Ventura Residents Divided Over Land Swap Proposal : Controversy: Greenbelt would be lost, new park gained in deal. Flyer promoting project is latest volley in battle over plan.

Many Ventura residents opened their mailboxes recently to find a quaint beige flyer announcing “We’re Building a Park in Ventura!”

On what appeared to be recycled paper, ringed with hand-drawn depictions of fishing poles, soccer balls and baseball mitts, the mailer described the golf course, tennis courts, swimming pool and ball fields planned for the land at Kimball and Telephone roads.

The pamphlet ends with the exhortation to “Join us at the next meeting of park supporters. See you there!” And it appears to bear the endorsements of the Ventura City Council and City Planner Mitch Oshinsky.

But, in fact, the seemingly homespun mailer was paid for by a local developer who has offered to help foot the bill for the park if he gets permission to build 437 homes on what is now a city-owned lemon orchard.

Builder Ron Hertel calls his land swap proposal “a fair deal for both sides.” But many others in town don’t see it that way.

Actually, the flyer is the latest volley in the war of words and paper over Hertel’s offer, which has divided city residents unlike any other development plan before the City Council this year.

Some outraged residents accuse Hertel of proposing to violate the sanctity of the city’s greenbelt, which they say preserves the area’s rural tradition and prevents endless suburban sprawl.

Simultaneously, he is the hero of east-side soccer coaches, Little League managers and basketball referees. These and other local sports team organizers find themselves begging every year for a patch of grass where their teams can practice and play their games.

“I got a call at 6:38 a.m. today on the park from a resident in the area,” said Councilwoman Rosa Lee Measures. “It’s even divided his family. The husband’s for it, the wife’s against it.”

The deal itself is complicated and filled with intricacies, but boils down to this:

* Hertel owns 94 acres of land just south of the Santa Paula Freeway, west of Kimball Road. He cannot make much money off this property now because the city has ordered it preserved as an agricultural greenbelt until 2010.

* The city owns an 87-acre lemon orchard--also considered part of the greenbelt--at Telegraph Road and Petit Avenue. The lemon grove is slated to become a regional park someday, but the city cannot find the money to get the process started.

* Hertel built a tract of homes next to the city’s lemon grove. He now proposes to swap his 94 acres for the city’s lemon grove, where he wants to build 437 more homes. To sweeten the deal, he has offered $2 million to help the city build a regional park on his Kimball Road property.

* To allow the development, the council would have to amend the city’s Comprehensive Plan, which says both properties must remain farmland until 2010. The city would also have to award Hertel 43% of all the housing allocations it will dole out through the turn of the century.

Even many of these basic details, however, have been obscured in the rhetoric of the community battle.

The fight erupted last spring, in the living rooms of the new stucco homes across the street from the lemon orchard. Neighbors who want to look out their back yards at fruit trees, not another new housing tract, have evolved into Save Our Agricultural Resources, or SOAR.

“He comes in with these proposals to build a park,” said Elaina Fletcher, who lives on Solano Street in a home built by Hertel. “But in reality, it’s all just to allow him to build more houses on his property and make more money.”

Fletcher insists that Hertel is taking advantage of the city. Once the greenbelt is gone, she said, it’s gone forever. And she doesn’t believe the city will ever have the cash to finish the park.

She and other incensed homeowners are collecting signatures for a ballot initiative that would prohibit any housing construction on greenbelt land unless approved by a majority of city voters.

So far, the group has gathered about 7,000 signatures--close, but not the 8,589 needed to qualify the measure for the ballot. Supporters say they will make a big push this weekend to collect about 3,000 more signatures, in case some are not currently registered voters.

*

The initiative drive has picked up preservationists along the way, some of whom see the Hertel development as the first step toward wall-to-wall housing across Ventura’s east end.

“One by one, little bits of orchard get taken over, and soon, the whole neighborhood” is developed, warned Allan Sandosham, who lives south of the lemon grove, in an older development across Telegraph Road. “Why is the city chipping away at (the greenbelt)? We have to take a stand on where we want to draw the line.”

But John Correa, a city parks commissioner and leading advocate for the park, argues the city ought to take the $2 million and run. He says that much of the greenbelt will be developed someday, so why not trade 437 houses for public tennis courts, two swimming pools, a golf course and ball fields.

“I don’t see why the city wouldn’t go ahead with it,” Correa said. “I think the value to the community is so overwhelming.”

Correa is so enthusiastic that he has drawn up blueprints of a proposed park and attached the sketch to his own petition, which asks residents to sign in support of the park.

