Panel to Consider Buying Land to Widen Lewis Road

Ventura County supervisors are scheduled to vote today to acquire nearly 45 acres of rural land along Lewis Road to widen the main route to Cal State Channel Islands.

The land, valued at $1.8 million and split among 13 owners, is along the portion of the road between the Ventura Freeway and Hueneme Road. Under the estimated $32-million project, the roadway will be widened from two to four lanes to accommodate increased traffic to the new university campus.

Property owners will have a chance to voice their concerns before the Board of Supervisors votes. But all the owners have agreed to sell their land to the county at fair-market value, said Steve Williams, manager of real estate services for Ventura County.

Williams doubted that the supervisors would have to use eminent domain to acquire any of the properties.

“There’s no money issues here; we’re fair in our values,” he said. “This is a classic road widening with farmlands. It’s been going on for hundreds of years.”

Negotiations continue on details of the widening project. Complications remain regarding improving a sound barrier near one home, relocating some driveways and rerouting irrigation systems, Williams said. But he expects the talks to be completed soon.

Tom Vujovich, an Oxnard vegetable farmer who will lose 14 acres of his ranch to the road expansion, said the county’s decision to widen the road angered him, though there’s not much he can do about it.

Vujovich said he missed the county’s announcements two years ago about the plans to expand Lewis Road. By the time he got a lawyer to fight the proposal, it was too late.

“My options were to go and protest it to the supervisors, but they told me they’d already approved it years ago,” he said. “Some people will tell you that’s progress and that’s where things are going. But I don’t know, I guess I’m just old-fashioned. I just hate to see farmland go to highway use.”