Battle of Calleguas Creek : Camarillo: Residents plan to fight a proposed mobile home park and flood control project. They say their views will be destroyed.

Camarillo residents living near Calleguas Creek say they like hearing coyotes howl at night and watching road runners scamper through the brush.

But they are afraid that plans to build a mobile home park and a flood control project along the creek will kill these simple pleasures--along with the view that cost them premium prices.

“The reason we came to this area is the view, and it’s going to be taken away from us,” said Laine Alves, whose back yard overlooks the creek.

Pardee Construction officials have told residents that they intend to spend up to $10 million to improve the creek, and then build a park for about 300 mobile homes on the east side of the waterway.

Pardee must complete the creek work before it can develop the nearly 350 acres it owns in and around the channel between Upland Road and the Ventura Freeway, city planners said.

More than 310 homes, a park, a sheriff’s substation and some office buildings have been planned for about 276 acres on the west side of the creek, said Ted Cullen, a Pardee senior vice president.

Pardee and Ventura County Flood Control District officials will discuss the company’s flood control plan with Camarillo City Council members and planning staff at a study session tonight at 5:30 p.m. in City Hall.

When residents learned of Pardee’s latest plans, “everybody was just stunned,” said Camarillo resident Lynn Abel, whose back yard looks down on the dry, sandy-bottomed creek that snakes around a lemon grove.

Abel said he and other Camarillo residents are mobilizing to oppose Pardee’s efforts. When they bought their Pardee-built homes a couple of years ago, the sales agents made no mention of the proposed mobile home park, he said.

Defending the company’s actions, Cullen said company policy dictates that sales agents “are not supposed to explain to the buyers what future land uses are going to be on vacant properties. . . . Until there’s finally an approved plan by the city, nobody can tell what exactly is going to be built there.”

In fact, Alves said, her sales agent said the east side of the creek probably would not be developed because of the possibility of flooding.

“We feel cheated,” Alves said.

Pardee officials announced in a newsletter that they mailed to residents living near the creek that a new mobile home park appears to be the company’s only alternative to building single-family houses.

The City Council rejected the single-family house proposal last year, because it would have required a zoning change. The parcel is zoned for a mobile home park.

Tony Boden, Camarillo’s planning director, said Pardee’s proposed park stands a good chance of being approved. “There would have to be some pretty good reasons why it would be turned down,” he said.

Because of restrictions in the city’s growth ordinance, Pardee can’t file a conditional use permit application for the park until August. Cullen said Pardee plans to do so at that time.

Cathy Brown, wildlife biologist for the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said the creek area supports species that are growing rarer in the county, such as birds of prey and pond turtles. She said her agency is interested in preserving this wildlife habitat and will review the flood control permit application that Pardee must submit to the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Construction Projects Pardee Construction proposes to do flood control work in Calleguas Creek in Camarillo. The company also wants to build a park for about 300 mobile homes on the east side of the creek.