The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors certified the environmental impact report last August for The Walt Disney Co.’s planned development of either eight or 12 new sound stages east of the 14 Freeway at Placerita Canyon Road.
Now, on Tuesday, the supervisors will consider approving all of the various permits that the company would need before it can actually go forth and build.
The company apparently hasn’t yet settled on eight or 12 sound stages because it’s seeking approval of two alternative tract maps - one with 510,000 square feet of indoor studio facilities including eight sound stages and an office building; and another with 555,950 square feet of indoor studio facilities including 12 sound stages.
The construction would occur on 44 acres (plus another 14 for parking) of the 890-acre Golden Oak Ranch, which Disney has been operating since the late 1950s.
Because the company filed its plans prior to the county’s adoption in 2012 of the One Valley, One Vision city-county general plan, the studio project falls under the county’s old 1990 SCV Area Plan, which will need to be amended. That’s part of Tuesday’s planned action, along with a zone change from heavy agricultural to commercial.
Also up for consideration is an oak tree permit, because the studio project calls for the removal of 158 oaks, including 16 heritage oaks, and encroachment into the protected zone of another 83 oak trees elsewhere on the property, as identified in the EIR.
There’s also a needed parking permit, to allow for tandem (stacked) parking, possibly within an LADWP easement.
Under a requested conditional use permit, building height would be limited to 60 feet within the development area, and the CUP would authorize and regulate certain things on the rest of the property including the “relocation of a caretaker mobile home, construction of a water tank, exemption from the county’s Outdoor Lighting District hours of operation, on-site filming activities, and the continued operation and maintenance of existing outdoor motion picture sets and the filming ranch on 195 acres. The remaining 637 acres of the Ranch will be used as a buffer area and filming backdrop.”
Studio construction would occur in phases.
“Although designed to be a unified project,” the documentation states, “it is intended that the phasing will be done in such a way to allow infrastructure, access, and priority sound stages to be developed first in the event that the later phases require delayed development.”
The project proponent is Golden Oak Ranch Properties, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Walt Disney Co.
Disney Placerita Studios Up for More Approvals
