Impact Study on 3,200-Home Project Awaited

It is easily a billion-dollar project, said Gary Austin, vice president of the Messenger Investment Co., which plans to build more than 3,200 homes on the northeastern edge of Moorpark.

It was seven years ago that the Orange County-based company first selected the 4,500 acres of scrub brush and oak-covered ranch land on which it plans to build. Now after five years of planning and more than $1 million in consulting costs and city fees, a detailed sketch of the community and its impacts on Moorpark is scheduled for release this week.

Although they have anticipated almost every contingency, Austin and other company officials are anxiously awaiting the release of the environmental impact study on the Hidden Creek Ranch development.

How will the influx of an estimated 14,000 new residents affect traffic, local schools and the local economy? And, more importantly, how will local residents and politicians react when they see what those impacts are?

The Messenger development is even bigger than the controversial 3,050-home Ahmanson ranch development in the Simi Hills along the Los Angeles County line. That project has been fraught over the past three years with legal challenges by several neighboring communities concerned about the potential burden that thousands of new residents would bring.

“We want to avoid that kind of controversy,” said William Messenger Jr., company president. “And I think we haven’t run into any of that here because we’ve done so much to familiarize ourselves with the community.”

Indeed, in Moorpark the Messenger development seems to have barely caused a ripple of interest.

“I wouldn’t say that there’s not a ripple of interest,” said City Councilman Bernardo Perez. “It’s just that it hasn’t risen yet. The undercurrent of interest there, it’s just waiting to break through.”

Local officials say that residents are just waiting for a chance to look at the more than 2,000 pages of the environmental report before they begin to discuss the housing development.

A limited number of access roads to the Ahmanson ranch property and a complicated land swap make that project much more controversial than the Messenger development, according to Austin.

Austin said he is convinced that any problems associated with building on the now-empty hillsides and increasing Moorpark’s population by more than half its present size are far outweighed by all the benefits the project will bring.

But he is still anxious about the reaction the report will bring.

“I’m confident that we’ve covered everything, but you never know what will happen with something like this,” Austin said.

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And Messenger Co. has a lot riding on this project.

Hit hard by the recession, Messenger Co., which once was developing land all across California, is now focused solely on the Moorpark property.

The company has gone from a high of about 40 employees in 1991 to just six today.

“In 1992, we decided to concentrate on this project alone,” Messenger said. “This is what we do every day. It is what we stay focused on.”

It is probably a testament to Messenger Co.’s focus and Austin’s careful shepherding of the project that there has not been more rancorous debate over the development.

Commuting from the company headquarters in Irvine almost once a week during the past five years, Austin has attended just about every council meeting in the city during that time. He has also regularly attended Planning Commission meetings and has held several workshops on the development with local neighborhood associations.

Conscious that growth was for years a hot-button issue in Moorpark, Austin has labored to placate neighboring homeowners’ fears about the project and to make sure that the city would not pass new laws that could hurt the project.

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In the 1980s, the city was one of the fastest-growing communities in California, more than tripling in population from 7,800 residents in 1980 to about 25,000 in 1990. The experience led to the adoption in 1986 of a growth-control ordinance: Measure F.

But hard economic times have made the rapid growth of the 1980s a thing of the past. The growth rate, which had once soared to more than 200% in the mid-1980s, has slowed to less than 2% since 1990. Measure F expires at the end of the year and plans are now being discussed to pass a much more lenient version of the ordinance.

Although no one expects the growth to ever again reach the levels of the 1980s, real estate experts predict that in the next 20 years Moorpark will again experience some of the strongest growth in Ventura County.

Austin thinks that the changing times have made residents in Moorpark more receptive to the company’s plans for development. When he talks about the issue, he says Messenger Co.’s carefully outlined development would be a model example of managed growth.

The construction of the homes will be stretched out over 12 years, he said.

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Streets, several parks, three new schools, and other infrastructure improvements will be built as the homes are built. The company has pledged to spend about $200 million on those improvements, guaranteeing that the increased growth from the development will not overburden local resources.

Along with meetings Austin has had with local residents, he has met with school officials, county planners and members of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy to incorporate concerns and demands from each into the project.

By grouping the homes in small village-like clusters separated by bands of undeveloped land, the company plans to leave more than 50% of the property as open space. It plans to donate about 2,000 acres to nearby Happy Camp Canyon Regional Park, which is managed by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy.

To win the hearts and minds of neighboring homeowners, Austin and Jeff Gordon, another company vice president, have met informally with families living near the property.

Many of those residents told Austin and Gordon that they were worried about traffic, so the project now has roads that are meant to divert traffic away from those neighborhoods.

Residents also said that they were tired of driving all the way to Simi Valley to shop for groceries, so Austin and Gordon have played up the fact that the development will include grocery stores, a drug store and several other shops.

Indeed the shops, planned golf courses, and other amenities have been cited by some residents as a desired benefit from building on the land, said Mike Leckrone, who lives near the property.

“I think most people here look at this from the standpoint that it’s going to be developed so they might as well do it right,” Leckrone said.

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The amenities will go a long way at pleasing some local residents, but he said some of his neighbors must look at the Environmental Impact Report before they will really understand how big the project really is.

“I don’t know what the noise level will be, but I think there will be a reaction when the EIR is released,” he said.

Despite all the preparations and planning, Austin and other Messenger Co. executives are anxiously awaiting that reaction.

The report is scheduled to be released to the public Wednesday. And public hearings on the report will begin within 45 days. That will begin the months-long process of meetings, culminating with a vote by the City Council on whether to accept the environmental report sometime before the end of the year.

Proposed Moorpark Addition

The Irvine-based Messenger Investment Co. owns a 4,500-acre parcel northeast of Moorpark. Company officials have proposed a development of 3,221 homes that would be annexed to Moorpark, increasing the city’s population by an estimated 14,000 people. Messenger would donate about 2,00 acres to Happy Camp Canyon Regional Park.

Source: Moorpark Planning Department