[KHTS] – The first stakeholder meeting about the anticipated Laemmle Theatre coming to Old Town Newhall was held Wednesday morning at the Repertory East Playhouse in Newhall.
The Santa Clarita City Council had voted July 14 to open negotiations with Laemmle Theatres and a developer partner to bring a six-screen Laemmle art house movie theater and residential units to Old Town Newhall.
“There’s an opportunity here to jump-start the development of what will be an authentic and vibrant environment in Newhall,” said Greg Laemmle, president of Laemmle Theatres.
The location is the empty city block that is owned by the city and its former redevelopment agency across from the Old Town Newhall Library.
Laemmle anticipates the theater in Newhall could draw 150,000 to 200,000 people per year.
The overall height of the tallest building in the theater complex would be the same as the Old Town Newhall Library.
The height of the building will transition down Main Street from Lyons Avenue to 9th Street, emphasizing Lyons Avenue and Main Street as the gateway to Old Town Newhall.
“I think we’re excited to have such a vibrant development coming to Old Town Newhall. We’re at the very early stages, however, and I really want to make sure people understand that this is just a development agreement where we’re going to start negotiating with them to decide what everything else is going to look like,” said Santa Clarita City Councilman Dante Acosta. “It’s exciting… we’re going to add shops and restaurants and an anchor theatre like this is going to help to revitalize and continue the process that’s been going on in Old Town Newhall.”
The theatre will have six screens on two stories, three on the ground floor and two on the second floor.
“We like this size of theatre because it is predominantly an art house, but that doesn’t mean we won’t play quality, Hollywood films here. It’s movie going for adults,” said Laemmle. “This works for us because we really want to keep the programming unique. We don’t think of the Laemmle experience as being a museum, but the films are curated and picked for a specific audience.”
“This is something that will really help with the arts and culture here in the community and being able to have another alternative to the mainstream movies that are shown,” said Acosta. “Some of the smaller, independent films are a lot of fun and very interesting as well.”
The project will have a Western-inspired modern architecture and also include a residential mixed-use project which would consist of 46 units.
The units would consist of 1-, 2- and 3-bedroom condo or apartment units.
Currently, 79 parking spaces are planned to be provided for the residential, with each unit allotted one and a half spaces.
One of the main concerns people had was the parking situation.
Santa Clarita City Councilman TimBen Boydston, who is also the executive and artistic director at the Canyon Theatre Guild in Old Town Newhall, also attended the meeting, saying that “parking is the number one issue.”
The city of Santa Clarita, or related agency, planned to provide an additional parking structure, anticipated to be a 300-space public parking structure, according to the Santa Clarita City Council’s agenda on July 14.
“I encourage people in the community to come down to Newhall right now, there’s so many great things to see and do,” said Acosta. “There’s a lot to do here now, just imagine in the next two, three years when this theatre project and everything else gets up and running, it’s going to be fantastic.”
The tentative start date for the project is in Nov. 2016 and the tentative finish date is in Oct. 2018.
To minimize the impact of construction activity for neighbors, visitors and retail activity, future meetings will be held to discuss site logistics, fencing and safety precautions, dust suppression, hours of operation and community progress updates.
“There will be many more city council meetings (about this project). We have a long process ahead of us,” said Acosta.
KHTS AM-1220 co-owner, Carl Goldman, has announced the station’s support for the project.
Background
The city and its redevelopment agency purchased the two-acre block across from the new library in November 2008 with the intention of redeveloping it. Some of the property was leased; when tenants’ leases expired, the existing buildings were bulldozed to make way for a new project. A Laemmle-type theater had been in the plans for the site since 2005, along with a housing component and public parking. (Under state redevelopment law, 20 percent of redevelopment assets had to be set aside to improve the housing stock in blighted areas. The downtown area qualified.)
Then in early 2012 the Legislature and the governor canceled redevelopment throughout the state. In 2011, as redevelopment was unraveling, Santa Clarita’s redevelopment agency transferred some of its property to the city.
Today the block consists of nine parcels, some of which are owned by the city, some by the “successor agency” to the redevelopment agency, and some by the city on behalf of the housing obligation under the old redevelopment law.
In 2013, as required by state law after the termination of redevelopment, the city filed a “long-range plan” to sell off its redevelopment property.
Under the long-range plan, which the state accepted, the city said it would put the property to bid and sell it to a developer who would create a project consistent with the city’s Old Town Newhall redevelopment plan.
The city solicited bids from nearly 100 potential applicants. There were five responses. Three were tossed out because they didn’t include a theater or public parking.
The two qualifying bidders were Laemmle Theatres in partnership with Serrano Development Group/Pacific Coast Housing Development of Glendale; and Maya/HighRidge Costa.
After meetings with staff and a professional consultant and a subcommittee of Mayor Marsha McLean and Councilman Bob Kellar, the Laemmle/Serrano proposal floated to the top.
Like this:
Like Loading...
Related
Tweet This
Facebook
Digg This
Bookmark
Stumble
RSS
REAL NAMES ONLY: All posters must use their real individual or business name. This applies equally to Twitter account holders who use a nickname.
22 Comments
Is this artist’s conception an indication that Old Downtown Newhall will be redeveloped with high density buildings in the near future?
