Moorpark Council Places Hotel Proposal on Review ‘Fast Track’ : Growth: The city and the Chamber of Commerce agree that Moorpark needs a hotel. The project could be approved within a year.

Moorpark business owners have been talking about getting a hotel for the community for nearly two years, and now officials say the end is in sight.

The wheels were put in motion for Moorpark’s first hotel when the City Council unanimously supported a “fast-track” review for the project, which could be completed in a year.

Until then, businesses must house out-of-town clients and visitors in Thousand Oaks or Simi Valley.

The hotel project, planned for the northeast corner of Spring Road and Flinn Avenue, has not yet come before the Moorpark City Council for a formal public hearing and thus has not yet been approved.

The council, however, has permitted the developer to apply for a conditional-use permit, which would allow the hotel to be built on industrial-zoned property. Because the hotel would benefit industry, a general plan amendment and zone change to commercial use was not considered necessary.

“The council is very anxious that this be expedited,” said Councilwoman Eloise Brown. “We have no hotel in this city . . . It’s essentially something the city lacks that would make it a whole city.”

For large companies such as Litton Systems, which has a division in Moorpark, the proposed hotel would be a welcome addition to the community.

“We have a lot of customers and people we’re constantly training, and we’re always looking for a hotel to put them in,” said Richard Cameron, a company vice president. Litton may house up to 30 people a week in Thousand Oaks or Simi Valley, Cameron said.

“The Chamber of Commerce was very much behind the idea, and each councilperson has received a lot of positive public input,” said Moorpark Mayor Paul Lawrason.

Increased traffic, he conceded, would be a “big consideration,” and the project would have to be “very, very carefully designed.”

Moorpark’s residents as well as its business community would benefit from a new hotel, said Linda Plaks, president of Moorpark’s Chamber of Commerce.

“Residents will have a place to send Aunt Grace when she comes in for Thanksgiving,” she said.

Plaks emphasized that the decision to bring a hotel into Moorpark was not made lightly.

“For the last two years, the Economic Development Committee, which is made up of city officials and Chamber of Commerce members, has been looking for the right kind of complex,” she said. “It’s not like they just came out three months ago and said, ‘Let’s build a hotel here.’ ”

According to Stan Cohen, who represents the Channel Islands Hotel Group, the three-story, 135-unit Country Inn would cost about $8 million to $9 million to build, including a proposed adjoining restaurant.

The hotel and restaurant would be built on half of a 7-acre site purchased about seven months ago by Martin Smith and Associates of Oxnard, the hotel firm’s parent company.

The company also is applying for a permit to build 60 apartments on the remaining 3 1/2 acres, but that project is undergoing a more extensive and lengthy application process.

So far, about $2 million has been invested in the hotel project, including the purchase of the land, Cohen said. The chain of Country Inn hotels caters primarily to business people, with rooms averaging about $69 a night, he said. There are nine Country Inn hotels in Los Angeles, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, including two in Camarillo.