Moorpark Council to Vote on Proposed Urgent Care Project

After more than a year of negotiation, a plan to create Moorpark’s first urgent care medical center could soon be underway.

The City Council is set to decide tonight whether to issue a commercial construction permit to DeeWayne Jones. Jones, a Moorpark resident who practices dentistry in Santa Paula, wants to create an office complex that would include an urgent care center, retail shops, business offices and restaurants.

The main section of Jones’ 57,300-square-foot project would be a two-story building off Los Angeles Avenue, near the intersection of Liberty Bell Road, that would include 8,000 square feet on the first floor designated for a medical center to provide occupational and physical therapy and treat patients who are not in a life-threatening situation.

Moorpark, which has 28,000 residents, has no hospital facilities. Even with an urgent care clinic, residents would still have to drive to hospitals in Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks or Camarillo for emergency room treatment.

Jones said he is negotiating with Columbia Los Robles Hospital in Thousand Oaks to operate the clinic as a satellite office.

The project also calls for two additional buildings, each on nearly one-acre parcels, to be built along Los Angeles Avenue. Jones said Baja Fresh has agreed to bring its fast-food Mexican menu to one of the buildings, but a final agreement has yet to be worked out.

For the council members, it was the medical center that kept the project viable.

“That’s been one of the priorities and the reason I supported the project from the beginning,” said Councilman John Wozniak.

But before the council votes, the city must still determine an exact amount of fees that Jones must pay to the Air Pollution Control District. The fees, used to compensate for the added pollution expected from future tenants, was a point of disagreement when the project was the subject of a City Council public hearing on Sept. 3.

Engineers that Jones hired for his project estimated he should pay about $2,500 in fees to the district, while the city estimated the amount at $129,000. The engineers argue that they have used the most recent formulas for calculating the mitigation figures.

“I think the big discussion has to be the dollars and the difference,” Wozniak said of tonight’s meeting.

However, the project has passed many of its major hurdles. The first was getting the city to rezone the residential area for commercial use and determine what type of businesses to allow in the project.

Last February, the council devised an agreement to rezone the site as a commercial property, but restrict its use to prohibit businesses such as taverns, nightclubs, hotels or lumberyards.

If the plan is approved tonight, Jones said he expects the project to be finished as early as next summer.

Though Jones has been a dentist for 37 years, he said he doesn’t have plans to establish a new dental office in Moorpark closer to his home.

“It takes a lot of time to open a new office and my plate’s full just trying to get this project off and running,” Jones said. “I just don’t think I want to run another office.”

But with a laugh he added, “Talk to me in a year.”