NEWBURY PARK : Violations Force Closure of Factory

A Newbury Park furniture manufacturing company is being forced to close its doors next month after operating for 13 years in a building not zoned for such industry, said Roberto R. Orellana, assistant county counsel.

The Coleman of California Co. has pleaded no contest to five fire-code violations and one building-code violation, resulting in fines of about $2,800, Orellana said. The company has agreed to close down by April 15, and charges of other building-code violations have been dropped.

The building is zoned by the county for light industrial use, the company’s attorney, Clay Clabaugh Jr., said.

The type of work that the company does includes sawing wood and upholstering furniture, which is considered to be heavier manufacturing and must take place in a building zoned differently, Orellana said.

But the furniture company, which employed 32 people, had no idea that their factory was located in an improperly zoned building, Clabaugh said. The factory was leased from Told Property Management Services of Oxnard, and Coleman specifically outlined the type of manufacturing that they were going to do when they entered into the lease, Clabaugh said.

The building was inspected periodically by building and fire officials, but until last year, apparently none of the inspectors noticed the zoning violation, Clabaugh said.

“This is a case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing,” Clabaugh said.

The company could have applied for a county zoning change, or for annexation into the city of Thousand Oaks, which would also have resulted in a zone change.

But those options would have taken at least a year, Clabaugh said.