what vacancies?
Castaic Town Center: The bottom strip mall has a cleaners, dentist office, and nail salon. That's a fourth of the spaces. I will admit the dentist office may be closing, but that would still be 2 filled out of 10 spaces. The upper level has a karate dojo and mexican resturant, and the other spaces will ultimately be filled with a public library. I'll grant you it is highly unusual to have a public library in a strip mall.

The Old Road: The Old Rd is getting another strip mall south of Rainbow Liquor and north of the new condos. And, it's getting an advertising kind of car dealership and a restaurant adjacent the County Maintenance facility. Sure there were lot's of protests to the project by the neighbors who will will have to endure the traffic and freeway signs, but always remember, anything is always better than nothing in northern Castaic.

Ah yes, let's not forget Ralphs. The facade and landscaping of the exterior has no equal, and the strip mall has a cleaners, nail salon, haircut, dentist office, facey clinic, and fast food italian. Then several non leased spaces. These are the same kind of establishments seen in the new West Ranch strip mall. Not! The basket n robbins has been on the market for years, and the quiznos owner spends a lot of time out front his operation. Blockbuster video (this is a keeper) and the Starbuck's owner has another Starbuck's within sight. Washington Mutual (which is actually very nice), and the fast food horror next door.

The Vine: Kragen auto (I hope they have very low overhead), and the extended/alternative education center (much like what you see in north Valencia-oh wait, those are higher learning places), another nail salon (yippee), and second Starbuck's within spitting distance of the other one, and of course, more fast food. Lord knows Castaic needs more fast food places. And still four spaces are not leased.

The new medical center: Well, with a retirement community across the street they were probably thinking the same thing as Walgreen's with their pharmacy. But that's not all, supposedly it will have spaces for other businesses.

But wait, an Arco gas station and other fine establishments are destined for the corner of Parker and Castaic?

I've just got to say, it's nice to see that the entire area of was considered, and an overall well thought out plan developed and executed for the primary benefit of local residents, otherwise individual establishments may have popped up all over and local residents may have ended up with too many of one kind of business, or businesses that fail to focus on the needs and desires of the local community but instead focus on the transient population. And without such a plan it's likely too many lease spaces would have resulted in numerous non leased spaces, which would result in filling the spaces with less desirable businesses. It's a good thing...Not!