Moorpark Council Not Bluffing With Rejection of Card Club

Folding a card club proposal before it even got into the planning process, the Moorpark City Council has decided to reject a Calabasas businessman’s idea to open a 30-table club in the city.

Mayor Paul Lawrason summed up the opinion of the council when he said the club might work well somewhere else, but was a bad idea for Moorpark.

“This is just not the kind of business we want in downtown Moorpark,” he said.

At a meeting Wednesday, the council voted unanimously to send a letter to real estate investor Everett Crawford rejecting his proposal. Crawford said the club could have netted as much as $2 million for city coffers, and he estimated that the business could have netted about $20 million a year. Patrons would gamble against each other and not the house. The club’s earnings would be solely from fees charged to players for each game, and the city would take a cut of those earnings.

But several council members expressed skepticism about Crawford’s estimates.

“In general I don’t think they (card clubs) generate the dollars and cents that they purport to,” said Councilman John Wozniak.

Backers of a 50-table card club that failed to win approval in Oxnard a year ago had projected that their business would generate $500,000 to $2 million for that city.

Crawford said that his revenue projections were not firm.

There was very little discussion about the proposal at Wednesday’s meeting. Crawford was unable to attend because of other obligations, he said. He called the city and tried to reschedule consideration of the proposal, but was told he could come any time and discuss his proposal during the public comment portion of the meeting.

“I would hope they would not take action until after they hear the proposal,” he said before the meeting.

But council members said they wanted to let Crawford know the council’s opinion of his plan before he began to spend money for a detailed proposal.

“I think he was just floating an idea here,” Wozniak said. “He was on a fishing expedition. He basically just sent us a letter asking us what we thought about the idea, and we’re sending one back telling him just what we think before he goes and spends a lot of money.”

For 26 years Moorpark had a small low-ball poker club that operated across the street from City Hall, and Wozniak said it took several years until residents were able to close that operation down in 1984. He said he could not think of anyone who wanted to bring another card club into the city.

“I wouldn’t go so far as saying that it would attract the wrong element,” Wozniak said. “I just think that when you get the gambling coming into town, you get a lot of other things that we don’t want here.”