Council Approves Plan for Sycamore Village

The City Council voted unanimously Monday night to give environmental approval to a developer’s plan to build more than 150 residences on one of the last remaining large tracts of land on Ventura’s west side.

The proposed project, called Sycamore Village, is to be built on 20 acres of lemon groves west of the intersection of North Ventura Avenue and Shoshone Street--adjacent to Kinko’s international headquarters.

It would include 106 single-family homes, 50 condominiums, a 53,000-square-foot storage structure for residents, a 3,800-square-foot library and community center, a segment of the Ventura River bike trail and, as befits the name, sycamore trees.

The council voted to give the project environmental clearance provided the developers agree to certain conditions--pay a $56,135 air quality mitigation fee, submit a soils and geology report and pay 45% of the $67,500 cost of installing a traffic signal at Shoshone Street and Ventura Avenue.

There are also archeological considerations because the Chumash once lived near the banks of the Ventura River. If developers unearth any artifacts, a qualified archeologist and a Native American representative will be called in before any further excavation is done. Work would cease until the significance of the find could be determined.

These conditions, as laid out in documents prepared by the Environmental Impact Report Committee headed by Assistant City Manager Steve Chase, will now become part of the project’s plans.

The project now returns to the city’s Design Review Committee, where it had earlier received conceptual approval for its mainly Mediterranean-style homes. The Planning Commission would also have to approve a planning permit plan, a zone change for part of the property and a tract map.

Sycamore Village drew attention last year after the Planning Commission initially refused to give the project the housing allocations it needed. But the council later decided to borrow allocations set aside for unspecified downtown residential projects and grant them to the developer.

Those allocations were transferred after negotiations between Councilman Ray Di Guilio and the Neel family that resulted in a promise to build a badly needed west side library as part of the deal.

The site of the proposed development was once the home of E.P. Foster’s daughter, Edith Neel Mercer, and her son, Henry Neel, whose children have agreed to donate the land for the library and pay for its construction.

Steve Perlman, a land consultant working for developer Stan Bulmer of Los Angeles County, said earlier this year that they hoped to begin construction on the project by year’s end.