Truck Yard Is Last Straw for Colony Residents

Dixie and Ray Aguirre could handle the trains rumbling past their home on Avenida Colonia. The couple figured the train tracks and the occasional chugging had been part of Virginia Colony, one of Moorpark’s oldest neighborhoods, as long as they or anyone else could remember.

But over the past decade, they say, a series of changes has made living in their three-block neighborhood a lot less tolerable.

Looming to the west is the Moorpark Freeway interchange that created a steady buzz of trucks and cars when it was completed four years ago; to the north, auto parts maker Kavlico Corp. has put up a mound of dirt along its property line, blocking a view of the once grassy slopes; to the south trees have been removed and part of the hillside has been lopped off to make room for Special Devices Inc., which creates explosive devices used in car air bags and missiles.

So when a proposal surfaced two months ago to add a truck storage area on the western end of the neighborhood--within 200 feet of homes--residents like the Aguirres said that was too much.

“Whatever Moorpark doesn’t want in their backyard, they put over here,” said Dixie Aguirre, 64, as she stood in front of the 3-acre site for the proposed storage lot. “We figure enough is enough. We don’t want any more additions. No more noise, no more activities.”

Residents of Virginia Colony are joining forces to oppose Thousand Oaks business owners Madelaine Shenkel and Bill Tanner, who want to create a storage facility for 22 trucks and trailers in an area now covered by bamboo and shrubbery.

The City Council is expected to decide Nov. 5 whether to approve Shenkel Trucking Inc.’s request for a temporary permit for the truck yard at 1425 Los Angeles Ave.

“This may pass, but it will not pass quietly,” said Tony Simen, one of more than a dozen residents who hope to defeat the proposal. “They’ll drag us kicking and screaming.”

Shenkel declined to comment, as did John Newton, a Moorpark-based land-use consultant representing the company.

The company isn’t new to town. Shenkel Trucking has operated in Moorpark for 19 years.

Until 1996, the company stored its vehicles--from cement trucks to 18-wheelers--at an A-C Construction Corp. site on Spring Road.

Complaints from residents in the nearby Peach Hills neighborhood about noise, glare from the lights and the night activity at the lot led to the move. During the past two years, the company received nearly 100 noise complaints, according to the city.

Shenkel and Tanner then relocated their facility to Crawford Canyon, just west of the Moorpark Freeway on the north side of Los Angeles Avenue.

Before the move, the city’s planning staff notified the company that it would be in violation of zoning codes if it moved to that location, but the company ignored the warning an relocated its trucks to the nearly 5-acre lot.

After it moved, the company submitted an application to the city asking to have the area zoned for industrial use.

And residents in the hillside homes above Crawford Canyon complained not only about the noise and traffic, but bitterly protested that the company located in a residential area.

When the council members learned of the code violations in April, they decided to allow the company to continue operating but only if it promised there would be no building of any kind on the property.

“That was the promise we were given,” said Councilman John Wozniak. “Then a couple of days later they started building on the property. Then we voted to rescind because they were violating what they were supposed to do.”

Wozniak said the company began to build some sort of patio cover to work on their trucks, which prompted council members to rescind their approval of the facility in May.

The company hopes to get the Crawford Canyon area rezoned and has applied for a temporary permit to relocate their facility to Virginia Colony for about a year.

Tanner and Shenkel have told the council at earlier meetings that there are just too few areas in Moorpark where their company could relocate.

“To me, they needed to be off the property [Crawford Canyon] that’s for sure,” Wozniak said. “But they also needed a place to go. I didn’t want to kick a business out of the city. Part of the reasoning was because the company had been around for 18 or 19 years. Our job isn’t to kick them out of Moorpark.”

Yet for many Virginia Colony residents, a truck storage yard in their neighborhood would be one inconvenience more than they’re willing to accept. They say they have have to suffer too much already because of the surrounding development.

Ray Aguirre’s mother, who lives across the street from him on Avenida Colonia, used to look out the window and see a grassy hillside. Now when she looks out her kitchen window, which is framed by a lemon tree, all she sees is a dirt mound placed there by Kavlico Corp. to create a separation from its parking lot.

When Simen looks out his backyard, he sees a canyon that is being filled with dirt from a hill that has been graded to make way for Special Devices, which plans to bring 600 jobs when it relocates from Newhall.

“That whole hill was beautiful with live oak trees--200, 300 years old--and they just ripped it out,” Simen said.

Adding trucks to this neighborhood, which will surely bring more noise and traffic, would is too much to ask of one neighborhood, residents said.

“We’re just tired of getting short-changed,” Simen said.