Camarillo Center Project Hopes for Local Support

The developers behind plans to build homes, a hotel and shopping center on 329 acres south of the Ventura Freeway hope to win approval for the project by donating about 65 acres to local recreation and community groups.

The Village Center proposal would be on agricultural land along Petit Street in Camarillo. Plans call for 1,000 single-family and multifamily homes to be built during the next decade, as well as a major hotel and conference center. There would also be a neighborhood retail center with a supermarket.

“We’ve intentionally designed a project we think will gain the support of nonprofits, and sports groups particularly, because we find they are greatly underserved,” said Dennis Hardgrave, a local planner heading the project for a trio of developers.

By promising more than 50 acres to the Pleasant Valley Recreation and Park District for baseball and soccer fields, five acres to the Camarillo Family YMCA for a new community center and 10 acres for a new elementary school, the backers have begun to find community support for their project.

The Camarillo City Council shelved plans to study the Village Center proposal last year over concerns that it might conflict with the local Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources initiative approved by voters in November. Because the project is within city limits the new law would have no effect, planners said.

But Tony Boden, director of city planning and community development, suggested the city slow down and wait for other major projects in Camarillo to take shape before devoting too much energy to Village Center.

The developers are “making all these pitches to all these nonprofits, but what’s the urgency?” Boden asked.

“They’re trying to whip everybody into a feverish mood to convince the council it’s the thing to do now, and I don’t know what the hurry is,” he said.