I’m all for the Laemmle Theaters and especially their art-house movies. However, I do think the old-style downtown of Newhall will become increasingly popular on its own…look at the older areas in other cities. I’d hate to see a plan that would entail knocking down substantial parts of Main Street.
The full city council approved the current plan in 2007 to develop the central business district (Main Street, Newhall) into 2-, 3- and 4-story buildings with ground-floor retail and upstairs residential.
If this project is approved there will be five story buildings on the site. To make this happen there will be subsidies required from our taxpayers, estimated at this time to be about 13 million dollars.
Your are incorrect in your cost estimates.
The city has been poring money into Downtown Newhall. The Library costs were over $100 Million. I estimate the costs of this project will be $20 to $30 Million.
The estimates of 200,000 people going to the theater are unrealistic. Since you are part of a theater group in Newhall, an estimate of 10,000 people would be realistic. Taxpayer money would have to subsidize the theater.
A city built 300 space parking structure, costing millions, is ludicrous.
Taxpayer money (city) built the current theaters, and taxpayer money (both city and county) continues to subsidize their operations.
SCVTV Correction. Taxpayer funds only helped to build the theatres. The CTG was awarded about $400,000 on a 1.5 million dollar project. They bring over 30,000 people each year to Downtown Newhall. Also the funds were Redevelopment money that would have gone to the State. The State killed redevelopment, so the new funds will have to come from City funds. The CTG and the REP are also both Non-profit organizations. This year our non-profit was awarded about $5,900 dollars of a City grant with the funds to be used only to help defray the over $20,000 that it costs to use the Performing Arts Center at College of the Canyons. The CTG budget is about $600,000 over the last few years. To compare the existing non-profit theatres with the proposed movie theaters is a stretch.
Biennial county arts grants, for instance: http://scvnews.com/2015/06/26/county-arts-grants-up-for-approval/ But you know better than we do where your own money comes from.
Yay! I’m quite happy about the new theater and retail/housing coming to Newhall. The City spends money all over the SCV, I’m happy its starting to show up in Newhall. It’s going to greatly improve the quality of life in this area. BTW…parking is an issue all over SCV. not just Newhall. Have you ever tried to find parking at the Westfield mall on a Friday night?
City even subsidized certain construction costs of the Westfield mall — for much the same reason it subsidizes our theaters. For the economic benefit that accrues from stopping the leakage of (sales, entertainment) dollars out of the city.
If the “Old Town” flavor of Old Town Newhall is to be preserved, building heights should be limited to no taller than the library. If 4-story buildings are allowed to be built, it will no longer be “Old Town” Newhall.
SCVTV stated “City even subsidized certain construction costs of the Westfield mall.” The devil is always in the details. How much did the City put in and what for? How much did Westfield put in? Details are important.
Reply
One place you’ll find the answer is in here … http://www.scvhistory.com/scvhistory/boyer2015book.htm
And don’t forget the money for the conference center at the Hyatt.
It is true that the City approved a specific plan for Newhall. But they failed to follow it. There is supposed to have been built (before the Civic building-library) two parking structures with a total of 800 spaces. Now anyone can increase the density of their use, but not supply any additional parking. Now there is no redevelopment money to build the parking. The City needs to look not just at the proposed theater project but the entire zoning and parking of the downtown.
Parking is not a serious issue.
During the weekdays, parking at the Metrolink Station is used by commuters.
At night, and during the weekends, there are no commuters. Plenty of parking is available there.
The bigger issue is security.
There have been recent breakins, armed robberies, and the homeless people relocated from the wash to downtown Newhall.
Right, and every urban planner will tell you that when you’ve got eyes on the street (people living upstairs, above businesses), it helps improve public safety. By extrapolation, one of the reasons we’re seeing some of the problems we’ve been seeing on Main Street is that nobody lives on Main Street; it’s nobody’s “home” and nobody reports it when it happens.
Parking?
Current cost estimates that will be paid by taxpayer funds.
$2MILLION..Cleanup of underground toxic tanks
$10MILLION..300 Car parking structure
$5MILLION…Movie Theater construction
$7MILLION…Construction of 46 Housing Units
$6MILLION ..Theater subsidy. 100,000 movie patrons at $20 each for 3 years.
TOTAL COSTS $30 MILLION
Those who advocate that money spent by movie patrons should stay in Santa Clarita, totally ignore the facts that all of this $30 MILLION is going to companies OUTSIDE of Santa Clarita.
Or they’re not ignoring it and instead believe it’s a good expenditure. And lumping the parking structure in with the project is a bit disingenuous; the parking structure has been in the plans for Newhall all along and is needed regardless of the theater project.
A parking structure is a waste of space and unneeded. Better parking directions and/or valet parking for nighttime events would work.
You really can’t compare parking at the mall to parking in Downtown Newhall. At the mall there are no free spaces anywhere. Downtown has a big parking lot that is empty at night and on weekends. here are over 500 parking spaces at the Metrolink Station.
Well, that’s a strange opinion, but we’re not going to sit here and rehash the last 20 years of complaints about Newhall, most of which pertain to the lack of parking. Even with the Metrolink lots.