examples and perspective in this article or section may represent an unduly geographically limited view of the subject. Please [ improve this article] or discuss the issue on the talk page. The Board of Supervisors is the body governing counties in the U.S. approved the project on 12,000 acres northwest of Santa Clarita, land that fronts the Santa Clara River Santa Clara River may refer to:
Construction is due to start on Newhall Ranch in about two years, and once complete, the development is expected to draw about 60,000 people to the valley. ``Newhall Ranch isn't in the city, but we can influence it even if we do not have the ability to control it,'' Pulskamp said. Four sisters killed Santa Clarita mourned on July 1, the day four young sisters were found asphyxiated in their Valencia home, their mother the single suspect. Sandi Nieves, facing an upcoming custody hearing with the father of two of her daughters, stands accused of staging a gruesome slumber party for the little girls, found dead on the kitchen floor. The pilot light had been snuffed, the gas in the oven turned on and a small fire apparently set inside the home. An older brother awakened frequently overnight to ask his mother what was wrong, but she calmed his concerns and urged him back to sleep, said prosecutors, who are preparing to try Nieves on four counts of murder and one of attempted murder In the criminal law, attempted murder is committed when the defendant does an act that is more than merely preparatory to the commission of the crime of murder and, at the time of these acts, the person has a specific intention to kill. . Pulskamp said one of Santa Clarita's biggest problems is domestic violence and noted that in 1998 the city hired a sheriff's deputy trained in family violence issues. Preventable crime, he said, remained low, and Santa Clarita retained the nation's fourth safest mid-size to large city. ``That (Nieves) case was pretty much an anomaly,'' he said. ``That's very different from gang violence or drive-by shootings.'' Students burned More heart-wrenching news was reported in Santa Clarita as the year came to a close. On Nov. 25, the day before Thanksgiving, two 17-year-old boys were severely burned at Hart High School during a supervised physics class experiment. Chris James
third-degree burns third npl → Verbrennungen pl dritten Grades to 35 percent of his body. Nolan LeMar, also a top student as well as a varsity baseball player, was less severely burned but spent several days undergoing treatment at the Grossman Burn Center at Sherman Oaks Hospital Sherman Oaks Hopital (SOH) is an 153 bed acute care facility in Sherman Oaks, California, USA and is home of world renowned the Grossman Burn Center. SOH is owned and operated by Prime Healthcare Services, Inc. . LeMar was home for Christmas and expects to return to school after the winter break. James, who underwent extensive surgeries including one to fight a life-threatening bacteria, is due home before the New Year. The story is sure to continue into 1999 as Los Angeles County sheriff's investigators continue their probe into what went wrong, and the school district deals with the aftermath. It rained and rained For decades we will remember 1998, the year El Nino hit Santa Clarita and dropped nearly 50 inches of rain. The normally dry Santa Clara River actually flowed, so heavily, in fact, that currents washed out part of the Bouquet Canyon Road bridge, crippling one of the area's busiest roads. Downstream, the flood waters threatened to undermine a Golden State Freeway The Golden State Freeway is a north-south freeway running through Kern County and Los Angeles County, California. Originally built as U.S. Highway 99, it was re-signed as Interstate 5 in 1964. bridge. And even further west, rescuers plucked a farm worker from the raging Santa Clara Santa Clara, city, Cuba Santa Clara (sän`tä klä`rä), city (1994 est. pop. 217,000), capital of Villa Clara prov., central Cuba. after the man thought he could drive through. The biggest downpour came in the final days before the Valencia Country Club was due to host its first nationally televised golf tournament, forcing workers to labor round-the-clock pumping several inches of water from the otherwise perfect course. At the William S. Hart PONY Baseball and Softball PONY Baseball and Softball is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping young people grow into healthier and happier adults, primarily through the organization of baseball and softball leagues. Complex, the river washed away one playing field - lights, dugouts and stands - and tore away the outfields of two softball diamonds. Still, months later, the effects of one of the rainiest years on record are being felt with torturous allergies, abundant wildlife and increased fire danger because of the prolific vegetation across the landscape. New parks open The city of Santa Clarita won kudos from the younger set with the long-awaited opening of a skate park at the new Sports Complex. In the final days of '98, the city's first gym opened at the complex, drawing crowds of basketball, volleyball and racquetball racquetball, sport played indoors by two or four players, combining elements of court handball and such racket games as squash racquets. It is played on a standard handball court 40 ft (12.2 m) long, 20 ft (6. players. In '99, Phase 3 begins, and the city will ask the public for input on what residents want in terms of recreation. In other parks news, the city and the Castaic Lake Water Agency began prepping agency property in Bouquet Canyon for Santa Clarita Central Park. The facility will bring the first city-operated soccer fields and also add softball fields. Town Center expands In the weeks before Christmas, a trendy expansion of the Valencia Town Center opened, an outdoor wing with upscale shops linking it to the mall via a small town square. Along Town Center