Moorpark OKs Disputed 2,500-Unit Development

The Moorpark City Council Monday night gave a developer unanimous permission to finish a 2,500-unit housing project, requiring the developer, in return, to pay $7 million for public roads, parks and school sites.

The project has been opposed by the Committee for Managed Growth, which is spearheading a November ballot initiative to cut housing growth in the Ventura County city to 250 units annually, about half the rate of development in recent years.

But speakers before the council, many of them residents of the development, overwhelmingly supported the city’s agreement with Urban West Communities, a Santa Monica-based developer. The agreement excludes the company’s Mountain Meadows project from terms of future growth-control ordinances.

Homes Already Occupied

About 500 single-family homes are already occupied in the planned community, situated on 848 acres about two miles west of the Moorpark Freeway and south of Los Angeles Avenue. Building permits have been issued for construction of another 200 units this year, according to Tom Zanic, Urban West’s director of community development.

Slow-growth activists charge that the council is trying to thwart the initiative by giving Urban West a guarantee that it can complete the development--the largest ever in the city of 15,500--without further conditions. However, only one member of the Committee for Managed Growth appeared before the council to object to the agreement with the developer.

The agreement would allow Urban West to build as many as 325 units a year over 12 years, as long as the total does not exceed 2,500. The council still must adopt the agreement in ordinance form, but that is considered a formality.

“We’ve been fine-tuning this since 1981,” Councilman Danny Woolard said.

Before the council meeting, the citizens’ committee’s president, Bob Crockford, complained, “It’s an obvious attempt to circumvent the initiative.”

To block the agreement with the developer, he said, the group is considering suing the council or leading a petition drive to place the Urban West agreement before voters in a November referendum.

Crockford’s group would need to collect 610 signatures--10% of the city’s registered voters--to force a referendum.

City Council members said their approval of what is called a developer agreement--the city’s first--was not timed to undercut the growth-curbing initiative, but rather to lock Urban West into paying for the long list of public improvements. Urban West would be required to make the contributions regardless of any delays in construction.

‘Good Planning Tool’

“It’s a good deal for the city,” said Mayor James D. Weak, who helped negotiate the contract. “We’ve got a very good planning tool here.”

The agreement calls on Urban West to build a four-lane bridge over the Arroyo Simi on Tierra Rejada Road, and to make improvements to several other area streets. Urban West would also donate a 50-acre site for a new high school and two 10-acre sites for elementary schools, build three eight-acre neighborhood parks and contribute $1.4 million to develop recreational facilities at a 69-acre city park within the development.

First Approval

Mountain Meadows was first approved by the Ventura County Board of Supervisors in 1981 when Moorpark was unincorporated. Discussions on a developer contract with Urban West began in 1984, one year after incorporation.

Crockford said his group believes that the contract is illegal because it fails to acknowledge the pending initiative vote or promise to abide by terms of the initiative if it is adopted.

City Atty. Cheryl J. Kane has told the council that the relationship between developer agreements and growth-control ordinances has not been tested under state law.