Port Hueneme Parking Lot Plan Has Residents Seething

It’s not often in Southern California that residents clamor for a new housing development. But in coastal Port Hueneme, a sea of new homes apparently beats an ocean of cars.

Homeowners in the sleepy Ventura County city are demanding that a nearby commercial port drop plans to acquire 17 acres of industrial land for a parking lot in favor of a rival proposal to build 150 homes on the same spot.

Residents say using the space for the housing development, which would include single-family homes, town houses and a public park, would be preferable to allowing it to become a short-term parking lot for thousands of luxury cars rolled off of ships each year.

They are particularly incensed that the port district, governed by a public board, is planning to use its eminent domain powers to acquire the land for the cars.

Port commissioners began actively pursuing the property after the housing developer, John Laing Homes of Newport Beach, had already spent two years and $2 million to gain the community’s support for a new subdivision, said nearby resident Katrina Lyon.

“People are irate,” Lyon said. “Laing made a lot of concessions to make this development acceptable. And now, at the last minute, this public entity thinks it can just grab the land.”

Neighbors and city officials raised such an uproar at a public meeting earlier in January that the port’s governing board tabled for a month a decision on whether to proceed with eminent domain.

Commissioners wanted more time to weigh opponents’ concerns, said Ray Fosse, president of the Oxnard Harbor District, which operates the Port of Hueneme. But the port doesn’t have a lot of choices when it comes to expansion, Fosse said.

Meanwhile, the cars keep coming in.

By 2008, as many as 300,000 vehicles will arrive at the port’s docks each year, a 23% increase from 2004 levels, he said. Those Jaguars, BMWs and Range Rovers have to go somewhere before they are prepared for sale and distributed to individual dealerships, Fosse said.

“We’re out of space, and the further you go from the docks, the less convenient it is for our customers,” he said.

By promoting the small deep-water harbor as an alternative to the busy Los Angeles and Long Beach ports, Fosse said, commissioners have in recent years attracted a number of overseas auto manufacturers, who like the attention given to their products.

“They get treated well here,” Fosse said. “They are big fish in our little pond.”

But the port’s rapid growth has caused conflicts along the way.

The port’s commissioners last year lobbied Congress and the Pentagon in an attempt to take control of vacant land at Naval Base Ventura County, with which it shares port waters. That raised the ire of base and local government officials who were engaged in a campaign to keep the installation off a government closure list.

Base leaders won and the commissioners backed off. But that forced the port district to look elsewhere to expand, and the 17-acre parcel just south of Hueneme Road is less than a mile from its docks, Fosse said.

The port’s plan calls for up to 2,660 cars to be stored on the site temporarily before being driven or shipped by rail to a second facility farther east where automobiles are prepared for distribution. The lot would be lighted by 60-foot-high floodlights and surrounded by barbed wire to deter thefts.

That’s part of what upsets residents. Though the site is in a run-down, mostly industrial area, owners of the condominiums that abut the land on two sides aren’t happy with the prospect of staring down onto a brightly lighted, fenced block of automobiles, Lyon said.

“There are alternative sites available,” she said. “But they are arrogant and determined to move forward with this one.”

Port Hueneme approved Laing’s project in February 2005 after a lengthy review process, said community development director Greg Brown.

As part of the deal, Laing Homes agreed to create a half-acre public park and build nine town homes for Port Hueneme’s affordable housing program, Brown said.

The city also would reap significant tax revenues, about $6.5 million over five years, if the homes were built, he said.

At the city’s direction, Laing approached the port district at the start of the process to make sure it was not interested in the property, Brown said. Bill Ratazzi, president of the company’s Los Angeles and Ventura counties division, said the port’s director, Bill Buenger, told him the district had no interest in the property.

Laing bought the property in 2003 and moved forward with the housing project. In late 2004, just before the city’s approval, Buenger called back and said the port district was interested in the land, Ratazzi said: “He said the port had decided it was a critical piece of property for them and that they wanted it.”

Buenger was not available for comment. But Fosse said the port intended all along to use the property eventually, and that the message was “lost in communication.”

Port critics say the conflict shows that commissioners are not operating the agency in an open manner. They are also suspicious of the port district’s plans for a railroad spur -- rarely used now -- that runs through a residential neighborhood from the port to the 17-acre property.

Fosse said there is no plan to use that portion of the line to transport cars. But he expressed little sympathy for residents’ worries that it could one day be reactivated.

“If I was concerned about that, I wouldn’t have bought a house right next to the railway,” Fosse said.