CALIFORNIA ALBUM : Downtown Revival Seen as Key to Uniting Moorpark : Population boom, changing racial demographics transform a once-sleepy town.

Every weekday morning in the city of Moorpark, the same scene plays itself out along High Street in the heart of downtown.

Predominantly white, upper middle-class workers board Metrolink trains bound for air-conditioned offices in Los Angeles, while only a short distance away Latino day laborers stand outside the Tipsy Fox market hoping that someone will drive by and offer them a day’s pay.

The dichotomy speaks volumes about life in this city of 26,000, Ventura County’s youngest and, based upon the median income of its residents, most affluent.

Not long ago, Moorpark was nearly the exclusive domain of orchards and migrant farm workers. But the town came of age in the 1980s, when a construction boom dotted its hills with homes that sold for up to $500,000, attracting thousands of new suburban dwellers.

The city was incorporated in 1983 and, said Mayor Paul Lawrason, is only now beginning to come to terms with its past and its future.

“I think we are safely out of the infancy stage,” Lawrason said. “We’ve addressed a lot of very major issues in the city and put many of them to rest, and I think now we’re moving along with a much better vision of what we see in the future.”

If Moorpark has had trouble envisioning its future it may be because, until recently, sudden and rapid growth made it nearly impossible to track its present.

Census figures show that in 1980 the area that would later become the city was home to 8,724 people, 5,478 of them white and 2,941 Latino. By 1990, the population had soared to 25,494, with whites outnumbering Latinos more than 3 to 1, 17,745 to 5,613.

“It was almost idyllic when I first moved to Moorpark, because the demographics were so evenly split,” said Councilman Bernardo Perez, who moved to the city in 1970 and is the council’s only Latino. “As the town has grown so quickly and the demographics have changed so dramatically, that has caused the stresses in this relationship here and that’s only natural. It’s our challenge as a community to get through those stresses and I believe that, largely, we’ve been able to do that.”

The “stresses” have led some white residents to avoid the older, downtown area, which remains a Latino stronghold. Although police say Moorpark has one of the lowest crime rates in the nation, its relatively small gang population is centered in the downtown area.

Newer residents of downtown complain that some of the city’s older homes are overcrowded and unsightly. The council has tried various ways to crack down on overcrowding, but acknowledges that the problem still exists.

“I had a conversation on the train the other day with someone not too new to Moorpark whose perception of downtown was of an area of another class of people who didn’t care about their property,” said Perez, who works in Los Angeles. “Basically, an area in decline.”

City officials are trying to change those perceptions and unite residents by reviving the town’s sleepy downtown, which is centered along a pepper tree-lined stretch of High Street that remains picturesque despite years of neglect.

A city redevelopment agency formed in 1989 finally came on-line late last year, after the city settled a flurry of lawsuits filed by other agencies over their respective shares of agency proceeds.

Acting as the redevelopment board, council members this year issued $10 million in redevelopment bonds to fund the agency--money slated for home improvement loans, public works projects and a general overhaul of downtown.

This fall, benches, planters and trash receptacles will be placed along High Street, and the city is moving ahead with plans to install decorative street lights along the strip. The council last week finalized the $800,000 purchase of 4.7 acres on the south side of High Street; part of it may be turned into a park.

“It’s nice to see something happening,” said Joy Cummings, a 20-year downtown merchant and president of the Moorpark Old Town Merchants Assn. “I think that is the only way that our old town can survive--making it a destination point, a place that’s interesting, fun, that people can walk away from with a positive attitude and tell their friends about. . . . Otherwise it will just die.”

Drawn by an unexpected revelation in the 1990 census that Moorpark’s median income had skyrocketed to $60,368--the highest of any city in historically affluent Ventura County--national retailers and service chains have been scrambling to set up shop here.

“We have major, national companies investing literally millions of dollars to locate here,” Councilman Scott Montgomery said. “They see the opportunity and they recognize the gem that Moorpark is.”

The new businesses will broaden the city’s tax base--which lags far behind those of neighboring Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks, despite its higher resident incomes--and may help unite the city, as its residents are given more chances to work, shop and play together.