Growth Campaign Sparks Fight : Corridor: The 12-mile stretch along the Ventura Freeway appeals equally to backers of industry and agriculture.

Conservationists are reacting angrily to plans by a developers’ group to mount a massive campaign to lure new industry to farmland in the Oxnard Plain.

The Technology Corridor Assn., which in the past has promoted growth along the Ventura Freeway between Woodland Hills and Thousand Oaks, has targeted a 12-mile stretch between the Conejo Grade and the Santa Clara River for the next development explosion.

The Oxnard Plain is considered by some to be the richest agricultural land in the United States. Its fertile topsoil extends 40 feet deep, according to county agricultural officials.

“That land is a treasure,” said Cynthia Leake, a Camarillo conservation activist. “It’s something we shouldn’t lose to development. Industrial parks they’ve already built are empty. New buildings aren’t needed.”

Technology Corridor leaders disagree.

“We’re not monsters. I’m not coming here with 1,500 tractors to level their neighborhoods. We’re here to enhance the area,” said Joseph Norick, an Oxnard title insurance company official who has been named new president of the 75-company corridor association.

“There’s no question in my mind that people should look at this in a favorable manner.”

Association leaders define the “corridor” as a strip 2 1/2 miles thick on either side of the Ventura Freeway. The area has a growing work force, cheap rents, a lack of traffic congestion 1634624544life that is offered here is phenomenal.”

But environmentalists complain that such a pro-growth effort will destroy that quality of life. They say they shudder at the thought of industrial parks gobbling up more strawberry and broccoli fields.

“We don’t have the water or the clean air or other services to welcome the people they are desperately trying to induce out here. Our schools and other services are already in trouble,” said Leake, conservation chairman of the Los Padres chapter of the Sierra Club and vice president of the Environmental Coalition of Ventura County.

Technology Corridor doesn’t see it that way.

Growth will lead to improved tax bases for both Camarillo and Oxnard, which will result in better roads, police and fire services, and schools, said Mark J. Mattingly, association executive vice president, who is president of the Told Real Estate Corp. of Ventura.

By concentrating new development along the freeway corridor, the Oxnard Plain’s main agricultural land will be preserved, he said. City and county officials already have taken steps to protect farmland located away from the highway, Mattingly said.

That’s true--at least for now, said Earl McPhail, agricultural commissioner for Ventura County.

“It’s preserved as long as we have a 3 to 2 vote. You have to keep it in perspective,” McPhail said.

A three-way agreement between the county and the cities of Oxnard and Camarillo has created a 27,000-acre farmland “greenbelt” between the two cities. As part of the agreement, neither city will attempt to annex the unincorporated agricultural zone.

“If things don’t change, the Oxnard Plain probably has quite a bit of life left,” McPhail said. “The farmland right along the 101 corridor is another question.”

Officials of Camarillo and Oxnard say they value the greenbelt open space.

Oxnard leaders have deannexed about 4,000 acres of the city over the past several years to add to the greenbelt, said Richard Maggio, the city’s Community Development director.

“Development is a two-edged sword,” Maggio said. “There is benefit in terms of the tax base and jobs. But if they look lustfully at the greenbelt area, we tell them to go away. They can look all they want, but they can’t touch.”

Camarillo leaders are equally protective of their country lifestyle, said Bob Burrow, a senior city planner who has helped plot his town’s growth for 13 years.

Half of his city’s 14 written community goals include references to the protection of open space and the community’s rural ambience, he said.

Although Burrow said the goals have not been placed in any priority, the first one on the city list calls upon officials to “retain sufficient influencing power to plan and preserve watershed, open space and conservation areas and prime agricultural soils in the Oxnard Plain.”

“People here tend to look toward preservation of the rural atmosphere,” Burrow said. “It would be very objectionable to them if everything along 101 were to be developed to the Technology Corridor plan.”

Technology Corridor leaders say their group is being favorably received in Camarillo and Oxnard, however.

“I’ve had a number of people call and say, ‘Hey, this is great,’ ” said Norick, head of North American Title Co. for Ventura County.

But the development group has rankled some in communities on the east side of the Conejo Grade.

Agoura Hills leaders complained in 1986 when the association began marketing the area in press releases as “Technology Corridor, Calif.”

“Where do they get the authority to change geographical names,” demanded Jack Koenig, then an Agoura Hills city councilman.

“It’s not enough that they level our hills and cut our trees for their buildings. They want to rename us. This has got to be the most presumptuous group of people I’ve ever seen.”

The latest association press release--the one announcing the group’s expansion to Camarillo and Oxnard--was likewise datelined “Technology Corridor, Calif.”

It explained that the organization is “committed to preserving the quality of life along the Ventura Freeway by encouraging controlled, clean-air business development and growth.”

That doesn’t mean that the association is prepared to blackball any smokestack company seeking to relocate to the Oxnard Plain, however.

“We don’t make laws,” Mattingly said.

While it will be up to Oxnard and Camarillo to keep offensive companies out of their city limits through the application of zoning laws, Mattingly said he doesn’t anticipate any polluters trying to come to Ventura County.

“Developers today are much more attuned to the environment,” he said.