Development : Wood Ranch Advances, Along With Grade School

More than a decade after the construction of the first Wood Ranch homes, a developer Wednesday submitted to city officials plans to finish the massive housing project and pave the way toward building the long-awaited Wood Ranch elementary school.

New Urban West Inc. said it hopes to build 652 homes on land owned by the Simi Valley Unified School District, between 1st Street and Wood Ranch Parkway. As filed, the plans would modify an existing development agreement and plans already approved by city officials.

Should the Planning Commission and City Council endorse the modifications, construction could begin early next year, said Tom Zanic, vice president of New Urban West.

Although the Santa Monica-based firm would not build the school, $6.1 million from its purchase of the district’s 1,850-acre property would go toward the construction of the facility, Zanic said.

City officials said the school, which has been designed to hold 500 students, is needed to ease crowding at Madera Elementary.

“The pressures in Wood Ranch and the community as a whole to build that school are building and building,” said Mayor Greg Stratton, who lives in Wood Ranch’s Lake Park neighborhood. “I’m hopeful that [New Urban West] can get the money to the school district to build that school.”

The community’s need for a school, Zanic said, is one reason his company’s plans have so far drawn support from some homeowners.

“People see a real strong connection between our progress and the building of the school,” he said.

An elementary school was part of the original plan for Wood Ranch, which was approved by the city in 1982. As proposed, the development would have created 4,000 homes in Simi Valley’s southwest corner, where the city’s borders brush against Thousand Oaks.

But in 1993, Olympia/Roberts--the parent company of the original Wood Ranch developer--filed bankruptcy, leaving a portion of the project unfinished. Olympia/Roberts then gave the school district the still undeveloped acreage in lieu of $6.2 million it had promised in order to build the school.

Last month, the district reached an agreement with New Urban West to complete the housing project. New Urban West now has an option to buy the land, and said it would do so once it wins city approval for its plans.

Those plans vary little from what Olympia/Roberts originally proposed, Zanic said. The new neighborhood, called Long Canyon, will contain mostly single-family homes on lots ranging from 4,000 square feet to five acres in size.

About 1,550 acres of the property would remain open space.

The proposed changes would rearrange the placement of some homes and narrow the width of an extension of 1st Street that will run through the project. City plans call for a four-lane extension connecting 1st Street with Wood Ranch Parkway.

Zanic said that all four lanes are not needed to handle the road’s projected traffic now that the city no longer plans to extend it into Thousand Oaks. Stratton, however, expressed reservations, saying that the most recent traffic study predicted 15,000 cars on the road each day.

“That is not a two-lane road, I think, unless no one goes at the same time,” he said.