MOORPARK : Neighbors Protest Levy Co. Proposal

About 50 Moorpark residents turned out Saturday morning for the City Council’s last public hearing on a set of proposals to double the number of homes in the city over the next 20 years.

The City Council is considering annexing up to 6.3 square miles of mostly vacant land where developers have proposed to build 5,500 homes.

In addition, city officials are reviewing several developers’ proposals to construct about 4,000 homes in the existing city boundaries.

Comments at Saturday’s hearing focused on a proposal by the Levy Co. to build 831 homes on a 285-acre hillside site just west of downtown.

The property, now mostly vacant and used for grazing, is within the city limits.

About a dozen residents of the rural Gabbert Canyon area that forms the western border of the Levy property protested the proposed density of the development.

They also expressed concern about a proposed California 118 bypass that would cut through the Levy site.

The bypass, which city officials hope would alleviate truck traffic through the center of town, would come within several hundred feet of some residents’ properties.

Gabbert Canyon resident Mary Kairouz said she has always expected development on the site, but that “800 homes is just too much.”

Kairouz and other residents asked city officials to put the proposed highway bypass in the hills just north of the city.

If city officials approve putting the highway on the Levy property, the company will donate some of the land for the new road.

Levy also proposes to donate 13 acres for a downtown park and to set aside some of the homes it would build as affordable housing, company spokesman Dennis Hardgrave has said previously.