Concept plans for the Valencia Town Center have been unveiled months after the Dallas-based developer Centennial acquired the property.

The new concept was showcased at a meeting held by the city Thursday evening. It unveiled a project aimed at building better dining, retail, live entertainment, experiential retail and venues.

“We want this to be a practical, real, buildable plan,” said Dave Peterson, Senior planner with the Santa Clarita Planning Division and project manager of the Town Center specifics. “We don’t want this to be a plan that just sits on the shelf and collects dust. We want to see this area improve and brought back to the way it was prior to covid.”

The concept intends to mimic places like the Grove, the Irvine Spectrum and the Americana while not being carbon copies.

The plan to make the Valencia Town Center more appealing is to incorporate gathering places throughout the mall and have a change in architecture and stores.

One concern of residents that Peterson addressed was that the mall would be torn down for housing.

“We’re going to have a balance of uses and balance is critical, so if there is residential development, there is also commercial development and these things happen together,” said Peterson.

While there is no plan to demolish the mall, there is a plan to stretch Town Center Drive to go from McBean Parkway to Valencia Boulevard.

So, in essence, Town Center Drive will go through the entire Valencia Town Center but will require JcPenney, the food court and Sears to be taken down.

These plans for Valencia Town Center are only a concept so that does not mean this is an absolute.

Other plans for the concept include a conference center with a hotel, office spaces, and mixed-use residential units.  

Along with better routes for pedestrians and bicyclists to navigate through the mall.

The entire development has a maximum build-out of 631,000 square feet of net commercial space and 2,563 residential units of townhomes and apartments.

“This is the maximum build-out scenario. What that means is we have a scenario that we think will reasonably occur and then we analyzed a little bit more,” said Peterson. 

Centennial will be responsible for the entire building and construction process. The city’s only involvement is to ensure everything is to code.

As previously mentioned, all plans are desires of Centennial and the city but are only concepts so nothing is official.

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