Living in the SCV these days is such a study in contrasts. On the one hand, you’ve got places like Creekside where at best, former new car dealers now sell used cars, and at worst, once-bustling car dealerships sit vacant and empty. I think I counted five empty car dealership spaces on a drive through Creekside last night. The residential real estate market isn’t much better; there are still lots of short sales and bank-owned properties out there, clogging up the system.
On the bright side, shopping centers, like Valencia Marketplace in Stevenson Ranch, have largely recovered from the recession with big stores like Urban Home and Ross moving into spaces that sat empty for a long time. There’s even activity in the other half of the old Mervyn’s space (itself occupied in part by Sprouts Market): a new baby store is being built up there. And word on the street is that we’re getting a new produce market in Bridgeport, at the site of the old Bristol Farms market. Last week, NickelDime noted the increased activity at the Patios too. There’s still a lot of empty retail space out there, but the picture is much better today that it was a year ago.
And then there’s Newhall, which is seeing an immense amount of activity courtesy of the City of Santa Clarita:
I feel really fortunate that the City is investing so much time and money into making Old Town Newhall attractive again. Yes, I’ve beat up on them over the library matter lately, but it’s really neat to see Newhall taking shape, especially in the midst of a crippling recession, reduced taxes and shrinking budgets.
Once Phase 2 of the streetscape is complete and once the library is built, Newhall will have undergone a fairly radical transformation in the last ten years (do you remember when Railroad was just a tiny street used by auto shops to park cars?). Hopefully businesses will follow. Once they do, we’ll have a destination unlike any other in the SCV: shops, a library, Metrolink station, community center, Hart Park, Veteran’s Plaza and more all within a five minute walk of each other. That’s something to be proud of, especially in this economy.
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