MOORPARK : Council OKs Plan to Rebuild Market

Loosening its strict parking requirements, the Moorpark City Council has cleared the way for reconstruction of an earthquake-damaged market in the city’s downtown and for a new movie theater complex.

The council voted unanimously Wednesday to change the city’s parking ordinance, which required that Mayflower Market provide 12 parking spaces before rebuilding.

The store, which opened more than 75 years ago, has never had on-site parking and has no space available for it now. The requirement would have made reconstruction almost impossible, the owner said.

The new ordinance will drop the requirement for on-site parking and allow the owner of the market to pay into a parking fund. The money in the fund will eventually be used to build a city-owned lot on vacant land near the intersection of High Street and Moorpark Avenue, Councilman Scott Montgomery said.

The measure applies only to stores along Moorpark’s historic High Street, Montgomery said.

“These are small shops on small lots,” he said. “The new ordinance really goes along with our whole concept for the downtown. Instead of stores having to provide on-site parking, I envision two municipal lots and people walking between shops.”

The second part of the new parking ordinance also will give a break to a planned eight-screen movie theater set to be open by the fall off Los Angeles Avenue. The ordinance allows the theater to meet its parking requirement with 15% of its spaces reserved for compact cars. This allows the theater owners to set aside a smaller area for parking, Montgomery said.