Proposal for Happy Camp Theme Park Raises Concern : Moorpark: Officials warn of effects on the environment and business. But it could raise $500,000 a year for the county.

Nestled in the hills north of Moorpark, Happy Camp Canyon Regional Park’s 3,700 acres of oak and sycamore-shaded canyons appeal only to those who like hiking, riding horses or mountain biking.

But under a proposal approved in concept by county supervisors, the southern 700 acres of the park’s rolling canyons may soon be transformed into a vast 1800s-style theme park complete with water rides, a 450-room hotel and a campground of air-conditioned tepees.

To county officials, the proposal by Encino developer QuorResorts Inc. promises to bring in $500,000 a year to maintain Happy Camp’s northern 3,000 acres as a wilderness preserve and help subsidize the maintenance of other county parks.

To QuorResorts owner Bill Norred, the idea represents the wave of the future: planned recreation areas close to big cities that will attract the increasingly harried and cost-conscious American workers who want to take short vacations near home.

Yet the proposed development has garnered considerable opposition from neighbors and Moorpark city officials.

“We don’t need Disneyland in Moorpark,” City Councilman John Wozniak said.

City Council members said they worry that the development would harm adjacent wilderness areas and generate traffic that would overwhelm the narrow residential streets leading to the park.

And they are concerned the shops and restaurants in the proposed resort’s Victorian-style village would steal business from struggling shopkeepers in downtown Moorpark.

Located just outside the city boundaries, the resort could lay these burdens on Moorpark without putting any money into city coffers, council members said.

Originally part of the sprawling Strathearn Ranch, Happy Camp got its name from a local family who periodically camped and raised bees at a site near the middle of the park, county parks officials said. The family called its campsite Happy Camp, and the name stuck.

The Strathearn family turned the land over to the state in the 1960s, and in 1983 the state swapped the park to Ventura County in exchange for Mandalay Beach.

But the county had no money to open the park to the public and for seven years, Happy Camp’s only visitors were trespassing dirt-bike riders whose motorcycles tore up the trails and grasslands.

In 1990, the county and the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy formed a joint agency called the Eastern Ventura County Conservation Authority to allow the conservancy to manage the park.

Besides successfully keeping out dirt-bike riders, the conservancy has opened Happy Camp during daylight to hikers, mountain bikers, horseback riders and occasional groups of schoolchildren on field trips.

About 250 people now use the park each week, mostly on weekends, conservancy officials said.

County officials, however, have long had bigger plans for Happy Camp, making it clear from the outset that the conservancy’s management of the park was only temporary.

In 1987, three years before teaming up with the conservancy, parks officials drew up a plan for converting the park’s lower canyons into a theme resort.

The idea was to open a recreation area serving county residents while also generating revenues to maintain Happy Camp’s upper 3,000 acres as a wilderness preserve for the mountain lions, red-tail hawks and other rare or endangered species inhabiting the area.

After soliciting bids from resort developers around the world, only one prospective builder came forward: Norred’s QuorResorts Inc.

Resort building is a second career for Norred, 52, who launched Quor with money from selling his share in a Simi Valley-based computer firm that he founded--Micro Systems Inc.

Although he is new to the theme park business, Norred had a vision of a Happy Camp resort that would be bigger, denser and more profitable than the county’s initial design.

Despite the grander scale of Norred’s proposal, the county Board of Supervisors accepted his bid to develop the park.

And in 1988, the board signed a contract giving Quor the right to lease Happy Camp and build the theme park on the condition that the company could satisfy concerns about traffic, protection of rare or endangered species and other environmental issues.

Quor released its initial environmental study last month and is now preparing a full-scale environmental impact report that is expected to take a year to complete. The theme park proposal is scheduled to go before county supervisors for final approval in 1994.

County supervisors could reject Norred’s plan if they find that the resort would cause unsolvable traffic problems or irreparable environmental damage, said Blake Boyle, manager of the county’s Recreation Services Department.

