Valencia is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a region that is not governed by a local municipal corporation. Widespread unincorporated communities and areas are a distinguishing feature of the United States and Canada. Most other countries of the world either have ...

in northwestern Los Angeles County, California. This area, with major commercial and industrial parks, straddles State Route 126 and the Santa Clara River. Development projects continue to be built in the unincorporated area. A major expansion of Valencia is under construction with new residential neighborhoods and the expansion of commerce and industrial developments. Spanning the Santa Clara River, the massive Newhall Ranch development was conceived by the Newhall Land land management company in the 1980s. After lengthy delays due to environmental challenges and change of investors, the project broke ground in 2017 and was renamed FivePoint-Valencia. The new development is directly west of

Six Flags Magic Mountain Six Flags Magic Mountain, formerly known and colloquially referred to as simply Magic Mountain, is a amusement park located in Valencia, California, northwest of downtown Los Angeles. It opened on May 29, 1971, as a development of the Newh ...

History

The area is the traditional lands of Native Americans. The

Tataviam people The Tataviam (Kitanemuk: ''people on the south slope'') are a Native American group in Southern California. The ancestral land of the Tataviam people includes northwest present-day Los Angeles County and southern Ventura County, primarily in t ...

migrated in here in 450 CE when the

Chumash people The Chumash are a Native American people of the central and southern coastal regions of California, in portions of what is now San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Ventura and Los Angeles counties, extending from Morro Bay in the north to Mali ...

were living here.

Newhall Ranch development

Newhall Ranch was ranched and farmed until the 1960s when

Newhall Land and Farming Company

Valencia orange. The completion of

Interstate 5 Interstate 5 (I-5) is the main north–south Interstate Highway on the West Coast of the United States, running largely parallel to the Pacific coast of the contiguous U.S. from Mexico to Canada. It travels through the states of Californi ...

through the Santa Clarita Valley in 1967 provided an improved route south into the San Fernando Valley. The same year, Newhall Land finished construction of the first homes in Valencia. With stores, parks, hospitals and schools, the community was intended to be self-contained. When it incorporated in 1987, the city of

Santa Clarita Santa Clarita (; Spanish for "Little St. Clare") is a city in northwestern Los Angeles County in the U.S. state of California. With a 2020 census population of 228,673, it is the third-largest city by population in Los Angeles County, the 17t ...

combined four communities, including most of the built out portion of

Valencia Valencia ( va, València) is the capital of the autonomous community of Valencia and the third-most populated municipality in Spain, with 791,413 inhabitants. It is also the capital of the province of the same name. The wider urban area al ...

, to form a city of 25,000. Although this was the only city, the population of the entire Santa Clarita Valley had reached 125,000. In the late 1980s, Newhall Land had one of the last big parcels of undeveloped real estate near Los Angeles with the Newhall Ranch. They estimated that was developable and about of the master planned Valencia neighborhood had already been built out with 8,000 single-family houses, apartments, and condominiums. Nearly all of the homes were built by the Newhall Land company and they had approvals for some 3,000 additional homes. The area slated for industrial parks, that already had 300 companies and their 8,500 employees, was expanding. Much of the land for industrial and commercial development was sold to other companies to be developed. The

Northridge Earthquake The 1994 Northridge earthquake was a moment 6.7 (), blind thrust earthquake that occurred on January 17, 1994, at 4:30:55 a.m. PST in the San Fernando Valley region of the City of Los Angeles. The quake had a duration of approximatel ...

fractured an ARCO pipeline just east of Interstate 5 in 1994. While concerns were raised over the proposed Westridge golf course community in 1992 over the removal of oak trees for road construction, Newhall Land began construction in 1998 on the Westridge community located north of Stevenson Ranch. This adjacent community had been developed by Dale Poe Development Corp. in the previous decade after Newhall Land sold them the property. Located west of Interstate 5, the TPC Valencia golf course in Westridge was renamed The Oaks Club at Valencia in 2018. Newhall Land started construction on the Valencia Marketplace in 1995 which became a major commercial center and a major source of sales tax revenue for unincorporated Valencia. By 1996, Newhall Land had developed in Valencia with some 12,000 homes. In 1998, Valencia area had 1.1 million square feet of industrial space under construction with a 2% vacancy rate in the existing developments. The unincorporated area northwest of the intersection of Interstate 5 and State Route 126 had plenty of acreage and entitlements to accommodate additional industrial space. Valencia Commerce Center and IAC Commerce Center are master-planned business parks with mixed-use with office, industrial and retail. Centered on Commerce Center Drive, major tenants include

Remo Remo Inc. is an American musical instruments manufacturing company based in Valencia, California, and founded by Remo Belli in 1957. Products manufactured include drum kits, drumhead A drumhead or drum skin is a membrane stretched ov ...

