Developer’s Plan Spurs Debate in Moorpark : Growth: Proposal to construct 3,221 homes worries some who moved to the area to escape urban sprawl. Builder calls their fears unfounded.

Standing together on the northeast edge of Moorpark a few months ago, looking out over the rolling hills, City Councilman Pat Hunter and developer Gary Austin saw two very different pictures.

While Hunter recalls thinking how the wide open land reminded him of why he moved his family to the city five years ago, Austin remembers looking at those hills and seeing future home sites for many more families.

The two were standing on the Hidden Creek Ranch property, discussing a project by Austin’s company, Messenger Investment of Irvine, to build 3,221 homes on about 4,500 acres of grassland and chaparral.

After five years of detailed planning--trying to meet all the city’s demands for open space, roads, a fire station and schools for what could amount to more than 10,000 additional people for this town of about 27,000--Austin thinks that the project is nearly ready.

Many people in town, however, including several City Council members such as Hunter, are not sure that the development fits into Moorpark’s future.

“Standing up there, you can see how beautiful all those rolling hills are,” Hunter said recently. “I told (Austin) I really was impressed by the project, but you know I’m originally from the San Fernando Valley and I loved it there, too. It got to a point, though, where I didn’t want to live there anymore because of all the development. I didn’t like it anymore. I don’t want that to happen here.”

The debate over the Messenger development is central to the debate over growth in Moorpark.

Like Hunter, many people who moved to Moorpark did so to escape the urban sprawl of Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley. They have repeatedly made growth a political hot button during City Council elections, demanding that their local politicians not allow development to destroy the town.

In the 1980s, Moorpark was one of the fastest-growing cities in California, more than tripling in population from 7,800 residents in 1980 to about 25,000 in 1990. The experience led to adoption of a growth-control ordinance in 1986.

Despite the fact that growth has slowed considerably since 1990, a committee has completed the draft of a new, stricter growth-control ordinance, which could take effect when the present ordinance expires in 1995.

The City Council will continue to take public comments on the proposal through the summer and is likely to vote on the measure in the fall, city officials said.

Austin argues that the proposed ordinance, which would limit the number of homes he could build each year, would make his project economically unfeasible.

“I don’t understand why this is still such a hot issue here,” he said. “People are living in the past, making judgments by what happened six years ago.”

He runs down the list of concerns expressed by growth-control advocates about his project, addressing each in quick fashion.

The beauty of the area would be protected, he says. The Messenger Co. plans to leave nearly 70% of the property as open space by grouping homes in small, village-like clusters separated by bands of untouched land.

As for concerns that the influx of people from his project would overburden schools and roadways, Austin says his company will spend more than $150 million to build several new schools, roads and other infrastructure improvements before any homes are built.

“This is a well-planned community with everything in right measure blending into the landscape with a generous amount of open space,” Austin said.

The concern that impending growth from his project would destroy Moorpark’s small-town character is unfounded, he said.

Hard economic times have made the rapid growth of the 1980s a thing of the past, he said, pointing out that the growth rate, which had once soared more than 200% during that decade, has slowed to less than 2% since 1990.

Still, many argue that the pressure to develop Moorpark’s rolling hillsides will come again.

Ernest Siracusa, a real estate market researcher in Westlake Village, said Moorpark continues to be attractive for families moving out of the Valley. While the demand for housing that peaked in the 1980s--when prospective home buyers actually lined up to buy homes--will probably not be repeated, he said, people will continue to move to the area. In reports that he gives to developers, Siracusa has projected a steady rate of growth in Moorpark during the next 15 years.

“It still presents one of the best values for families interested in living in a rural country setting within commuting distance to Los Angeles,” he said.

Developers know Moorpark’s appeal and, while the Messenger project is by far the largest development being considered by the city, it is not the only one. There are at least seven other developments, ranging in size from about 100 to 700 homes, that the city expects could be built in the next 15 years.

While city planners estimate that altogether these projects would swell Moorpark’s population to roughly 47,000 people by 2010, other estimates put that figure as high as 65,000.

“A lot of people who got out of the Valley are wondering if they just didn’t move far enough away,” said Clint Harper, a Moorpark College professor and former city councilman who moved from the San Fernando Valley in 1978. “It seems the nature of the beast that all communities sprawl, and it takes a lot of political willpower to stop it.”

Harper said Austin has represented his company well, driving up from Irvine and attending almost every City Council meeting for the last four years, but he argued that the city did not owe Messenger anything.

“We have no obligation to make a land speculator rich,” Harper said. “When a developer buys a piece of land, they’re rolling the dice.”

Eloise Brown, another former council member, said the attitude of Harper and other growth-control advocates is “unchristian.”

“It begs the question, when do you shut the door?” she said. “Is it OK for Mr. Harper’s family but not someone else’s? It just doesn’t fly. What I would like to see is directed growth. If people want to keep land from development, they should be willing to pay for it. They don’t have a right to tell a property owner what to do.”

In 1986, after voters approved Moorpark’s slow-growth ordinance, attorneys representing one of the local developers and the building industry challenged the law. They argued that the city had to show that the ordinance was needed to stop growth from overburdening such things as schools, water supplies and local roadways.

The case was settled out of court. The limit on the number of homes that could be built each year was amended from 250 to 270, and one development of 2,500 homes was exempted from the law.

The draft for a new growth ordinance returns to the 250 figure, and the city has been warned by building industry representatives that it could face another lawsuit.

“Just because voters decide to use the ballot box to attempt to make growth-management and growth-control decisions does not mean that the ordinance will stand up to a legal challenge,” Austin said in a recent letter to the council.

Joyce Thompson and Bob Crockford, who have been involved in drafting the new ordinance, said they were worried about possible legal challenges. Thompson said it’s unclear how the courts would rule on a new ordinance, but she left no question about how she felt.

“The bottom line is that a community isn’t a community unless the people who live there have control over their own destiny,” she said. “They should be able to state what their wishes are, and we don’t want Moorpark to become like every other overdeveloped and overpopulated city in Southern California. We want to control our own fate.”

Covered with dust from a morning spent working on his five-acre avocado orchard only a mile away from City Hall, Crockford echoed Thompson’s points. “The beauty of this place is that it isn’t like everywhere else,” he said. “It isn’t wall-to-wall housing, but mixed with homes next to small farms or horse corrals. It isn’t strip malls and suburban sprawl, and we’re trying to keep it that way.”

Looking out from his home next to the Messenger property, Mike Leckrone can see green meadows and large oaks through to the horizon. He said his family regularly sees owls and red tail hawks, and they often hear coyotes at night.

“It’s a beautiful place and we want to keep it that way,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean there can be no development. The bottom line shouldn’t be some arbitrary number of houses each year, but assurances that any development protects the beauty of the town.”

An environmental review of the possible impact of the Messenger development is under way and will take several months to complete. The City Council plans to open public discussion on the growth control ordinance in July and possibly enact the ordinance in the fall.

Hunter and his fellow council members have all said they support renewing the growth-control ordinance. Whether the new ordinance will make the Messenger project economically infeasible is still an open question, but Hunter said he hopes that something can be worked out.

“It’s still early on in the process and a lot could happen to make the development possible,” he said. “But ultimately Messenger is going to have to abide by any mandates placed on them by the city. Any development will have to be on our terms.”