Moorpark Voters Reject Project

Moorpark voters, for the second time in seven years, have overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to expand their city’s borders in order to make room for a large-scale luxury home development.

The developer of North Park Village had gone to great lengths to win public support, including promising to create a 52-acre lake and swimming lagoon and a 2,121-acre nature preserve for all to enjoy.

But in a special election Tuesday, 5,673 people opposed the $1-billion project, which would have brought 1,680 homes and 6,000 new residents to the hills north of Moorpark College. Only 1,818 voters supported the project.

Turnout was high; about 45% of the city’s registered voters cast ballots.

“This is twice now that residents of the city have made clear their expectations for growth and development,” Mayor Patrick Hunter, a leader of one of the two groups opposing the project, said Wednesday. “Our residents are well-informed, educated and they come to sound conclusions.”

Hunter said the development would have generated 23,000 additional daily vehicle trips and likely forced the need for a second high school. He said the homes would never have produced enough property tax revenue to pay for long-term road maintenance and other public services.

In 1999, Moorpark passed Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources laws that require voter approval before the city annexes land for new development. The proposed project’s 3,586 acres are just outside the city limits and would have had to be annexed from unincorporated Ventura County.

“People exercised their control and resoundingly said ‘no’ to urban sprawl,” said Councilwoman Roseann Mikos, co-chair of the No on North Park group. “This is grass-roots politics at its best.”

County Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Linda Parks, a long-time growth-control advocate, said this vote should make other developers think twice before trying to build beyond city borders.

“The peoples’ voice was heard,” Parks said. “That’s the whole point of SOAR, to take these major land-use decisions and let the people have a voice.”

In the same 1999 special election in which they approved a local SOAR ordinance, Moorpark residents also voted to reject the Hidden Creek Ranch project, a 3,221-home development planned for the same site as North Park Village.

In a seven-week campaign leading up to Tuesday’s vote, the developer, Newport Beach-based Village Development, vastly outspent opponents. But it wasn’t able to persuade enough voters that its project -- and more than $150 million in fees and donations to the city, school and college district -- would overcome potential problems.

“To see an overwhelming landslide against us was very surprising and shocking to me,” Jim Baldwin, a principal in Village Development, said Tuesday night as the early returns came in. “I’m convinced that you can’t get anything done through the local electorate here -- because we had a project with something for everybody.”

Baldwin said his investment group spent more than four years conducting neighborhood focus groups and meetings to address concerns about traffic and the environment.