Old Town Newhall is even uglier these days.
There. I said what everyone was thinking.
But if we’re to believe the city, the transition Old Town Newhall is undergoing now (it started last week actually) will lead to bigger and better things. After seeing what they’re doing down there today on my lunch, I sure hope they’re right.
As I pedaled down Main Street next to giant diggers and other construction equipment, I was struck with the unnerving feeling of something missing.
No. It wasn’t Newhall Hardware. Sorry to say, the grieving process is complete and I am so over that.
It was something much simpler.
Trees! That’s right, green, leafy, 20-foot odd tall trees lining the sidewalk on Main Street. All the trees were gone, as far as the eye could see, cut down in a truly macabre fashion, with each former CO2 sucker cut in half, like this:
Even in front of TimBen Boydston’s Canyon Theatre Guild (or perhaps because it was in front of the CTG), the trees were similarly butchered, axed in half, the trunks sticking out of the ground like lonely timber tombstones:
Compare that with how Main Street looked just about six weeks ago:
All those trees you see- gone!
Like all good SCV residents, my first reaction upon discovering this was apoplectic outrage mixed with furious fist-shaking.
“Wha????!? How could they? They killed my shady trees, those bastards!!” I shouted, a vein popping out of my forehead.
But not all is lost in Newhall. Indeed, the “streetscaping” project which claimed the trees is also building new sidewalks, installing new underground thing-a-ma-jigs, and improving pedestrian access. Just check out this heavy equipment being supervised by the foreman in the foreground:
As I was taking this picture, a guy walked up to me and asked if I knew what they were doing. I reflected for a moment, realized I had no clue, and then said simply, “They’re streetscaping.” The man walked away with a sour look on his face.
With all the arbor-genocide and the street digging going on, you’d think business would be quite down in Old Town Newhall. It probably is, but I found a few things to be happy about.
Across the street from the Jan Heidt Metrolink Station AKA Newhall Depot AKA Newhall Metrolink AKA that place with the clock-tower is a new cafe called, appropriately enough, Railroad Cafe. The diner serves coffee, sandwiches, and other assorted foods from windows directly on the street, giving us our first authentically urban street-side cafe!
Just think- you could bike your way down to the Metrolink station, stop here and get a cup of joe, cross the street, and board your train out of the SCV without haggling over parking. Quite convenient eh?
No reviews on Yelp as of yet, but If I know that crowd, they’ll be by there soon enough to tell us whether Railroad Cafe will survive.
I also had some time to stop at the popular Newhall Bicycle Company store, also located on Railroad. Roger, proprietor of the shop, was busy fixing bikes, putting new ones together, and taking delivery of yet more, which I took to be an indication that it’s spring and the bike business in Santa Clarita is doing quite well.
If you need a bike, Roger’s the guy to talk to, so stop in and tell him Jeff sent you!
Anyway, back to Newhall. Where’s all this going anyway? Is it really worthwhile to butcher all those trees and dig up the streets and sidewalks?
For many in Santa Clarita, the words “The City has a plan!” aren’t especially comforting, but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt here and answer yes, it’s worth it.
You can read about that plan in any one of the five PDFs available for download at OldTownNewhall.com. Or, I’ll save you some time and skip to the good part: artist renderings of what Old Town Newhall may look like someday.
That naked landscape along Main Street with the butchered trees will hopefully rise from the ashes and someday look like this:
“But wait Jeff,” you say, “That’s kind of how it looked before.”
Yeah. I know. But it’s new. That’s the point.
At the north end of Newhall where Main Street intersects Lyons Avenue, we’ll hopefully have in the not-to-distant future a brand new library to be proud of and hang out in and near. This isn’t necessarily what it’s going to look like (indeed, an architect hired by the city is working on design right now), but if it’s even close, I think this process will be worth it:
I realize the library isn’t too popular among the SCVTalk chattering classes, but I’m very excited about it. Anything is an improvement over the dumpy buildings there now (yes, I would like to see the old jail house saved), and I think it’s going to make Old Town Newhall a destination for many people.
Railroad Avenue isn’t going to be left alone in all this either. Though it’s now a high-speed four lane roadway, it’s still part of Old Town Newhall, and an important part at that. I’m not sure how far off this is, but it appears that a median with trees could someday run down the center of Railroad Avenue:
So after considering all this, am I still fit to be tied about the trees? Yes, I’m quite upset, but I’m willing to give the city time to make it look great. We’ll just have to wait and see.