But Boyle also acknowledged that the Quor master plan is “substantially the same” as the proposal that the board contracted with the company to build.

Norred said he hopes QuorResort-Ventura would be the first of many such theme parks around the country.

Market research shows, Norred said, that three-quarters of Americans disdain tent camping. “They like the outdoors but they don’t want to have to put up with the inconveniences.”

At QuorResort-Ventura, visitors who wanted to rough it could bypass the hotel for a campground of mining cabins, deluxe log lodges or air-conditioned tepees that would each be furnished with two queen-size beds--all available for $60 to $200 per night, per person.

The resort would also offer horseback riding, tennis courts, live entertainment at an outdoor amphitheater and a man-made fishing pond in addition to a water park, golf course, shops and restaurants.

“It would provide the necessary. . .escape from reality” that vacationers seek, Norred said.

Assuming the theme park would draw thousands of visitors each week, QuorResort-Ventura would bring in annual revenues of $10 million or more, of which 5% or $500,000 would go to the county as a lease payment on the land, Norred said.

Even if revenues fall short of Norred’s expectations, the county would get a minimum rent ranging from $36,000 in the first year of the resort’s operation to $200,000 in its fourth year and thereafter.

“If he only sells one Popsicle stick out there, he’d still pay the minimum rent,” county recreation Manger Boyle said.

Quor has an option to lease the entire park and has proposed charging visitors to enter the wilderness preserve, an idea that infuriated Moorpark officials and local environmentalists.

But Boyle said county officials intend to keep the park’s northern terrain free of charge to the public, possibly by having the county retain control over the land or handing its management to the conservancy.

Nevertheless, Moorpark officials and environmentalists said county officials are going too far in their proposal for Happy Camp’s lower 700 acres.

“I’m worried that, in their efforts to provide funding to keep the park open, they will do so much in the lower canyon they will inadvertently and unintentionally threaten the wilderness preserve,” said Roseann Mikos, a member of the Ventura County Environmental Coalition. Her back yard sits adjacent to the site proposed for the resort’s golf course.

Mikos said automobile traffic, noise and glare from artificial lighting in the resort could disturb the wild animals living to the north.

Environmentalists also said they are concerned about rare plant and animal species in the lower canyon where the theme park would be built.

Happy Camp Canyon is one of the few undeveloped canyons at the mouth of the Santa Susana Mountains that has a rare plant called the alluvial fan scrub. The plant clumps, found only at the mouth of canyons in the area, flourish on the site of the proposed theme park, Mikos said.

In addition, Paul Edelman, staff biologist for the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy said the resort could destroy the habitats of the rare predatory birds such as owls and hawks that live in the lower canyon.

Besides such environmental concerns, Moorpark City Councilman Bernardo M. Perez said he is worried that county officials’ quest for dollars is leading them to go beyond their proper role in managing public parks.

“It’s one thing for the county to administer lands,” Perez said. “It’s another thing for the county to get into the resort business and subsidize a private developer.”

But Boyle said such a public-private venture is nothing new for the county.

For 27 years, the county has owned Channel Islands Harbor, which it leases to 25 marinas, hotels, restaurants and other businesses.

The harbor generates $3 million in annual revenues for the county, making up half of the entire budget for the parks and recreation department, with the other half of the department’s budget coming from camping fees and other charges at county-owned parks.

“We’re the only county in the state that doesn’t receive one cent of property tax revenue” for running parks and recreation services, Boyle said.

And Rorie Skei, a Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy program manager, said the conservancy accepts that some type of planned recreation area will be built in Happy Camp’s lower canyon.

She said if the resort is not too big and is designed to minimize environmental damage, it could comfortably coexist with the park’s wilderness preserve.

Under those conditions, visitors who like to visit the outdoors only in the controlled environment of a resort could comfortably share Happy Camp park with those who prefer nature untamed.

“It is a big park,” Skei said. “There is a lot of room.”