Tejon Ranch Company has received approval from the Kern County Board of Supervisors for the Tejon Industrial Complex, a 320-acre business park along I-5 at the northern base of the Grapevine. Although it is a 45-mile drive from the outskirts of Los Angeles, the project appears to tie Kern County closer to metropolitan Southern California, a concept that Tejon Ranch encourages. Tejon Ranch owns 270,000 contiguous acres (422 square miles) in southern Kern and northern Los Angeles counties, making it one of the state's largest private landowners. The company sees Kern County as an extension of the Los Angeles basin, said Philip Adams, vice president of real estate development for Tejon Ranch. Besides the Tejon Industrial Complex, which has drawn great interest from companies looking for large distribution centers since Kern County approved it in the spring, Tejon Ranch has other blocks of land on the valley floor that it is willing to make available for industrial development. Maybe even more importantly, Tejon Ranch earlier this year announced that it had signed an agreement with three major developers (Pardee Construction, Lewis Investment and Standard Pacific) to create a 4,000-acre master-planned new town in the Tehachapi Mountains near I-5 and Highway 138. And the company talks of building a resort community around Tejon Lake, northwest of the proposed new town. The fact that the industrial park site is roughly 20 miles from the potential new town demonstrates how vast Tejon Ranch's holdings are — and how big a player it could become in the urban development game. For more than a century, Tejon Ranch has been a farming and cattle enterprise. But in recent years the company has hired executives with development expertise, such as Adams and CEO Richard Stine. Now, the company's development plans are becoming public. "They want to go up and over the Grapevine, all along the I-5 corridor," said Mary Griffin, conservation chair for the Kern Audubon Society, which opposed the industrial complex. "I don't want to see that. I want the scenic beauty. I want legitimate agriculture and oil." Earlier this year, Kern County supervisors certified an environmental impact report and approved a general plan amendment, zone change, precise plan, development agreement and parcel map for the Tejon Industrial Complex. The site, along I-5 a couple miles south of the Highway 99 split, had been zoned partly commercial/industrial and partly agricultural, and has served as grazing land. Now it is all zoned M2, a mid-range industrial designation, said Dave Rickels, Kern County special projects planning division chief. The zoning permits a number of light and moderate manufacturing uses, but Tejon Ranch appears mostly interested in warehousing and distribution operations. Tejon Ranch intends to build 3.5 million to 5 million square feet of industrial space at the complex, Adams said. The development agreement locks in place for 10 years all existing development standards. Thus, if the county alters, for example, landscaping or road rules, Tejon Industrial Complex will be exempt. Kern County officials were accommodating because they are interested in the jobs that the industrial park will provide. The county's unemployment rate has remained in double figures during the recent economic expansion. At least 500 people, possibly many more, are expected to work at the industrial park. A major furniture retailer, IKEA, has already signed up for a 1.8-million-square-foot distribution center, which would be one of the state's largest buildings. Tejon Ranch is talking with a number of other companies, all of which want at least 390,000 square feet, Adams said. The advantages for shippers are numerous: the site is along an interstate highway; there will be a freeway interchange designed specifically for trucks; nearby Highway 99 provides access to the fast-growing Central Valley; there is vacant land available for expansion; restaurants and truck stops that Tejon Ranch developed earlier lie next to the site; development is less expensive and employee wages are lower in Kern County than in metropolitan Los Angeles. Plus, traffic congestion in the Los Angeles basin means that it does not take any longer to haul freight from the Long Beach and Los Angeles ports to southern Kern County than to distribution centers in the Ontario and Fontana area, Adams said. "The fact that you are seconds off the freeway makes a huge difference in truck time," Adams added. "I think this is going to be one of the major distribution sites in the United States." That is precisely what worries Griffin and other environmentalists. The industrial park will affect three creeks that are vital for wildlife, she said. The bigger issue, though, is leapfrog development. Bakersfield is nearly 30 miles away and there are very few homes within 20 miles of the industrial park site, so hundreds of workers will have to drive a good distance to the new jobs. Yet Bakersfield has many infill development opportunities, and the area's economically depressed small towns — such as Taft, Arvin, Shafter and Delano — could use jobs, she said. "We don't need this leapfrog stuff. It will be the slums of tomorrow — a new town for L.A.," Griffin charged. The county did have to adopt overriding considerations because of air quality impacts from so many people commuting long distances to work, Rickels said. Such overriding considerations are not uncommon because the south valley's air quality is so poor. "The simple fact of the matter is there are no residential communities in which people could live. There is Frazier Park about 20 miles away, and Arvin and Bakersfield about 25 miles away," Rickels said. But it is the location that makes the industrial project feasible, he said. Tejon Ranch's Adams agreed. Building the project in Bakersfield is not realistic because it is 30 to 40 minutes farther from Los Angeles. The Tejon Industrial Complex site abuts the San Emidio Ranch, where Kern County approved a 9,400-acre subdivision in 1992 (see CP&DR, October 1992, CP&DR Legal Digest June 1993). The San Emidio subdivision, proposed by the late San Fernando Valley developer Dale Poe, has never gone forward although the specific plan remains on the books, Rickels said. The project would need additional environmental review and zone changes, he said. "At least in theory, someone could reactivate that development," Rickels said. "They would almost have to start from scratch. … They would have to readdress the water situation, which was one of the big sticking points on that development." Contacts: Dave Rickels, Kern County planning department, (661) 862-8600. Mary Griffin, Kern Audubon Society, (661) 871-7304. Philip Adams, Tejon Ranch Company, (661) 248-3000. Tejon Ranch website: www.tejonranch.com