Newhall Hardware's closing has sparked some very heated commentary in The Signal.

I can’t even think about the Newhall Hardware saga without getting a splitting headache these days… While I don’t have a crystal ball and definitely didn’t predict the demise of the long-standing Newhall Hardware business, I’ve been trying in vain to get this whole Newhall redevelopment issue into the forefront for months now. It really didn’t take a rocket scientist (or an ex-accountant) to figure out that the approach that the City of Santa Clarita was taking was going to cost many of the Downtown (Old Town) Newhall businesses their lives, and the tidal wave is just beginning.

The Signal posted an editorial in Friday’s Escape section that bears reading, but won’t be seen by non-subscribers since it’s not online. I feel so strongly about this whole issue, and so in favor of The Signal’s recent rant, that I’m taking the time to type this editorial in (in its entirety) so all can read it. More than once. After all, this is our town and our history we’re talking about, and we’re allowing a bunch of weenies at City Hall to destroy it for us to satisfy their own personal agendas.

Yes, I know that many of you would like to see the stroller-pushing Latina Mommas chased away from our pristine town, but that’s just plain WRONG. And the businesses that are being shut down aren’t just those that serve the Spanish-speaking population. There’s Newhall Hardware for starters. Add in the recently closed Antique Flower Garden. And the businesses on Spruce Street that are being chased away for this supposed urbanization of downtown Newhall, including another long-standing Newhall business, the White Light Chiropractic Center. They’ve been in the same location for over 20 years, and now the City of Santa Clarita wants them to wave bye-bye to Newhall for a mere fraction of what it will cost them to relocate elsewhere.

Add to that the automotive-related business, such as Auto Service Plus and SoundStation, that the City is actively working to push out in favor of more yuppie-style sales-tax-collecting businesses. And the remaining businesses along Spruce Street and San Fernando Road that haven’t already been smothered out of existence by the City’s new parking schemes and the rerouting of traffic away from that area.

Revitalizing Downtown Newhall doesn’t have to mean chasing away existing businesses in the hopes of attracting a bunch of cookie-cutter boutique stores. Heck, the City’s own studies show that the boutiques likely won’t set up shop there anyways. Even if you do agree with the plan to set up a bunch of cookie-cutter stores in Downtown Newhall, the closing of Newhall Hardware has shown what a terrible impact the City is having with the way they’re implementing this supposed revitalization project. There’s a better way. Revitalization has been done before in other areas without killing off existing businesses.

Here’s today’s Signal editorial. Read it. Act on it. Make sure that you take the time to make a difference in our community. Write letters to the Editor, to City Hall, to City Council Members. Post articles on blogs. Write a guest article for this blog. Contact Gloria Allred. Call the TV stations. Do whatever feels right to you, unless it’s just sitting there on your butt doing nothing. We don’t have to just sit back and allow Santa Clarita City Hall to run rampant over our history, and collectively we do have the power to stop this.

Shame on All of Us. Don G is Rolling Over in His Grave.

We tend to rail and shake our fists. At times like this, some write letters. Some cry: "There ought to be a law." Others call for the formation of yet another Blue Ribbon Committee of the connected, constipated and addled to endlessly study the matter.

Newhall Hardware is closing and there is something terribly, obscenely wrong with that.

On March 3, 1947, the empty lot next to the safeway (Tres Sierras today) in Downtown Newhall was sold by Betty Moss to Don F. Guglielmino. "Don G" as some of the old-timers called him, passed away a few years ago. He was nephew to J.F. Baudino, who owned that whole block in the 1940s.

Recently discharged from the military, Don G would soon open up Newhall Hardware. That lot, by the way, was where William Mayhue’s home used to sit. When the property was bought 61 years ago, there still was the ancient olive tree in the front yard. Vic Feany started working there when he was 23 and there isn’t a better man in town. Don G sold the place to Vic several years ago.

For six decades, Newhall Hardware was more than a place where you went for a 2-cent wingnut or a $2,000 pulley. It was part of the fabric of America, unique and homespun. Newcomer yuppies grinning out of context or the grizzled old rancher coming down from the hills could be spotted wandering aisles so narrow, you could hardly run a pipe cleaner through, let alone a grown and hearty cornfed salesclerk.

Newhall Hardware sold guns and cast iron skillets, horse tack, the coolest John Deere windvanes and tool belts. But best of all, if you had some need for a nine-sided 3/14ths hex bolt, somewhere in that darn store knew where it was.

If you needed it, Newhall Hardware had it.

Better, it was that slow-paced meeting ground where you caught up on current events, politics and gossip. Once you earned your stripes, you might be lucky enough to exchange light-hearted expletives with the owner’s wife and try to bargain down the cost of a roll of duct tape.

Things change.

Not always for the better.

Earlier this week, one of the valley’s oldest businesses held a going-out-of-business sale. Women and men wept openly.

Blame?

It was a perfect storm of circumstances. The economy sucks. You can’t throw a rock and not hit a WalMart or hardware super-store marketed toward an infantile populace weaned on Disneyland, twinkling lights, TV tie-ins and beddie-bye music. Like some malignant glacier, the City of Santa Clarita began an elephantine modernization project which couldn’t have harmed the already struggling businesses any more unless the municipal staff just punched them in the stomach.

On the quarter hour.

Actually, the previous scenario is silly and contrived. Once the staff managed to drive down there, where would they park?

Then, there were the dreaded signs.

Stop signs.

One seemingly every 16 annoying inches along the newly named Main Street.

Then, there’s the worst villain in this play.

Us.

The new creature, homo sapien suburbanicus, has a need for speed and comfort. Going to Downtown Newhall was now just too much of a logistical hassle.

Why in the holy hell do we so despise the unique? What sort of society have we built where there is space only for the smothering mediocrity of planned urban development? Every precious square inch is now niggardly doled out. Like sheep, we allow ourselves to suffer parking places too small for any compact and told that we have choices: to blindly push a shopping cart and graze at that supercenter or to blindly push a shopping cart and graze at the other supercenter. Everyone’s tables, chairs, towel racks and toilet seats are variations of the same cheap particle board theme.

We deserve what we get.

We deserve to go to a shopping center where the employees are ordered not to wish a customer "Merry Christmas" because it might offend the one lawsuit-happy and acrimonious cheese weenie cult member.

Congratulations.

We have all killed one of the last remaining eclectic sanctuaries in this maddening compound of sameness.

As usual, we’ll shake our heads and bemoan yet another example of sucking the poetry from the valley.

We’ll quietly march one step closer to living in this instant soup society and becoming the dulled stars of our own science fiction movie.

Shame on all of us for not taking a few minutes here and there to buy a lousy screwdriver to save Newhall Hardware, for there shall never be anything like it again.

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