"I think about just how devastating this is to our businesses on Main Street," Carrie Lujan, the City of Santa Clarita's communications manager, said the morning after fire tore through the heart of Old Town Newhall. "Newhall Refinery is one of the most popular restaurants in town. The message I want to get out is how important our local businesses are, especially these unique-to-Santa Clarita ones."
That was August 24. Two weeks later, the block is still fenced off in places, the investigation into what started the fire is still open, and the businesses that anchored a decade and a half of Main Street's slow reinvention are gone. But something else happened this month that most residents haven't connected yet: the city didn't cancel the September block party. It made it bigger, and it moved it specifically to route foot traffic past the businesses trying to survive next door to the wreckage.
What's Actually Gone, And What Isn't
The fire started just before 3 a.m. at Gary's Auto Collision Center on the 24000 block of North Main Street. Fire crews escalated it to a second alarm at 3:07 a.m. and a third by 4:42 a.m. as it spread down the row. By the time it was out, the addresses between roughly 24254 and 24274 Main Street, plus a building on Railroad Avenue behind the block, had been reduced to rubble. Fire officials from Los Angeles County put the response at 112 firefighters and 58 pieces of apparatus. No injuries were reported.
The businesses lost include Newhall Refinery, The MAIN performing arts theatre, Care Tucker Style House, Source Inc., and the space that once held El Trocadero Mexican restaurant, on top of the auto shop where the fire started. The building itself was more than a hundred years old.
Two structures on that block survived largely untouched: the Canyon Theatre Guild, built in a Western Victorian style in 2000, and the former Newhall Sheriff's Substation No. 6, a 1926 building the Guild now uses as its business office. The Guild has already been cleared to continue its workshops and productions. Everything else on that stretch is gone.
The Restaurant That Poured The Last Round
Here's the detail that hasn't made it into most of the coverage. SENSES, the city's monthly Main Street block party, rotates its on-street bar sponsor every third Thursday. On August 20, four days before the fire, that sponsor was Newhall Refinery. The theme that night was "Time Machine." The restaurant that had spent thirteen years pouring drinks at the party literally on the sidewalk in front of its own door was gone within the week.
Newhall Refinery had been open since May 2013, one of the first new businesses to open as the city pushed to turn Old Town Newhall into an arts and entertainment district. Its owners, Christine Munoz and Raphael Gonzalez, called it their first business together. "It was our baby," Munoz said. "Something like this is just, you don't think, you could never imagine." A GoFundMe for the restaurant's staff, who are now without a workplace, has raised thousands of dollars.
A few doors down, Care Tucker Style House, the boutique run by Care and Johnny Tucker, took similar damage. "This is a historical building that can't be replaced the same way," Johnny Tucker said, "so it's just tragedy in so many ways." A separate fundraiser is running for the Tucker family.
Why The City Expanded The Party Instead Of Pausing It
The obvious move after a fire like this is to quiet things down. Santa Clarita did the opposite. In a blog post published September 5, the city confirmed that SENSES returns to Main Street on September 17 with an Oktoberfest theme, and that this month it's expanding.
"This month, the City is partnering with the Old Town Newhall Association to expand SENSES an additional block to the south and incorporate activities supporting fire recovery efforts," the post read.
That's the mechanism worth understanding if you live here. SENSES was built as a nightlife draw, live music and a rotating on-street bar pulling people to Main Street on a Thursday night. By stretching it a block south this month, the city is using the same event to walk that same foot traffic past the businesses adjacent to the fenced-off site, the ones that survived the fire but are now sitting next to an empty lot instead of a busy strip. The on-street bar sponsor for September 17 is The Old Town Junction, one block over from where Newhall Refinery used to stand.
Councilmember Bill Miranda put the intent bluntly at the city council meeting two days after the fire. "When I say they were devastated, when I say they were impacted, they don't exist anymore. They're gone," he said. "We're going to do everything we can, everything possible, everything within the law, to fix Santa Clarita, to fix Main Street." He also told displaced performers the city would find them a stage. "For all performers, including you young ones that are here today, if you want a stage to perform, let us know. We will provide a stage for you."
That promise matters more than it sounds like it should. The MAIN was mid-run on a local production called "You Got Older" when the fire hit, a show built, designed, and staged by local artists with nowhere left to perform it. An art exhibit by Jane Mick, showing inside The MAIN, burned with the building. "We're over 20,000," Mick said of her losses. "It's years of working on your art."
What Still Runs On Schedule
Not everything on Main Street's calendar depended on the block that burned. Here's what's holding steady this fall and what's been displaced.
| Ritual | Status this fall |
|---|---|
| Saturday Farmers Market, Old Town Newhall Library | Running as usual, 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., year-round |
| Canyon Theatre Guild productions | Continuing, building cleared with only minor damage |
| SENSES Block Party, third Thursday | Returns September 17 as Oktoberfest, expanded one block south |
| City Cinemas outdoor movie nights | Continuing through the fourth Friday of September at rotating parks |
| The MAIN's 10 by 10 Variety Show | Displaced, city has pledged to help find an alternate venue |
| Newhall Refinery dining | Closed, owners say they intend to rebuild |
| Care Tucker Style House | Closed, family fundraiser active while they determine next steps |
The pattern is worth sitting with. The things tied to a physical address on that specific block are gone or paused. The things tied to a broader footprint, the farmers market at the library, the Guild's stage, the movie nights that rotate parks, kept running without interruption.
What This Means If You're Actually Walking Main Street This Month
The fenced perimeter around the burned stretch is still up while the investigation into the fire's cause continues, and that part of the block isn't accessible. But the rest of Main Street never closed, and the city's message this month has been direct: show up, spend money, walk the block. Supervisor Kathryn Barger framed it as a fabric issue, not just a property one. "These are small businesses that are part of the fabric of this community," she said, "and for some owners, years of hard work and livelihoods were destroyed in a matter of hours."
If you've lived in Newhall long enough to have a regular order at Newhall Refinery or a favorite rack at Care Tucker Style House, the honest version of this story isn't that Main Street is closed. It's that the street rearranged itself in two weeks, and the businesses now catching the foot traffic that used to stop at the Refinery's door are the ones one block over, inside the expanded SENSES footprint. That's where Main Street's center of gravity sits for the moment, at least until the fenced lot has an answer.
For everyone who calls Newhall home, September 17 is as good a night as any to see it for yourself.
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