Planners to Reconsider 227-Home Development on Ventura Orchard

Only a month after rejecting the project, the city’s Planning Commission voted 5 to 2 Tuesday night to reconsider a developer’s request to build 227 homes on a sprawling east Ventura lemon orchard.

“The developer has come forward and wants to change the project and address the concerns of the neighbors,” Commissioner Lynn Jacobs said after the meeting. “I think it is important to let them have a chance to do that.”

The commission’s decision disappointed many in the crowd of more than 100 who turned out Tuesday to urge commissioners to stand behind their denial of the project proposed by Orange County-based Beazer Homes.

“It looks like they are forcing our hand in negotiating with them,” resident Cecil Black said after the meeting, waving to upset neighbors who streamed out of the City Council chambers.

“We’ll be back,” he assured them.

Residents who live near the 42-acre site have vehemently opposed Beazer’s project, which would put a complex of two-story tract homes on the property at Kimball and Telegraph roads.

The development would result in more children having to be bused to schools in west Ventura, opponents argue, while clogging streets with traffic and robbing the city of diminishing green space.

“This project does not warrant further study,” resident Matt Capritto told the commission. “This is a common sense issue. We don’t need another housing tract in Ventura. There is no community support for this project.”

Although the land is now planted with citrus, it has been zoned for residential development since the 1960s, and the City Council gave Beazer the right to develop there two years ago.

But since the land was earmarked for development, things have changed dramatically in east Ventura.

Last month, the City Council voted to suspend housing allocations for a year as a result of new population statistics that show the city is growing faster than set limits.

And, as a result of classroom overcrowding, the Ventura Unified School District recently approved a plan to bus 185 Buena High School students to Ventura High School next fall.

Planning commissioners have acknowledged that Beazer’s proposal comes at a bad time. And some commissioners said Tuesday that the demands on the city were reason alone to deny reconsideration of the project.

“Beazer has the right to develop this land, but the question is when, and the question is how,” said Commissioner Al Okuma, who voted against the request.

“I really do want to work with the applicant,” he said. “But . . . there is an issue of trust that has been broken down.”

Before Tuesday’s meeting, Commissioner Jacobs said the developer deserved a chance to take the project back to the drawing board and work with the neighbors to bring a better proposal forward--a promise the developer spelled out in a letter to residents earlier this month.

The developer plans to hold a series of community workshops over the next few months.

“The original design I did not support,” she said. “But I feel if they have taken into account all the comments of the Planning Commission, perhaps they can come up with a better design.”