My personal reconaissance of the area now confirms that the Bridgport HOA’s no trespassing signs are nothing more than a blatant land grab in direct contravention of the development agreement between Newhall Land and Farming (“NLF”) and the City of Santa Clarita that resulted in the building of the Bridgeport Tract.
When I first heard about the signs I held a very slight degree of sympathy for the Bridgeport HOA, because I personally witnessed the scores of people associated with weddings and proms tromping around the grassy area in front of the iconic lighthouse at the corner of McBean Parkway and Newhall Ranch Road, obviously having some negative impact on the landscaping, but a viewing this morning during one of my walkabouts in Valencia revealed a more sinister purpose.
The signs shown so eloquently in a previous entry, upon a personal viewing, would do nothing to prevent the “abuse” of the landscaped corner. They are too small and not even visible from the street so that a wedding party of 100 could show up for photographs, spend an hour, and protest legitimate ignorance to any responding sheriff’s deputy.
However, the small signs, perched right at the entrance to the lake paseo system made public through the aforementioned development agreement, seem designed to discourage legitimate foot traffic through the lake paseo, an illegal land grab by the HOA to make the public paseo private.
City spokesperson Gail Ortiz last week acknowledged the illegality of the signs and stated the City would take action, yet the signs remain as of this morning, so further action must be taken. In the Middle Ages when a noblemen defied a sovereign the King would raise an army, lay siege to the rebel noble’s castle, and hang them from the walls once the castle was taken. Bringing up seige engines and burning the Bridgeport lighthouse to the ground is probably too much for 2010, but what about K-bars over the limited entrances to Bridgeport, denying the residents egress to the street system since they sought to seize the paseo footpaths? Seems like a fair exchange, since they can use their “private” paseos to walk in and out.
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