Pharmavite Pharmavite is an American dietary supplements company that was founded in 1971 by California pharmacist, Barry Pressman, and that was acquired by Otsuka Pharmaceutical in 1989. Its "Nature Made" vitamin brand was launched the following year. Pha ...

Mechanix Wear Mechanix Wear, Inc. is an American safety company headquartered in Valencia, California, that produces high performance work gloves in the automotive, industrial, tactical and construction segments. Partnership On 14 July 2020, NASCAR and Mec ...

, and ITT Aerospace Controls.

Major expansion

The large master-planned Newhall Ranch development in unincorporated Valencia, now called FivePoint-Valencia, was conceived in the 1980s by Newhall Land as a

greenfield development Greenfield land is a British English term referring to undeveloped land in an urban or rural area either used for agriculture or landscape design, or left to evolve naturally. These areas of land are usually agricultural or amenity properties ...

not included in the original Valencia master plan. City council members of the adjacent city of Santa Clarita objected to the project in 1989. They were concerned with the congestion it could bring along with the environmental issues that had been raised by other groups. The city was also asking for this area to be included in their sphere of influence, just two years after the city incorporated. The sphere of influence is a municipal growth boundary that delineates the area that the

Local Agency Formation Commission Local Agency Formation Commissions or LAFCOs are regional service planning agencies of the State of California. LAFCOs are located in all 58 counties and exercise regulatory and planning powers in step with their prescribed directive to oversee the ...

(LAFCO) believes is the appropriate and probable future city limit. The formation committee's proposal for the city included a much larger area than was finally allowed to proceed by LAFCO. The city applied to LAFCO for similar large increases to the sphere of influence in 1991 and 2000. While the sphere of influence was increased and annexations approved on the other three sides of the city, the western boundary has remained at Interstate 5. Newhall Land supported this limit, stating, "We've always seen the 5 freeway as the dividing line between the city and the county. … There are no city services in that area and it's isolated from the rest of the city." At the request of area town councils, the county board of supervisors put three advisory measures on the ballot in 2009. The residents of Sunset Point, Stevenson Ranch, Southern Oaks, Westridge, Tesoro,

Castaic Castaic () (Chumash: ''Kaštiq''; Spanish: ''Castéc'') is an unincorporated community in the northwestern part of Los Angeles County, California. As of the 2010 census it had a population of 19,015. For statistical purposes the Census Bureau ...

and Val Verde were able to weigh in our their preference. Most voted to stay unincorporated while some voted to be annexed to the city of Santa Clarita. Few were interested in creating their own city. In 2009,

Lennar Lennar Corporation is a home construction company based in the census-designated place of Fontainebleau, Florida, with a Miami postal address. In 2021, the company was the second-largest home construction company in the United States based on the ...

acquired a 15% stake in the Newhall Land for $138 million, with five lenders owning the balance. Lennar formed Five Point Holdings LLC to manage its California master-plan developments in 2009.

Legal challenges to expansion

The developers of the Newhall Ranch project had hoped to break ground by 2012 but several lawsuits were filed over the years by various

environmental groups An environmental organization is an organization coming out of the conservation or environmental movements that seeks to protect, analyse or monitor the environment against misuse or degradation from human forces. In this sense the environmen ...

, and other interested parties. During the decades the development had been in planning, it faced legal actions, environmental concerns, and several changes in investors. The landmark

California Environmental Quality Act The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) is a California statute passed in 1970 and signed in to law by then-Governor Ronald Reagan, shortly after the United States federal government passed the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), t ...

, or CEQA, was used to challenge the development even after the county had approved the specific plan and the zoning changes needed for the project. The downstream impact and other effects also drew Ventura County officials and citizens into opposition to the project. While these lawsuits have been dismissed as merely tactics to block or delay the project by some, others claim the environmental law has led to a better-designed project while saving crucial habitat. The project straddles the Santa Clara River, one of the most dynamic river systems in

southern California Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and cultural region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. It includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second most populous urban a ...

