Approval of Camarillo Outlet Mall Is Appealed : Development: The City Council will be forced to vote on the matter. Ventura County, school district and a resident cite concerns about 22-acre project.

For the second time in 14 months, the Camarillo City Council will consider approving a 22-acre factory outlet mall after appeals were filed challenging the Planning Commission’s blessing of the project.

The most recent appeals, filed late last week by Ventura County, the Oxnard Union High School District and Camarillo resident John Johs, will force the City Council to decide at its March 9 meeting whether the 250,000-square-foot mall should be built, despite the commission’s unanimous approval of the project.

County officials said they appealed the commission’s Feb. 15 decision because of concerns about how the project’s traffic will impact local roads and the Ventura Freeway. The site is south of the Ventura Freeway between Las Posas Road and Carmen Drive.

“We just don’t believe that the city is providing enough in terms of traffic impact fees,” said W. Butch Britt, the county’s deputy director of public works. “We filed the appeal if for no other reason than to preserve our rights in the process.”

Britt said Las Posas and Pleasant Valley roads would be particularly hard hit by the new development.

In their appeal, Oxnard school officials argued that the proposal does not provide enough funding to the district to compensate for the number of families that would move into the area because of jobs created at the mall and whose children would attend district schools.

“It’s not that we are against the factory outlet,” said Richard Canady, the district’s assistant business manager. “It’s that we believe that Camarillo has not fully considered the costs that we will have to bear should the project be developed.”

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Johs based his appeal on concerns about traffic from the mall and the project’s impact on local schools. He could not be reached for comment Monday.

Filing of the appeals angered Camarillo officials, who said they can’t understand why the project has been seemingly thwarted at every turn. The project could bring the city an estimated $400,000 in annual sales tax revenues.

“We have jumped through every hoop there is to be jumped through,” City Manager Bill Little said. “At this point, we’re just baffled.”

After the council first approved the mall in January, 1993, Oxnard developer Stephen Maulhardt and retired Camarillo businessman Richard Lundberg filed a Superior Court lawsuit charging that city officials had failed to assess the full impact of the project. As a result of the suit, a judge ordered a full environmental review and ruled that a proposed tax rebate to the developer, Los Angeles-based Koll Co., amounted to a gift of public funds.

Little said the project has undergone a full environmental review and provides more than adequate funding to the county and school district.

“Before the end of the project, we will pay more than $100,000 to the county in road improvements,” he said. “It’s seems like no matter what we do, they just want more and more.”

Koll officials said they are still optimistic that the project will be built.

“This is just a part of the process,” said Peter Tilton, a company spokesman. “This isn’t insurmountable. We will carefully answer the charges and, after we are done, I’m sure that the council will come to the same conclusion that it did more than a year ago.”

But as officials wait for the project to come before the council, construction on a similar-size factory outlet mall continues about five miles north in Oxnard. The facility, which broke ground in December, is south of the Ventura Freeway between Rose and Rice avenues.

The Camarillo council will consider the appeals at 5 p.m. March 9 at City Hall, 601 Carmen Drive.