MOORPARK : Developer Again Asks for Exemption

An Irvine-based development company planning to build 3,200 houses in northeast Moorpark has reiterated its request that the city exempt the planned community from any future or existing growth-control ordinance.

The request comes on the heels of a negotiated agreement between the city and another developer, the Carlsberg Financial Corp. That agreement exempts Carlsberg’s 552-house development from any future growth-control ordinance.

Representatives of the Messenger Investment Co. have said they would also like such an exemption. The company plans to build its housing over a 12-year period on the former Hidden Creek Ranch property, just outside town. Messenger Vice President Gary Austin said the company would not be able to complete the project under the existing slow-growth law or a possibly stricter law that could replace it when it expires in 1995.

Austin has repeatedly asked the Moorpark City Council to consider drawing up a development agreement with specific yearly limits on housing units that would apply only to Messenger. In exchange, the company would build certain roads, sewer and water systems before the housing is completed.

“It would effectively manage growth and keep us in business,” Austin said.

The current growth-control ordinance, called Measure F, allows for no more than 270 building permits to be issued each year. A proposed extension of the ordinance to take effect when Measure F expires in 1995 would lower the number to 250 and also not allow any single developer to receive more than half of those allotments. Austin said his company wants to build 400 houses each of the first two years of the project, and 300 houses thereafter until the development is complete.

“We want to be excluded from any existing or future ordinance,” he said. “It wouldn’t work otherwise.”