Council Postpones Disputed Housing Allocation Vote
One of the most anticipated decisions of the year in Ventura--which developers get permission to build housing in the city--will have to wait until Aug. 29, bleary-eyed council members said at 2 a.m. Tuesday.
Ties loosened, hair tousled, the seven-member council agreed to put off distributing this year’s housing allocations rather than continue their meeting until sunrise.
“We need to come back to this with a clear mind and a good attitude,” Councilman Jim Monahan said.
The meeting was to have decided the fate of 11 development proposals before the city, though many of the 60 people lined up to address the council came for only one issue: the land swap proposal.
And this week’s meeting added yet another twist to that controversial saga, which council members may also have to address when they reconvene next month.
Developer Ron Hertel’s proposal to swap his land for the city’s, trading $2 million for a community park in exchange for permission to build 437 homes on a city-owned lemon orchard, has pitted eastside sports enthusiasts against open space preservationists and neighbors of the proposed development.
Local real estate broker Barry Moore has spoken for the last two weeks of his anonymous clients who say they can offer the city a better deal than Hertel. Tuesday morning, under pressure from Councilman Steve Bennett, he revealed the clients’ names: the Santana Family Trust, a local farming partnership, and Dallas-based Centex Corp., the nation’s largest home builder.
The Santanas now lease the city’s 87-acre lemon orchard at Telegraph Road and Petit Avenue--the same land Hertel wants to swap and they want to buy. Jaime Santana approached Centex officials at their Antelope Valley office last spring with the idea. The project would be Centex’s first venture in Ventura County, company officials said.
Their offer for the city is this: the Santanas and Centex purchase an 80-acre strawberry farm at the southwest corner of Kimball and Telephone roads, which they then sell to Ventura as a community park for $4.5 million. At the same time, the development partners buy Ventura’s lemon orchard for $8.7 million, thus leaving the city with a net of about $4.2 million toward a park.
If the city ever wanted a larger park, Santana said the owners of 50 acres of farmland to the east of the strawberry farm have expressed interest in selling their land.
The offer is only good, of course, if the lemon orchard comes with housing allocations attached, Santana said.
Both Hertel’s land, at the northwest corner of Telephone and Kimball Roads, and the city’s property and the strawberry farm are zoned agricultural until 2010. The council would have to amend Ventura’s General Plan before any homes could be built on any of the sites within the next 16 years.
Santana said he did not make his proposal earlier because he never dreamed the Hertel offer would garner the attention it has.
“I didn’t think the city was going to take Ron Hertel’s offer seriously,” he said. “I thought this was an insult, to offer the city $2 million and land that is worth $35,000 per acre (for the city’s property).”
Officials at Hertel Constructors, the developer’s company, have insisted in the past that their property is worth $65,000 an acre. Tuesday afternoon, however, the company’s vice president said the actual value may be closer to a local real estate broker’s estimate of $40,000 to $50,000 per acre.
Edwin Nutt, a Fillmore-based agent who has sold agricultural land in the county for 40 years, said the parcel is worth a bit more than most county farmland because it is situated in the city and could conceivably be developed one day.
“That’s exactly right,” said Tom Crozier, Hertel Constructors’ vice president, of Nutt’s estimate.
Crozier said he still does not have enough information about the new offer to judge if it is a credible one. “Possibly yes, possibly no,” he said. “I just don’t know.”
The parcel the Santanas and Centex are considering is across the street from the Hertel property. The strawberry farm in question does not yet belong, however, to either the Santanas or Centex, but to another local farming trust called thH. Smith Family Partnership. Greg Smith, one of the partnership’s owners and managers, said he would be interested in an offer on his property.
After all, since the council zoned it agricultural years ago, meaning no one can develop it until 2010, few have been eager to buy his swatch of farmland surrounded by suburbia.
“We’re sort of in a limbo,” he said. “It’s hard to develop and it’s hard to farm. This has placed us in a difficult position.”
Councilman Bennett, who has called for the city to consider other offers on its lemon orchard since Hertel presented his proposal in February, said the latest offer on the land proves he was right.
“This indicates that there is credible potential up there,” he said. “I’m just interested in fair market return on our investment.”
But Ventura Mayor Tom Buford said he was not bowled over by the new offer. “I don’t know how seriously the council is going to take this,” he said. “We can always go with Hertel’s proposal and call for appraisals on both properties.”