, with the planned area overlapping one of Los Angeles County's Strategic Ecological Areas program, which designates areas of "irreplaceable biological resources". The construction will fill in and alter more than of the river's flood plain and tributaries according to the required permits. The area provides habitat for a wide array of native plants and animals including threatened and endangered fauna and flora. The development includes building 21,500 dwelling units, a commercial district, seven public schools, three fire stations, a regional park, three community parks, a golf course, and a lake divided into 9 areas referred to as villages. of permanent open space would be set aside and of trails developed. The plan includes converting nearly of tributaries and riverbank into storm drains and levees and use of excavated soil to fill in

wetland A wetland is a distinct ecosystem that is flooded or saturated by water, either permanently (for years or decades) or seasonally (for weeks or months). Flooding results in oxygen-free (anoxic) processes prevailing, especially in the soils. The p ...

s. The Newhall Ranch Sanitation District will operate a water reclamation plant serving the development near the boundary with Ventura County. The plant will treat an estimated of water every day before releasing it into the Santa Clara River as it flows towards the ocean and into Ventura County. A lawsuit by three environmental groups was settled in 2004. In 2014, the California 2nd District Court of Appeal overturned a Los Angeles County Superior Court ruling and found that the environmental impact report adequately analyzed the project's potential impact on endangered fauna and flora and Native American cultural artifacts. The ruling also supported the agency's determination that storm-drain runoff from the project's into the Santa Clara River would not harm juvenile steelhead trout downstream in Ventura County. Subsequently, the California Supreme Court agreed to review a petition that stated the appellate court opinion exempting developers from protections for the unarmored threespine stickleback would apply to other protected species such as the

California Condor The California condor (''Gymnogyps californianus'') is a New World vulture and the largest North American land bird. It became extinct in the wild in 1987 when all remaining wild individuals were captured, but has since been reintroduced to nort ...

. Also of concern is that participation in land-use issues is discouraged by requiring that public comments be submitted early in the environmental review process rather than up to the time of project approval. The environmental review for the Mission Village neighborhood was upheld by a Los Angeles Superior Court in May 2014. In April 2015, the

Appellate court A court of appeals, also called a court of appeal, appellate court, appeal court, court of second instance or second instance court, is any court of law that is empowered to hear an appeal of a trial court or other lower tribunal. In much of ...

affirmed the environmental review for the Landmark Village neighborhood and approved the commence of the neighborhood's construction. Environmental groups that are still against the project continued challenges in court over Landmark Village. The California Supreme Court ruled in November 2015 that Newhall Land Development Inc. failed to provide evidence in its overall Environmental Impact Report (EIR) to prove its project was consistent with state guidelines to control

greenhouse gases A greenhouse gas (GHG or GhG) is a gas that absorbs and emits radiant energy within the thermal infrared range, causing the greenhouse effect. The primary greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere are water vapor (), carbon dioxide (), methane ...

. In May 2016 the state Supreme Court directed lower courts to toss out the EIRs mentioned above for two phases of construction. After changes had been made addressing the Supreme Court's concerns, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife certified the environmental impact report in 2017. In July 2017, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors certified a revised environmental analysis and re-approved land-use permits for the Mission Village and Landmark Village communities.

Major construction begins

The development broke ground in 2017, and the company FivePoint is currently developing the first village, Mission Village. Landmark Village was planned to be the first neighborhood to be built. Mission Village, with 4,000 homes, is currently under construction and will have a " downtown style" mixed-use center.Madler, Mark (27 May 2014) "Newhall Ranch Wins Legal Round" San Fernando Valley Business Journal Homestead Village and Portero Village are also being planned. , all 18 initial neighborhoods are under construction with a total of 725 homes sold since sales began in May 2021.

Entrada South and Entrada North

Entrada South and Entrada North are being developed by Newhall Land as part of their original Valencia Master Plan. The two Entrada projects are west of The Old Road and will abut the Newhall Ranch development on the east with roads connecting to Mission Village. Entrada South includes 1,574 residential units including 339 homes and 1,235 multi-family units. At just over , the project also includes of commercial development, a

Saugus Union School District Saugus Union School District (SUSD) is a public California school district located in Santa Clarita, Los Angeles County, California. The district serves students in grades TK/K-6 in Saugus, most of Valencia, and parts of Canyon Country. There a ...

elementary school, and open space areas. The Newhall Ranch Resource Management and Development Plan and Spineflower Conservation Plan includes approval of a reserve within Entrada South. The development is between Six Flags Magic Mountain amusement park to the north and the community of Westridge to the south which is the most southerly community in unincorporated Valencia in 1998. Entrada North is a development with 1,150 multi-family residential units built around a town center with shopping, dining and entertainment. The project is southwest of the junction of Interstate 5 and Highway 126.

Geography

Located in the westerly portion of the

Santa Clarita Valley The Santa Clarita Valley (SCV) is part of the upper watershed of the Santa Clara River in Southern California. The valley was part of the Rancho San Francisco Mexican land grant. Located in Los Angeles County, its main population center is th ...

