Proposal to Redevelop Farmland Questioned

A state agency has informed city officials that they could run afoul of state law by designating 213 acres of prime farmland as part of a “blighted area” to be redeveloped.

Plans for a regional shopping center, called the Oxnard Town Center Plan, call for including the agricultural land in the city’s 1,983-acre redevelopment area, making it cheaper for developers to build and keeping more tax money in the community.

But in a letter to city staff, state Department of Conservation officials cite two California Supreme Court cases in which such an approach is barred.

“Agricultural land and open space land have repeatedly been held to be off-limits to redevelopment agencies,” the March 6 letter states. “In each case, the court reasoned that open space and agricultural lands have a positive public value and therefore are incompatible with redevelopment.”

In addition, a new state law passed last year severely restricts efforts to place agricultural land within a redevelopment district.

Closer to home, an attorney representing Ventura appeared at a recent Oxnard Planning Commission meeting to caution against proceeding with the project, which would lie next to Oxnard’s border with Ventura.

“The draft [environmental impact report] is lacking in information and detail to give any reader on planet Earth any . . . full accounting on the environmental effects,” of the project, said Steve Chase, assistant to the Ventura city manager, on Monday. “How in the world does farmland for a commercial project such as the Town Center . . . qualify as blight?”

Oxnard officials say they plan to address all concerns in the final environmental impact report. Because the project, originally proposed in 1985, is in debt and still needs improvements to infrastructure, Richard Maggio, Oxnard special projects manager, said it should be considered both a physically and economically blighted area.

Plans to build the regional shopping center have won strong support from council members, who say it could help regenerate growth and stimulate Oxnard’s economy.

“We believe that the Town Center area is where the regional shopping center should be. It is off the freeway and more convenient for the residents to get to,” Councilman John Zaragoza said.

Zaragoza charged that Ventura’s complaints are just retaliation for Oxnard’s recent suit against the neighboring city’s plans to expand the Buenaventura Mall.

“We are suing them for the EIR, and I’m sure they figure there are some holes here, too, and I think they want to get back at us,” Zaragoza said.

Plans to build a regional shopping area were halted by a lawsuit filed by the city of Ventura in 1985, Maggio said.

After the two cities reached a settlement on improving access to the site from the Ventura Freeway and surrounding streets, the recession hit and sent the project close to foreclosure. It is now $12 million in debt, Maggio said.

To ensure that the property would not fall into foreclosure, the City Council agreed to pay the $3.3 million in property tax debt that the developer owed the county on the project, said John McKinney, assistant treasurer/tax collector for the county.

Two office buildings stand on the property, located near the freeway and Oxnard Boulevard on the eastern border with Ventura. Some of the infrastructure, such as sewer systems, was started but not completed, Maggio said. But most of the remaining land is still used for farming.

Redevelopment agencies were created in the 1950s as a financing tool to help cities pay for improvements to areas that were considered economically downtrodden.

The term blight has not been defined precisely in law. But state law does say that a blighted area must be a “serious physical, social or economic burden on the community which cannot reasonably be expected to be reversed or alleviated by private industry acting alone.”

Some critics of redevelopment funding say the definition of blight has been skewed to benefit cities that want to facilitate development.

Reacting to the vast number of cities statewide that have successfully used redevelopment money to pave over farmland, the California Legislature passed new legislation last year, stiffening the requirements on what could pass as a blighted area.

Richard Gann, head of the Paul Gann Citizens Committee, an anti-tax lobbying organization, said his group plans to sponsor a 1998 initiative that would require voter approval for any form of debt-based project, including redevelopment.

“They have the power to allot debt without voter approval,” said Gann. “Every nickel in taxes that is collected goes back into [the redevelopment agency’s] coffers. . . . It’s gotten so ridiculous that they are identifying farms as blighted.”

In addition to the debt issue, farm preservationists and conservationists are concerned about the total number of prime farm acres that this project and two other proposed plans will pave over.

Together with a proposed Northwest Community Plan--which would convert more than 300 acres of farmland into homes and expand the River Ridge Golf Course--and the proposed 815-acre Southeast Community Plan, Oxnard would lose more than 1,300 prime farm acres.

Those two projects would have to be annexed into the city’s sphere of influence.

“I am deeply concerned, as is every sensible person in Ventura County, when thousands of acres are proposed to be taken out of farming,” said Carla Bard of the Environmental Defense Center. “You add those numbers up and it seems to me that Ventura County is getting perilously close to the point where farming will not be a viable economy. This should be a wake-up call to the ranchers to protect ag land in Ventura County.”