Santa Clarita City Council members are sharing concerns after Centennial, the Texas-based company that purchased the Valencia Town Center, requested financial support toward building a parking structure.

 Back in September 2023, Centennial purchased the Valencia mall for nearly $200 million.

 Since then they have been working with the City of Santa Clarita for over the last year in regards to what the future of the mall will become.

 However, this week Centennial requested financial support from the City of Santa Clarita to go toward the start of construction on a parking structure at the mall which has raised concerns from at least two of the city council members.

 “They’re asking for financial support to build about a 1,500 space parking structure. They’re guesstimating that the parking structure will cost somewhere between $60 and $75 million,” said Council Member Bill Miranda. “They have not told us directly how much they’re asking for, but when you’re talking about between 60 and 75 million I can assure you they are going to ask for a substantial amount of that.”

 City staff are the ones negotiating with Centennial on how much money they feel would be necessary to fund the project, and then it would be reviewed and voted on by the city council at a later date.

 While Miranda is in support of having a town center, he has concerns about spending taxpayer dollars towards Centennial’s project. Considering over the last year, not much progress has been made at the existing location, there is less foot traffic, more businesses have left and less events are occurring.

 “Most of us want a place where our families can go and mingle around and really have a true town center, not just a mall, and I want that,” Miranda said. “I don’t want to be someone that impedes that, but on the other hand, I don’t want to, what I consider to be potentially misuse not not illegal, but unethically misuse city funds to help a corporation that supposedly is richer than rich.”

Miranda also wants to be careful that if money is approved towards the parking structure, that Centennial may start asking for more funding for other portions of the mall.

 “We pay some of the highest taxes in the country,” Miranda said. “We have to treat the peoples’ money as if it’s our own… We are not going to spend wildly in the hopes of getting benefits.”

 Council member Jason Gibbs also shared concerns about aiding any amount of funds to the project, stating “I have my own concerns, if the city is going to front substantial dollars to anything, whether we’re doing our own project that we own, or whether it’s the situation we’re talking about with this development here, what is the benefit to the city? So my initial thoughts and feelings were, that is a tremendous amount of money that would need to be tied to some sort of return on investment for Santa Clarita as a whole. That is the lens that I would look at this as a council member.”

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