, the community straddles the Santa Clara River, considered the last undeveloped river valley in Southern California.. It is bounded on the west by the

Ventura County Ventura County () is a County (United States), county in Southern California, the southern part of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census, the population was 843,843. The largest city is Oxnard, California ...

line and on the east by

, which also marks the border with the neighborhood of

in the city of

. It is also bordered by

to the north, Val Verde to the west, and Stevenson Ranch to the south. Valencia has historically supplied people with water, fish, and fertile farmland. The area provides habitat for a wide array of native plants and animals including threatened and endangered fauna and flora such as the

California condor The California condor (''Gymnogyps californianus'') is a New World vulture and the largest North American land bird. It became extinct in the wild in 1987 when all remaining wild individuals were captured, but has since been reintroduced to nort ...

, the

California gnatcatcher The California gnatcatcher (''Polioptila californica'') is a small long insectivorous bird which frequents dense coastal sage scrub growth. This species was recently split from the similar black-tailed gnatcatcher of the Sonoran and Chihuahuan ...

, the

southwestern willow flycatcher The willow flycatcher (''Empidonax traillii'') is a small insect-eating, neotropical migrant bird of the tyrant flycatcher family. There are four subspecies of the willow flycatcher currently recognized, all of which breed in North America (inc ...

, the least Bell's vireo, the

arroyo toad The arroyo toad (''Anaxyrus californicus'') is a species of true toads in the family Bufonidae, endemic to California (U.S.) and Baja California state (México). It is currently classified as an Endangered species on the IUCN Red List of Threa ...

, the San Fernando Valley spineflower, and the threespine stickleback.

Education

Elementary school students in Valencia attend schools in the

and

Newhall School District The Newhall School District is an elementary 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 L ...

. Junior high and high school students attend Rancho Pico Junior High School and

West Ranch High School West Ranch High School is a public high school in the William S. Hart Union High School District located in Stevenson Ranch, California. The school mascot is the Wildcat, and navy blue and gold are the school's official colors. ''The Paw Print'' i ...

, both part of the

William S. Hart Union High School District The William S. Hart Union High School District (commonly referred to simply as the Hart District) is a school district in the Santa Clarita Valley of Los Angeles County, California. It serves all of the valley's high school students (grades 9� ...

College of the Canyons College of the Canyons (COC) is a public community college in Santa Clarita, California. It comprises the Santa Clarita Community College District. The college is accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges and has campus loca ...

and

California Institute of the Arts The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) is a private art university in Santa Clarita, California. It was incorporated in 1961 as the first degree-granting institution of higher learning in the US created specifically for students of both ...

are located nearby, in the Santa Clarita city neighborhood of Valencia.

Government

The entire Santa Clarita Valley, including Valencia, is in the Fifth District of the

Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors (LACBOS) is the five-member governing body of Los Angeles County, California, United States. History On April 1, 1850 the citizens of Los Angeles elected a three-man Court of Sessions as their firs ...

, represented by

Kathryn Barger Kathryn Ann Barger-Leibrich is an American politician, serving as a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors for the 5th District since 2016. A member of the Republican Party, Barger served as Chair of Los Angeles County from 2019 ...

State and federal representation

In the California State Senate, Valencia is split between the 21st and

27th 27 (twenty-seven; Roman numeral XXVII) is the natural number following 26 and preceding 28. In mathematics * Twenty-seven is a cube of 3: 3^3=3\times 3\times 3. 27 is also 23 (see tetration). There are exactly 27 straight lines on a smooth ...

districts, represented by ( R) and ( D), respectively. In the State Assembly, it is in the 38th district, represented by ( R). In the

United States House of Representatives The United States House of Representatives, often referred to as the House of Representatives, the U.S. House, or simply the House, is the lower chamber of the United States Congress, with the Senate being the upper chamber. Together they ...

, Valencia (and nearly all of the Santa Clarita Valley) is in .

Law enforcement

The

California Highway Patrol The California Highway Patrol (CHP) is a state law enforcement agency of the U.S. state of California. The CHP has primary patrol jurisdiction over all California highways and roads and streets outside city limits, and can exercise law enforcem ...

is responsible for patrolling public streets. The

Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department (LASD), officially the County of Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, is a law enforcement agency serving Los Angeles County, California. LASD is the largest sheriff's department in the United States ...

serves the unincorporated Santa Clarita Valley communities together with the city of Santa Clarita which contracts for law enforcement.

Notable people

* Jake Bird (born 1995), baseball pitcher for the Colorado Rockies *

Naya Rivera Naya Marie Rivera (; January 12, 1987July 8, 2020) was an American actress, singer, and model. Recognized for her work on the popular musical comedy-drama series '' Glee'', she received various awards, including a Screen Actors Guild Award and ...

(1987 - 2020), actress * Pat Valaika (b. 1992), MLB infielder

References

{{authority control Planned communities in California Proposed populated places in the United States Santa Clara River (California) Santa Susana Mountains