Centennial development co-exists with pristine country-scape

By TINA FORDE Valley Press Business Editor
Reprinted with permission from the “Antelope Valley News”

The Tejon Ranch, a 270,000-acre hunk of real estate that encompasses much of southern Kern County and spills over into Los Angeles County, is as pristine as when Gen. Edward Fitzgerald Beale created it out of four adjacent Mexican ranchos in the mid-19th century.

Civilization has encroached minimally inside the 442-square mile ranch. Interstate 5 cuts through the western edge of the property, and the 15,000-acre Tejon Industrial Complex at Grapevine is filling with distribution centers and warehouses. Thousands of cattle inhabit far corners of the property. The Tejon Equestrian Center, with its covered arena, paddocks and horse barns, sits placidly off the I-5 at Lebec.

But for the most part, the great ranch, with its oak-covered rolling hills, mountains and abundant wildlife, is intact and untouched. It is the largest privately owned contiguous land holding in California and is about 40% the size of Rhode Island.

Fiduciary Responsibilities

Therein lies a challenge. The Tejon Ranch Co. is a publicly traded entity with a fiduciary duty to its stockholders to make a profit. There’s a limit to the financial potential in hunting trips, trail rides and film shoots, and it’s not likely the artist Christo will schedule a return engagement of his enchanting yellow umbrellas that flowed over the hillsides of Tejon Ranch like California poppies in 1991.

Leasing the land for grazing cattle and raising wine grapes, almonds, walnuts and pistachios, however lucrative, cannot match the serious money that derives from residential, commercial and industrial development.

As stewards of the corporation as well as of the rare legacy embodied in the physical gifts of the ranch, the company officers have a big responsibility.
“We have no intention of carving up the ranch and selling it in pieces,” said Bob Stine, president and CEO of Tejon Ranch Company.

The company’s master plan, unfolding in recent years from the corporate offices in Lebec, presents a 25-year, three-part vision of “conservation, ranching and farming and limited development.”

The conservation efforts will set aside permanently a land area that is the size of Yosemite Valley, twice the size of the Catalina Island Conservancy and larger than Hearst Ranch. The Tejon Ranch Company has worked with the Trust for Public Land and other organizations for two years to identify 100,000 acres to be designated as a preserve. The Highlands Core portion of the preserve will protect wilderness areas and provide a 37,000-acre California condor sanctuary. Comanche Point will be set aside to protect sensitive species habitats.

The third element of the preserve involves the Pacific Crest Trail. In a move that will give the public trail-hiking rights through the heart of the ranch, a tentative agreement has been made to relocate a section of the Pacific Crest Trail from the desert floor of the Antelope Valley into the ranch’s mountains in the Tehachapi range. According to Liz Bergeron, executive director of the Pacific Crest Trail Association, the move would reroute into the ranch the 35 miles of trail that now snakes across the west end of the Antelope Valley.

Trail’s Life at Stake

“We are hopeful it is going to happen,” Bergeron said. “It’s early in the process.”

The Pacific Crest Trail, administered by the U.S. Forest Service, is open to hikers and horse riders, but not to motorized vehicles or bikes. The proposed Tejon Ranch section of the popular 2,650-mile trail, which is part of the publicly owned National Trails System and runs from Mexico to Canada, is the subject of complicated negotiations regarding ultimate ownership of the12- to 18-inch-wide trail , a possible wider scenic easement and camping areas inside the ranch.

“It’s a beautiful piece of property,” Bergeron said.

The trail association originally approached officers of the Tejon Ranch in 1968, during the time the entire trail was being laid out, for permission to pass through. The ranch refused to discuss it, and the trail landed in the desert, hugging the jagged boundary of the ranch.

This time, Bergeron said, “They approached us. That was a whole different company then.”

Conservation, Preservation and Jobs

According to ranch spokesperson Barry Zoeller, the ranch will continue leasing grazing land to two major cattlemen who have worked the ranch for decades. The agricultural business of vineyards and orchards will expand and grow.

The three areas designated in the master plan for residential and industrial development will encompass 5% of the ranch’s acreage.

The Industrial Complex, home of the IKEA distribution center and others, was the first development on the ranch. Complete build-out of the industrial area, according to Commercial and Industrial Marketing Vice President Barry Hibbard, will produce 6,000 jobs.

The planned upscale Tejon Mountain village, to be built around Lake Tejon (the historic name being Lake Castac, but the confusion with nearby Castaic Lake prompted the name change), will feature boutique hotels, resorts, golf courses, equestrian facilities, condos and homes. Twenty-three thousand acres of the 28,000-acre Tejon Mountain Village land will be set aside for conservation, according to Zoeller. The lake can be seen from I-5 at Lebec.

The major development on Tejon Ranch will take place on 11,770 acres on the hills at the west end of the Antelope Valley from 300th Street West to the foothills at Quail Lake, from Highway 138 north to the Los Angeles County line. This land, all of which is within Los Angeles County and sometimes is referred to as “the moguls,” constitutes 15% of the land area of the Tejon Ranch. It is here that the Tejon Ranch Company, in association with partners Pardee Homes, Standard Pacific and Lewis Investment Corporation, plans to build a new city called Centennial. About half of the acreage will be permanent open space, according to Greg Madeiros, vice president of community development for Centennial Founders.

If all goes as planned, in 20 years the city — or series of villages — will have 60,000 residents living in 23,000 homes, and a substantial number of jobs supported by the commercial sectors. The elementary schools in new villages of Centennial will be in the Gorman School District, and the high school, to be within the Antelope Valley Union High School District, will establish a strong tie to the communities at the east end of the Valley.