Just what is this nonsense about renaming Magic Mountain Parkway to Auto Center Drive?
It makes me tired just to drag out the laundry list of reasons why the Santa Clarita City Council should run as fast as they can from making this idiotic move, but for the sake of discussion, here goes:
There is only one car dealership on the present MMP. You don't get to count the overflow lot for Chevrolet or the back yards of Ford and Jeep. As to the one dealership that does front on that road, don't even get me started on why NOBODY needs a car as oversized and wasteful as a Hummer.
Magic Mountain is a part of history. Car sales are a part of commerce. Most of the people you want to attract to your dealerships worked there at some time in their lives. Have some respect and look beyond the almighty buck.
Everybody knows where Magic Mountain Parkway is; it runs from Bouquet Canyon Road to the amusement park itself. The amusement park that employs more people than the auto dealers and attracts thousands of visitors to the area every year who stay in our hotels, eat at our restaurants and shop at our stores. Yeah, car dealers might contribute more tax dollars, but nobody says "I know where Santa Clarita is, that's by the (fill in the blank) car dealership." They do identify us with that park. Maybe that's why living here is such an extreme thrill.
If you want to change the name of a street, why not propose that Creekside be changed? That makes sense. Granted, it's not an offramp, but you already have that monolithic monument sign that glares through the day and night thwarting every environmentally-sensitive principle. Deal with it. Besides, in another asinine move (before we became a city), another street - completely across town and having no connection to the first Creekside - was given the same name. Changing the street between Magic Mountain Parkway and the Santa Clara river bed to Auto Center Drive would eliminate confusion and stop the looky-loos from cruising the quiet residential street in Newhall.
I'm encouraged by the reaction to this proposal from Supervisor Mike Antonovich who said that the idea was "ill-timed" and "an insult." He's right. Just because you bring money into the area doesn't mean you always get your way. And if the Valencia Auto Dealers are so dedicated to our community, why are they sponsoring the New Year's Eve celebration at Clear Channel (oops, money talking again) Stadium in Lancaster instead of something here in town? Oops.
It's also pretty funny that a short-time Stevenson Ranch resident and blogger has thrown his criticism toward this issue. If he'd done his research, he would have discovered that the first such "insult" to the community was done in 1996 when McBean Parkway - named after pioneering Newhall family member Atholl McBean, who saved the family and company with his financial acumen - was renamed Stevenson Ranch Parkway to make a literary boundary between "us" and "them."
Makes for an interesting chat around the fire pit, no? And if the auto dealers really want to attract our business, try giving better service. I don't go down the big stretch of Creekside for my car buying needs because the sharks aren't always friendly. There's a reason my family owns four - count 'em, four - Saturns.