Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : Santa Clarita Moves City Hall Offices to New Site : Government: A building in Saugus becomes the temporary administrative center while the badly damaged civic structure is repaired.

SANTA CLARITA —  After operating out of tents and trailers in the parking lot of its quake-hammered headquarters for more than two weeks, the city of Santa Clarita on Monday began moving its offices to a temporary site in Saugus.

Beginning today, a building owned by Cytec Engineered Materials Inc., 21444 Golden Triangle Road, will serve as the city’s administrative center while repairs are made to City Hall, which suffered about $4 million in damages in the Jan. 17 temblor.

Repairs to the City Hall building at 23920 Valencia Blvd. are expected to take three months, and will include shoring up and seismically reinforcing the structure.

Lease terms are not yet complete for the city’s temporary home, said Cytec plant manager Joe Sadera, but the city will pay only operational costs for the use of the building.

“We have a vacant building and the city needs a place to stay, so we’re going to help them out,” Sadera said.

City Finance Director Steve Stark said the new building was selected in part because it is large enough to house all city services.

“This way we can broadcast to the citizens, ‘City Hall is now HERE,’ instead of having things spread out all over the place.”

Although Stark said he will be relieved to move to more permanent quarters, he was surprised at how smoothly the city was able to operate under adverse conditions.

“It’s remarkable how well we’ve done outdoors,” Stark said. “This tent has gone through an evolution from emergency response to disaster recovery.” He said some recovery services--such as building inspection requests--would continue to be offered from the City Hall parking lot for at least the next week.

“As long as there’s a need, we’ll be out here.”

Meanwhile, a second disaster assistance center opened Monday at the Saugus train station in Hart Park. Before then, residents of the Santa Clarita Valley in need of earthquake relief services had to go to Canyon Country Park in the city’s northeastern corner.