Valencia Commerce Center

Odis Sneed's rooster no longer crows at sunrise in Val Verde, and the silence speaks volumes about the way the village is changing. Sneed, who has kept roosters for three decades in the community five miles west of the Golden State Freeway in the Santa Clarita Valley, recently got rid of the bird after his new neighbors complained about the incessant crowing. He is not worried that some of the hamlet's country atmosphere disappeared with the last cock-a-doodle-do.

Beneke Cos. of Dallas acquired the 800-unit Sunset Ridge Apartments at 43436 N. 16th St. in Lancaster from Sunset Ridge LLC for $47.8 million. The price was the highest paid per unit for an apartment complex in north Los Angeles County, according to Sean Deasy of CB Richard Ellis, who represented the seller. Beneke represented itself. * Orangefair Marketplace LLC, an affiliate of Columbus Pacific Properties, bought the 352,720-square-foot Orangefair Marketplace in Fullerton for about $31.

Burbank city officials began a new campaign Friday to woo Fox Studios to their city after hearing that studio executives are frustrated with plans to expand their West Los Angeles headquarters. The city's desire to lure Fox is not new. Two years ago, Fox executives toured a site in Burbank but put off plans to move, instead focusing on an attempt to expand their existing facility.

Burbank city officials began a new campaign Friday to woo Fox Studios to their city after hearing that studio executives were frustrated with plans to expand their West Los Angeles headquarters. The city's desire to lure Fox is not new--two years ago, Fox executives toured a site in Burbank, but put off plans to move, instead focusing on an attempt to expand their existing facility.

Developers are scheduled to break ground today on a $40-million industrial project in Valencia, underscoring how the growing Santa Clarita Valley community is on track to eclipse some of its San Fernando Valley neighbors as an industrial center. The new project is Vista Business Park, which will eventually include 730,000 square feet of industrial space on 36 acres in Valencia Commerce Center at the intersection of Interstate 5 and California 126.

Dear Street Smart: I am a trailer-boat owner who still thinks that the far right lane on the freeway is the lane for us. The exception is when we move over one lane to the left in order to pass a slower vehicle. Why do I see vehicles pulling boats, travel trailers and utility trailers in the fast lanes, closest to the center divider? And why don't they ever seem to get a ticket? Isn't it still the law that vehicles towing another vehicle must be in the far right lanes?

Santa Clarita is a precocious 5-year-old now, the whiffs of smoke from its birthday candles still fresh, its moods constantly in flux. Like Los Angeles 45 miles to the south, it has not one personality but several. Drive all the way through the leafy, upscale community of Valencia, and you're in Newhall, with its mix of antiquity, charm and blight, or Saugus, with its tract houses and mini-malls encroaching on its rough-hewn look.

Four years ago, economist Ron Halcrow had some bad news for Palmdale and Lancaster, the dusty desert towns that had become two of California's fastest growing cities almost overnight. At the northern edge of Los Angeles County, where dozens of spanking-new housing tracts had sprouted in the old alfalfa fields during the mid- to late 1980s, he saw dark clouds on the horizon.