Drive, the six-story Princess Cruises headquarters opened, as did the Valencia Hyatt, Santa Clarita's first full-service hotel. Next year will bring more stores, shops, restaurants and an Edwards movie complex anchored by an Imax 3-D theater. Valencia hosts golfers Despite the rain, the Nissan Open, formerly the Los Angeles Open golf tournament, was a hit at the Valencia Country Club. Thousands came out to watch the sport's top players, and the tourney brought some bragging rights to Santa Clarita. It was the first nationally broadcast pro tournament for the course. The Open usually is played at the Riviera Country Club The Riviera Country Club is a country club with a championship golf course. It is located in Pacific Palisades, California, within the city limits of Los Angeles, California. The country club opened in 1926, with George C. Thomas, Jr. as the course architect. , but it transferred to Valencia for a year because Riviera was committed to another tournament. Year-round schooling It rained, of course, as thousands of parents lined up overnight at the seven Newhall School District The Newhall School District is a school district in the Santa Clarita Valley that serves the Valencia and Newhall communities within the city of Santa Clarita, California, as well as the Stevenson Ranch community in unincorporated Los Angeles County. campuses to sign their children up for the preferred tracks when the schools switched to year-round scheduling. Overcrowding overcrowding overcrowding of animal accommodation. Many countries now publish codes of practice which define what the appropriate volumetric allowances should be for each species of animal when they are housed indoors. Breaches of these codes is overcrowding. forced the move, and parents were willing to spend a chilly night in tents and sleeping bags to ensure their children get time off in July or August. Olde Town emerges A public-private partnership accomplished what has been tried for decades: a face lift for Downtown Newhall. Olde Town Newhall was born with the aid of the city's new Redevelopment Agency, which will help pump extra property tax money and other revenue sources into the Santa Clarita Valley's original business district. Nondescript non·de·script adj. Lacking distinctive qualities; having no individual character or form: "This expression gave temporary meaning to a set of features otherwise nondescript" box-style buildings along old San Fernando Road San Fernando Road is a major street in the city and county of Los Angeles. It starts off in Castaic as The Old Road, passing through Santa Clarita and the Newhall Pass, where upon its intersection with Sierra Highway near the junction of the Golden State (I-5) and the are getting new facades, old-time street lights have been installed along the newly expanded Railroad Avenue, and ground has been broken for a Newhall Metrolink station sure to make Olde Town a destination. Recently, the city announced a grant program to draw arts programs to the region, setting the stage for businesses to consider the new locale. Hart High champions The year ended on a celebratory note as Hart High's football team won the CIF Division III championship. Hart's Indians beat St. Paul 17-4 before an overflow crowd of 12,000 at College of the Canyons' Cougar cougar: see puma. cougar or puma or mountain lion or panther Species (Puma concolor) of large, graceful cat that lives in a wide variety of habitats in the Americas, from southern Alaska to Patagonia. stadium. The title is the Indians' fourth overall and first since 1995. It came after an impressive 12-2 season. And finally Indeed, 1998 was a mix of tears and cheers. Saugus High softball standout Lauren Blaire was killed by a drunk driver, the motorist now serving a 10-year sentence for gross vehicular manslaughter vehicular manslaughter n. the crime of causing the death of a human being due to illegal driving of an automobile, including gross negligence, drunk driving, reckless driving, or speeding. . Smaller athletes - a group of 10-year-old boys from the Hart PONY League - came home from Irving, Texas, with a Mustang World Series championship. Canyon Country got a state-of-the-art Edwards Theater complex on the grounds of a long-abandoned school. High schools and junior highs got visits from drug sniffing dogs. In business news, Newhall Land's Westridge project and PGA-sanctioned golf course was approved in the rolling hills west of Santa Clarita, where native oaks shade grassy slopes. The company also announced that Seattle-based Nordstrom was interested in opening its high-end department stores at the Town Center - for a price. Nordstrom wants a $20 million incentive as well as numerous concessions from Newhall Land. Newhall Land agreed to the latter demand and wants the city to come through with the bigger money. The debate is certain to be among the most heated in 1999 in Santa Clarita. CAPTION(S): 6 Photos PHOTO (1--Color) Los Angeles County firefighters rescue Francisco Gabaro from rain-swollen Castaic Creek. Shaun Dyer/Special to the Daily News (2--Color) Tiger Woods takes part in the Celebrity Pro-Am prelude to the Nissan Open at the Valencia Country Club. Tina Gerson/Daily News (3--Color) Hart High quarterback Kyle Boller, No. 8, hoists the Southern Section Division III trophy. Hans Gutknecht/Daily News (4--Color) Parents camp out to get preferred tracks when Newhall School District campuses switched to year-round schedules. John Lazar/Daily News (5--Color) Nancy James, sister of burn victim Chris James, is comforted by Gavin Klinger, above, after an accident during a supervised physics class experiment. Andy Holzman/Daily News (6--Color) James and two fellow students were burned when methanol was ignited in a launcher constructed from empty fruit-juice cans, right. Shaun Dyer/Special to the Daily News |
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