Pleasure Faire May Move to Site Near Simi

A Renaissance Pleasure Faire official said Thursday that an agreement has been worked out with Big Sky Ranch Co. to rent 100 acres of the ranch for this year’s festival.

But Ventura County must approve a permit for use of the property and will not do so unless organizers of the annual fair can prove that the site on Tapo Canyon Road north of Simi Valley is accessible by car, fair spokesman Kevin Patterson said.

Organizers have been looking for a place to hold the event since April, when the Los Angeles County Regional Planning Commission approved a developer’s request to build a gated community on the fair’s longtime site in Agoura.

If fair-goers are allowed to use Tapo Canyon Road, the only paved road to the property, then P.W. Gillibrand Co., a gravel and asphalt firm that mines a rock quarry on the same road, might be adversely affected, county planner Paul Porter said. The company’s trucks make about 500 round trips daily on the road, he said.

Phillip Gillibrand, owner of the company, said he does not want to share Tapo Canyon Road on eight consecutive weekends this summer with fair-goers because the additional traffic would delay his trucks. He said he met with fair organizers in late December.

“They offered to pay me, but I don’t want part of their income,” Gillibrand said. “If they apply for a permit, we would complain” to the Ventura County Planning Commission.

Porter declined to comment on the merits of the proposed site because no plans have been submitted.

Glen Gessford, vice president of Big Sky Ranch Co., said fair organizers are considering building a private road on the 9,400-acre ranch. The road would be just north of Walnut Street and would lead to the northeast portion of the ranch, where the fair would be held, he said.

Patterson said fair officials are considering other sites in eastern Ventura County but declined to name them.