Oxnard Will Add 60,000 Residents, Group Predicts

Oxnard will grow by 10 square miles and about 60,000 residents by the year 2020, according to a report released this week by a citizens group at work on a blueprint for Oxnard’s future.

The city will stretch to Ormond Beach on the south and as far east as Victoria Avenue, nearly half a mile past its existing eastern boundary, the final draft of the group’s update on the city’s General Plan projected.

The report, which culminates nearly two years of work by the 22-member General Plan Advisory Committee, also recommends converting three square miles of agricultural lands to urban uses and changing the zoning on much of Oxnard’s undeveloped area from residential to commercial. The amount of land zoned for open space, which could be devoted to parks or farming, would be boosted to 1,099 acres or nearly two square miles.

Negative effects of growth would be held in check by more stringent growth-management policies, which would bar development unless the roads and schools in the area could support it. The approach also requires developers to build in established neighborhoods before breaking ground in less-populated areas.

The plan, which is expected to be adopted at a May 25 meeting of the committee, is aimed at allowing more Oxnard residents to work and shop within the city, thus increasing the city’s tax base, committee Chairman Ralph Schumacher said.

“GPAC made a commitment to jobs for Oxnard’s residents,” he said. “To do that, more jobs had to be created.”

The committee envisions Oxnard’s population growing from about 125,000 today to 184,197 in 2020. The number of homes that could be built on property zoned for residential uses would drop from 11,596, under the city’s present General Plan, to 6,447. Property zoned for commercial and industrial purposes would climb from 3,624 acres to 5,148 acres.

According to the committee document, much of Oxnard’s growth would be centered at Ormond Beach, where an Orange County developer has proposed a marina-based residential and commercial community.

Baldwin Co. of Irvine had hoped to develop 2,900 acres of Ormond Beach, but the committee has recommended that no more than 900 acres be developed.

Recommendations

GPAC recommends converting nearly a square mile of agricultural property on the northwest end of the city to residential uses, with land set aside for a high school, an elementary school and a junior high school.

The property was offered to California State University two years ago by a Somis developer as a site for a Ventura County campus. The developer, David White, has since offered to donate a site for a high school in exchange for development concessions.

“GPAC took this into consideration when we decided to move the urban limits line,” Schumacher said.

GPAC’s proposal would also open up agricultural land north of La Colonia for residential development and three school sites, in keeping with a request by trustees of the Oxnard School District, said Richard Maggio, Oxnard’s community development director.

But the document, which will be considered by the Oxnard Planning Commission and the City Council in coming months, drew criticism from several quarters.

Scott Bollinger, a GPAC alternate who has long advocated strict limits on growth, said the proposed plan’s protections can too easily be ignored by city officials.

“If the council were to honor the Growth Management Element, you’ve got something that would work,” he said. “But I have serious doubts that the council would honor it. The pressures for growth have always been there and they’re becoming more intense.”

Bollinger also questioned the document’s population projections, which he said failed to take into account population growth due to immigration because it was based only on anticipated new housing.

Meanwhile, Oscar Karrin, another GPAC alternate and an advocate of affordable housing, criticized the plan for sidestepping the issue of affordable housing.

“Nobody can afford to live here as it is,” he said. “Businesses are already subsidizing housing for their workers.”

An environmental impact report released with committee’s recommendations raised several other concerns.

The report predicted that growth would deplete aquifers, increasing the risk of their contamination by seawater.

The report also predicted a loss of $10 million in agricultural revenue as a result of the proposed conversion of three square miles of agricultural land to urban uses. But it also noted that the losses could be offset by businesses moving in.

In addition, the development planned for Ormond Beach would damage much of the area’s most productive wetlands, the impact report said. While Baldwin plans to protect 50 acres of wetlands, only three acres have been designated as highly productive by biologists. The development, meanwhile, would impact 110 acres of wetlands that have been designated highly productive.