Home Building Vote Stirs Growth Debate in Ventura

For the first time in four years, some developers are expected to get permission Monday to construct homes in the city of Ventura.

The issue of who gets to build and when has become especially contentious in a town where council elections usually divide between slow-growth and pro-business camps, and where many residents bear sentimental attachments to the open agricultural lands that crisscross the east side.

“This topic touches a central issue in this city, and that is how fast are we going to grow?” said Councilman Steve Bennett. “Land use and the rate of growth are the driving issues in Ventura politics.”

This year’s housing allocation process is especially difficult because the General Plan allows a maximum of 1,018 allocations through 1999--but developers want to build about 2,600 units.

And some council members, who consider 1,018 allocations too many to distribute in one year, would like to hold that number down to a couple hundred allocations annually.

Awarding an allocation does not mean a house automatically can be built on the designated site. Rather, it means the builder can apply for permits to construct the specified number of apartments, condominiums, mobile homes or houses. The city still gets to review the development design, a process that can stretch over months or even years.

Eleven developers have applied for allocations. Aside from two proposed developments near Ventura Avenue, all the projects would be built in the middle or east end of town.

The two proposals with the most council support have also excited the most public controversy, turning neighbor against neighbor, inciting threats of a lawsuit in one instance and a possible ballot initiative in the other.

* A proposal to build 200 homes, office buildings, bike paths and a park on Ventura Avenue seemed destined to sail through the contentious allocations process. But threats of a lawsuit from small property owners on the site, who did not want their land rezoned from heavy industrial to lighter industrial and commercial uses, persuaded one of the three main development partners to drop out of the project this week.

Even without the Huntsinger family’s land, the other property owners involved in the project--the Neel family and Kinko’s, the national copy service giant headquartered in the area--say they still hope to make the deal work at City Hall.

* Equally controversial is a proposal by developer Ron Hertel to swap his land at Telephone and Kimball roads for a city-owned lemon grove at Telegraph Road and Petit Avenue. To sweeten the deal, Hertel has offered to give the city $2 million toward building a regional park on his 94-acre site.

Both the city’s land and Hertel’s property, however, lie within Ventura’s agricultural greenbelt--sites designated to remain farmland until the year 2010 under the General Plan.

The deal has pitted local sports enthusiasts against neighbors of the proposed development and greenbelt preservationists. Opponents are circulating petitions for a ballot initiative that would not allow any development in the city’s greenbelt without approval from the voters.

Other proposals include a plan to build 60 apartments at Darling and Wells roads, a project calling for 467 homes at Telegraph and Hill roads, and a request to construct 227 homes at Telegraph and Kimball roads.

Ventura’s Planning Commission, meeting to review the proposals last week, recommended awarding allocations to the 60-unit apartment complex, a mobile home park at Copland Drive and Telephone Road, and a condominium project at Cedar and Kellogg streets, for a total of about 170 allocations.

But council members have shown the most interest so far in single-family home developments, particularly the Neel-Kinko’s project on the Avenue and the Hertel land swap.

City officials expect Monday night’s meeting to be so heated that they have decided to start it at 6 p.m., an hour and a half earlier than usual.

Sheri Vincent, who devotes about four hours a week to gathering signatures for the greenbelt ballot initiative, said she hopes to pack the council meeting with as many as 50 people opposing the land swap.

“I think sparks are going to fly,” she said.