Antelope Valley gets industrious.

A huge development boom is underway in the Antelope Valley, with nearly 1 million square feet of industrial property in varying stages of construction in Lancaster alone and thousands more in earlier planning stages in Palmdale.

Developers who have never considered the area before,

Although their enthusiasm is tempered by the fragile history of the area and its building busts, these developers say the dynamics in play in the Antelope Valley now are different enough and sufficiently promising to warrant the investment.

"If you look at Southern California, the basin is really getting full, so everything has to go either north or east," said Greg St. Clair, executive vice president for Larwin Investment Co., which is developing 225,000 square feet of industrial property on 16 acres in Fox Field Business Park, a new industrial complex bordered by Barnes Avenue, 47th Street West and Avenue G in Lancaster, the first industrial venture into the area for the developer. "We're beginning to see the push now into Lancaster. There's a great employment base, there's a lot of positive attitudes toward growth and then there's enterprise zones that really assist small manufacturing firms."

Some of the development is coming from owner-users like Valencia-based Regent Aerospace, which has contracted for a 75,000-square-foot build-to-suit in Fox Field and Delta Scientific Corp., which just opened a new facility built for the company in Palmdale.

But for the first time in decades, developers are also budding "on spec" in Antelope Valley, meaning they have no specific tenants ready to occupy their buildings.

Among the developments underway in addition to Larwin:

* Culver City-based UDC Properties Inc. is constructing four buildings totaling 66,000 square feet on six acres in Lancaster Business Park at Avenue K-8 and 5th Street East and will begin work on another eight acres next year.

* Cambridge Development Group LLC in Encino is building 93,000 square feet of industrial properties in Lancaster Business Park.

* Frank Visco, a local Antelope Valley developer who recently completed a project for Countrywide Financial Corp., is acquiring 32 acres of land in Fox Field Business Park.