The way Correa and other supporters see it, the park would cost about $10 million. Of that, $2 million would come from Hertel and about $4 million from the city, which has set aside a special fund to build a public swimming pool. The rest would be raised by a nonprofit association formed specifically to administer the park.

Once built, the park will pay for itself because it will be almost entirely activity oriented, advocates said. Each piece of space will be a field, arena or green dedicated to a particular sport, and park visitors will pay fees to use each area.

Nearly every type of community sports enthusiast finds something in the design to cheer about.

“Right now, we’re feeling a tremendous crunch for pool space,” said Steve Baxter, the coach of the Buenaventura Swim Club, a youth swim league. The league now uses pool space at the local high schools, organizing its schedule around each school team’s practices and competitions. “This park would be a tremendous advantage to the aquatics community.”

*

Baxter and other swimmers are gathering figures on the tourist dollars that would come with regional swim meets at an Olympic-size pool.

Softball players and coaches also look on the proposed park as the answer to their logistics problem of juggling too many teams and too few fields.

Jim Kniss has been playing adult softball for 20 years. His league used to play entirely out of Camino Real Park, but then the league outgrew the limited space there. Now, many teams play at West Park Recreational Center on the west end of town, but Kniss said some players refuse to travel there because of gang problems in the neighborhood.

“A game three years ago had to be stopped because of a shooting,” he said. “Hopefully now, with a park out here (on the east side), we could use that and Camino Real as our home base.”

*

Pat Kelley, president of the Ventura Tri-Valley Girls Softball League, has been squeezing his teams onto the fields at Ventura College this last year. But with more and more girls signing up, space is getting extremely tight.

“This sports complex is intriguing,” he said of the proposed park. “A once-in-a-lifetime facility.”

Some council members share Kelley’s enthusiasm. The council will consider this month whether to amend the city’s Comprehensive Plan so that Hertel’s proposal can begin the city’s lengthy review process.

“It’s a tremendous opportunity for the entire community,” Councilwoman Measures said. “It’s there and it’s ready to go. Let’s negotiate the swap and move on with the feasibility study.”

Measures received free rental space from Hertel during her campaign last fall, and counts the developer as a personal friend. She said she has known Hertel for more than a quarter century and that her sister lives in a townhome he developed.

However, she said, Hertel has never put any pressure on her to support his land swap proposal. “I hold him and his family in the highest esteem,” she said.

*

Mayor Tom Buford said the issue has generated such passion because it highlights a broader municipal problem--the lack of youth centers and activities in Ventura.

“The reality is we do need a facility,” he said. “Anyway, this really ties into a bigger issue, which is how do we continue to find programs and facilities (for the city’s youth)? How do we keep kids out of juvenile delinquency? I really think it’s that big.”

But Councilmen Gary Tuttle and Steve Bennett say they worry Hertel is using local coaches and team players as a front to get himself a sweetheart deal with the city.

“This is a long way from being anywhere near a fair deal,” Tuttle said. Tuttle and Bennett both say Hertel has overvalued his land to make it look as desirable as the city’s property, estimating its worth at $65,000 per acre. They say it may be worth as little as $35,000 per acre.

“What’s happening here is these people are becoming a shill for a developer,” Tuttle said.

For his part, Hertel said the athletic community’s enthusiastic support of his proposal has been a welcome, if unexpected, bonus.

“We encourage that,” he said. “I didn’t even know John Correa was drawing up plans for the park until he called me up six months or so ago.”

He acknowledged having paid for the flyer that went out anonymously in the mail the third week in June. He said his staff had prepared the mailer, but he had not read it and was not sure of the nature of its contents.

“The sports enthusiasts are really pushing this from our side,” he said. “They are the initiators and we are just helping them.”

*

Hertel’s mailer describes the proposed park in some detail.

“The park concept grew because there was funding to make a really nice park for whole families, including seniors, to enjoy,” it reads in part. “The park offers a great opportunity to put golf greens, playing fields, a duck pond and a sports complex on property that would otherwise fall to development.”

The flyer urges residents to write or call City Council members and planner Oshinsky to show their support for the park. It concludes with the phone numbers for Oshinsky and the council.

Oshinsky said he complained to Correa because he thought the flyer implied he had signed it.

Although Correa said he did not write the pamphlet, he said he reviewed it before it was mailed.

“It was a dumb mistake,” he acknowledged. “It wasn’t designed to be misleading. We are going to change it.”

Council member Steve Bennett said he, too, found the mailers confusing. “But that’s the game of politics,” he said. “And unfortunately, that’s how it’s played in this city.”

Proposed Land Swap

Developer Ron Hertel wants to trade his Kimball Road property for a city-owned lemon orchard. He hopes to build 437 houses on the lemon grove and promises $2 million toward a park on the other property.