City Offers Concessions in Effort to Keep Kavlico : Moorpark: Officials will speed approval for plant expansion. The major employer says it would have relocated otherwise.

After threatening to leave the area, Moorpark’s largest employer has won concessions from the city in a bid to nearly double the size of its manufacturing plant and add 300 new employees.

In negotiations over the past two weeks, Kavlico Corp. officials said they would be forced to relocate if the city did not quickly process its application to expand so it could hire the workers needed to fulfill a new manufacturing contract.

The company, which now has roughly 800 employees, makes electronic sensors for the automotive and aerospace industries and is one of the largest 20 employers in Ventura County.

Moorpark’s effort to retain Kavlico is just one example of a trend on the part of local officials to accommodate existing industries and lure others by making it easier for them to do business.

“There are very few places in Southern California and certainly Ventura County where governments find they have money to give businesses and say, ‘Here’s a carrot, so stay,’ ” said county Supervisor Maggie Kildee. “But in Ventura County, cities are meeting with businesses and working out their problems and, indeed, they are staying.”

Jim Aguilera, Moorpark’s director of community development, has met with Kavlico representatives three times to discuss how the city could speed processing of an application to expand the firm’s current 100,000-square-foot plant by an additional 94,000 square feet.

“They just landed a contract that requires more facilities and more workers,” Aguilera said Friday. “They have to expand. Whether they do it in Moorpark or somewhere else depends on who can meet their deadlines, and we can.”

Aguilera said Kavlico needed the new building up and running by September, 1993, to service the contract and would have left if the city could not meet that deadline.

Kavlico is scheduled to apply for the major modification to its plant on Dec. 21 and the matter will go before the city Planning Commission in January, Aguilera said, the fastest turnaround time for any such application in recent memory.

Bruce Tackman, Kavlico’s chief financial officer, declined comment on the expansion Friday. But Tackman did discuss the firm’s plans at a meeting of the county’s Council on Economic Vitality on Wednesday.

“He was giving this to us as an example of someone who had opportunities to move to sites in other states and who had done some research and found the city of Moorpark accommodating and decided to stay,” said Marshall Milligan, president of the Bank of A. Levy and a co-chairman of the advisory council with Kildee.

“My impression is that the accommodating attitude is what made a lot of difference,” Milligan said.

Litton Aero Products, a Los Angeles-based defense contractor that had been Moorpark’s largest employer, announced in March that it was closing its Moorpark plant and will move all operations out of the city this month.

Moorpark Mayor Paul Lawrason said the city did not want to lose another major employer in Kavlico.

“We will do everything we can to make sure (the application) moves along quickly,” Lawrason said Friday. “Considering the economic situation right now, we need all of the businesses that are in the city at the present time to remain. The retention of businesses is a very important focus for us right now.”

Lawrason said the city would not overlook flaws in the application in an attempt to make Kavlico happy.

“I would not rush it through and wind up missing something or not doing it right,” Lawrason said. “I would not tolerate us not doing a good job on it. There is a limit here in terms of fast-tracking it.”