Council Discusses Firm’s Plan to Build Trigger Plant
The City Council Wednesday night discussed plans by Special Devices Inc. to build new headquarters on the east end of town, part of the city’s two-year effort to lure the Newhall-based manufacturing firm to Moorpark.
The company is seeking permission to level about 28 acres of an undeveloped hillside east of the intersection of California 23 and New Los Angeles Avenue, and build offices and a plant to make explosive triggers for missiles and automobile air bags.
Despite the potentially hazardous nature of the company’s product, the project has generated few objections. The only vocal opposition has come from a local environmental group that objected to the plant’s proposed location--hilly, vacant land designated as open space by the city’s General Plan.
One reason for the warm welcome: The project could eventually bring more than 700 manufacturing and management jobs to Moorpark.
“We need this kind of job in the city,” Councilwoman Eloise Brown said before the meeting.
To ensure that the company delivers as many jobs as promised, the development agreement sets employment targets for Special Devices and includes penalties if those goals are not met.
The agreement anticipates that at least 490 employees will work at the facility during its first year of operation, with about 225 more hired during the following two years. Although the agreement allows exceptions to those goals, the company could be forced to pay the city $25,000 for each year it misses the employment targets during the first three years of operation.
“This is a method of guaranteeing that we both get something out of it,” Brown said.
The agreement includes other perks for the city. About 280 acres of the 300-acre property would be left as open space and protected by conservation easements that block future development. About 22 acres along the Arroyo Simi, which cuts across the property’s northern boundary, would be deeded as open space to the city by Special Devices.
The Moorpark branch of the Environmental Coalition, a group devoted to the protection of open space and farmland, objects to any development on the site, which has been identified by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy as a wildlife movement corridor.
Company executives had considered moving the firm to Arizona after they outgrew their Newhall facility. But a team of city, state and Southern California Edison representatives persuaded the company to relocate to Moorpark by assembling a $6-million package of tax breaks and reduced or waived fees.
