Firm Hopes : Camarillo: Opening of retail and entertainment businesses may better balance the city’s makeup in the coming year.

Shopping and entertainment complexes set to open in 1995 may change the profile of Camarillo from that of a bedroom community to a more balanced city, better able to meet the needs of its growing population, city officials said in looking forward to the coming year.

With the Camarillo Factory Stores mall scheduled to open in the spring and talk of a mega-sized Target or K mart store being built on Las Posas Road near the Ventura Freeway, the city is poised to begin receiving as much as half a million more dollars annually from sales taxes.

Those facilities, along with two new major movie complexes (one built and the other under construction), mark a subtle change in the complexion of the city, whose burgeoning population outgrew its capacity to provide shopping and entertainment to residents.

“We may have wanted to keep this a bedroom community, but the reality is that if we continue to grow, we will have to find new sources of income to support the needs of our residents,” City Councilman Ken Gose said. “It is incumbent upon us to find as many stable new sources of revenues as we can.”

The city now receives about $3.6 million annually in sales tax revenues.

Although no plans have yet been filed with the city regarding the super-sized K mart or Target store, the 22-acre Camarillo Factory Stores project is now past the halfway point in construction, developers said.

Tenants for the 250,000-square-foot mall are expected to be announced next month, as are plans for a 160,000-square-foot second phase. The first phase should be open to shoppers by late spring.

Next to the mall site is an Edwards Theatres 12-screen cineplex that opened earlier this month. Edwards officials said at least one new restaurant will be built on an adjacent parcel to complement the $8-million theater complex.

In the Mission Oaks area on the city’s east side, an 11-screen United Artists complex has already broken ground and is expected to open by late summer.

The city is also expected to join with Oxnard to supply sewer and water systems for the Cal State University campus scheduled to be built northwest of Camarillo. Last week, landowners signed an agreement to sell 260 acres of farmland for the campus.

In concert with efforts to promote projects that will generate sales tax dollars, city officials are working hard to recruit environment-friendly companies.

“Of course, we’re talking with anyone who is looking to relocate here, but we are trying to focus on bringing those high-tech, pollution-free companies to town,” said James M. Jevens, the city’s economic development consultant.

Jevens said he is concentrating his recruiting on the biomedical and allied science fields.

“They are a source of good, high-paying jobs for our residents and a good source of revenues for the city,” Jevens said.

But while the city looks to 1995 for new financial growth and stability, some of 1994’s issues will remain.

Citing concerns about safety, as well as air and noise pollution, Councilwoman Charlotte Craven said the panel will continue to fight development of a regional airport at the Point Mugu Naval Air Weapons Station.

Although proponents of the airport hope to minimize flights over the city with use of a new, satellite-based navigation system, Craven says conversion of the naval facility to accommodate civilian travelers would drastically worsen the county.

“If a regional airport comes to fruition, it will change the entire character of the county within 20 years,” she said. “Our agricultural and greenbelt spaces will all be gone within a couple decades. You just don’t put in an airport and have nothing happen.”

The Camarillo council, which has gone on record against the airport, has also all but killed city participation with Oxnard and Ventura in construction of a $15.6-million minor league baseball stadium.

While council members have requested a status report from stadium consultants next month, they are not expected to change their opposition to spending city funds on the project.

Another issue that will continue to confront residents in 1995 will be the battle against the Mediterranean fruit fly.

Since the first of the crop-destroying pests were discovered Sept. 29 in a fig tree in the St. John’s Seminary orchard, state and federal agriculture officials have responded with aerial sprayings of the pesticide malathion.

Larry Hawkins, spokesman for the state and federal Cooperative Medfly Project, said the aerial spray missions, which dispense a sticky mixture of the pesticide and corn syrup, have gone off without any mishaps so far.

A total of 66 of the insects have been caught in panel traps, with the last discovery Nov. 22. Hawkins said officials will probably continue the spray missions about every two weeks through April, or through at least two complete life cycles of the fly. The cooler the weather, the longer the fly’s life cycle, he said.

The sprayings have touched off loud protests. More than 300 people attended a recent town hall meeting that featured a panel of medical doctors, scientists and biologists opposed to the sprayings.

While Camarillo council members have said they have no control over the sprayings, they have supported the eradication missions, citing agriculture’s importance to the county’s economy.

Opponents of the spraying have formed an association called Group Against Spraying People, or GASP. The group has pleaded with the council to reverse its stand.

“I urge you to look at the information the state is presenting (on the safety of malathion) and then compare it to independent, peer-reviewed research,” Terri Gaishin, the organization’s chairwoman, said in a recent letter to the council. “This is an unpopular, controversial program that should be stopped.”

The city next year is also expected to confront the concern that there are insufficient activities for youths.

Craven said that issue, plus finding funds to add another youth officer to the city’s police force, will be among her priorities in 1995. She advocates using the additional youth officer to fight the encroachment of gangs.

“I think most of them (Camarillo teen-agers) are good kids,” Craven said. “I just think that as a city, we should be doing more in this area. I also think that we need another youth officer to make sure we can head off any problems before they get a chance to get started.”

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FYI

The Camarillo City Council will hold an informal goal-setting session Feb. 4. The public is invited to attend the meeting, which will start at 9 a.m. at City Hall, 601 Carmen Drive.