OXNARD : Council to Consider Project Near Airport

The Oxnard City Council tonight will consider allowing more than 200 new homes to be built on almost 80 acres of vacant land within a mile of Oxnard Airport.

City planning officials are recommending that the council allow the project, called Patterson Park, and adopt a finding that the new homes would create no adverse environmental impacts.

No environmental impact report would be required on the project if such a finding is adopted.

Under the proposal, more than 25 acres of the 79-acre parcel would be set aside for a community park to be developed by the city of Oxnard.

The balance, owned by Laguna Pacific Development of Montecito, would be subdivided into 216 single-family lots south of 5th Street and east of Patterson Road.

In recommending that the City Council approve the project, planners said the development is consistent with the county airport’s long-range land-use plan. But Marshall MacKinen, Ventura County airports administrator, said he is skeptical any time that homes are built so close to an airfield.

“I don’t think it’s fair to put homes that close to the airport,” he said.

“When you get high-density housing within a half-mile, which this is, you’re going to get noise complaints.”

MacKinen, who spoke against the Patterson Park project before it was approved by the city Planning Commission in September, said officials should be more concerned with the safety of homeowners living in the airport’s flight paths.

More than 50,000 general operations flights, including helicopters and private planes, are flown each year at Oxnard Airport, said Chris Kleen, air traffic facility manager.

A public hearing on the development is scheduled for 7 p.m. in the council chambers.