A plan to clean up and redevelop 1,000 acres of prime Santa Clarita real estate, more than a decade in the making, is finally getting underway. The property, which once housed the Bermite Powder Co., has been sold to a partnership consisting of Cherokee Investment Partners LLC, a real estate investment company that specializes in remediating brownfields, and SunCal Companies, an Irvine-based developer, for an estimated $64 million. The deal follows the resolution of one of the biggest sticking points in the battle over the redevelopment how much it will cost to clean up the property, contaminated with perchlorates during the 50 years that munitions were manufactured on the site, and who should do it. “The good news is that remediation is underway,” said Lisa Hardy, planning manager for the city of Santa Clarita. “The insurance settlement secured $200 million to be spent on cleanup.” Whittaker Corp., which acquired Bermite in the 1980s, sold the land to a unit of Remediation Financial Inc., a Phoenix company that specializes in brownfield cleanup, in 1998 for $15 million plus a contingent interest in the property. That deal sparked hope in the community that the land, which officials have called the “hole in the doughnut” because of its central location criss-crossing the city of Santa Clarita, would finally be put to good use. But RFI filed for bankruptcy before the cleanup questions could be resolved, and the property was put up for sale as part of the Chap. 11 reorganization proceeding. The sale was again delayed over the past year while the bidders awaited a determination on the amount of the insurance settlement, a key factor in determining the final price of the property. Cherokee earlier had the property in escrow, but that deal never materialized. Initially that company, and SunCal sought to acquire the property separately, but joined forces very late in the negotiations. “The partnership brings the land development expertise of SunCal Companies and marries that with the brownfield redevelopment expertise of Cherokee, and forms in our view a fantastic partnership to deliver on the remediation side in an expert fashion and the development side in an expert fashion,” said Ray Pearl, director of government relations for SunCal. (Calls to Cherokee were referred to SunCal as well.) SunCal will be establishing an office in Santa Clarita, where an as-yet undetermined number of staffers will be based throughout the project. SunCal, which counts among its projects, Tesoro del Valle, a single-family home community in Santa Clarita, has primarily worked in the home development sector. But like most companies of its kind, SunCal has been moving into urban infill development as large vacant parcels of land become scarce in California.
