Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : City Preparing to Take Over 2 Abandoned Housing Tracts

LANCASTER —  The city of Lancaster is preparing to take possession of a pair of partially built housing tracts that were abandoned by developers and then taken over by the federal government.

On Monday, Lancaster’s redevelopment agency and City Council entered into an agreement to use the city’s eminent domain power to acquire portions of the Silverado tract. The city redevelopment agency is also expected to acquire the unfinished Legends tract.

The two tracts are now controlled by the Resolution Trust Corp., the agency created to dispose of the assets of failed savings and loan institutions. City officials say the two tracts have become an eyesore, the target of vandals, as well as a place for teens to party and the homeless to sleep.

The RTC will not oppose the so-called “friendly condemnation,” said an attorney for that agency.

The city for nearly two years has been discussing the purchase of 23 unfinished houses in the Silverado tract, which is located near 30th Street West and Avenue L. The Legends tract is located at 30th Street West and Avenue J.

Lancaster Redevelopment Director Steve Dukett said the city may gain title to the two tracts as early as August, with the idea of selling the Silverado property by year’s end. Legends, he said, will take longer because the tract consists of weather-ruined wood frames that are beyond repair and will have to be torn down.

The city would pay about $1.4 million for the remaining portions of Silverado and $3.4 million for Legends. Final approval of the transaction is scheduled for June 21.

Construction of the housing tracts was started by the U. S. Housing Corp., a Burbank-based firm that is now out of business. The company stopped building in 1989 when its lender went broke. Nearly 100 homes had already been purchased and occupied in the Silverado tract, while Legends never progressed beyond a collection of partially built frames.

Federal regulators in 1989 seized and later liquidated the lender, Pennsylvania-based Hill Financial Savings Assn.