Quake Recovery Expedited for Market : Moorpark: The City Council unanimously approves plan giving administration of federal aid to the owners of the Mayflower store.

Hoping to end months of delay, the Moorpark City Council on Wednesday approved a plan that will speed up the reconstruction of an earthquake-damaged market in the city’s historic downtown.

The council unanimously approved the plan giving administration of federal aid over to the owners of the Mayflower Market.

If the city had administered the money--which the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development originally required--it would have had to obtain an expensive insurance policy to protect it from potential liability.

The policy would have cost the city about $10,000 on a $50,000 design project. That requirement had threatened to add at least six more months to the already yearlong delay in rebuilding the market.

The council’s approval will allow the Hijaz family, which has owned the store for more than 20 years, to hire an architect to design a new building.

“We’re where we should have been right when this whole process started,” said Councilman Bernardo Perez.

After the Northridge earthquake hit 19 months ago, federal emergency officials had planned to cut through red tape and bureaucratic interference and rush aid to victims in the hope of quickly rebuilding damaged areas.

It has not turned out that way for the Hijazes, who own the market on Moorpark’s historic High Street.

The quake so severely damaged the 70-year-old store that it had to be torn down.

Since then, the owners have waited for low-interest loans and grants to rebuild. And during the months-long wait, they have had to operate out of a makeshift storage space on the lot where their store once stood.

“It’s been tough,” said Rifat Hijaz, who runs and manages the store with his father, Mustafa. “We lose money every month, but we’re still in business.”

Sales at the store have dropped by about 25% since the earthquake, Hijaz said. It will cost about $50,000 to redesign the building and about $250,000 to rebuild it, city officials estimate.

The family will use a federal grant from HUD to pay for the design of the building and a 4% loan from the Small Business Administration to pay for the reconstruction.

“We never imagined it would take this long,” Hijaz said. “But we’re thankful for the help.”

Although they had hoped to make the new store a little bigger, filling out their corner lot, federal regulations require that the loan be used to pay for the construction of a similar-sized building.

The family still will have to go through a review of the store’s design by the city’s Planning Commission. After that process, which could take up to two months, construction could begin. The new store probably will take several months to build.

“We’ve had to wait so long already that we’ve learned not to expect anything to happen too quickly,” Hijaz said. “We just hope that the city will see what we’ve gone through and try and move the process along.”