Camarillo in a Struggle Over Its Identity : Population: The city, a blend of suburbia and agriculture, has become the front line in a countywide battle over farmland preservation.

Outside the stately Victorian, the keepers of Camarillo’s history are honoring descendants of the pioneer families who helped to build the community.

Wearing a cowboy hat, Mayor Stanley J. Daily calls forward his sister, Jean Daily Underwood, a 20-year trustee at the high school district.

They are the grandchildren of W.P. Daily, who settled on a nearby farm in the 1880s. And Daily is welcoming his sister as one of the historical society’s new “dons and donas” for 1992.

“I’m very proud of you, sis,” the mayor whispers.

At the other end of town, huge earthmovers are scraping a hill bare and rearranging it. A Japanese company is spending $115 million to build an exclusive country club. The best lots sell for $1.2 million. Club memberships are $55,000.

But Charles Stricklin, director of the Spanish Hills project, puts a small-town spin on the big money and big development rapidly transforming the Camarillo landscape.

“When people come to see us, they want to know about the community,” Stricklin says. “We tell them, ‘Why don’t you go down to the farmers’ market?’

“The people here are warm and unassuming,” Stricklin adds. “The hospital and the Rotary Club are very important to them. It reminds me of the way I was brought up in Texas.”

It is that vision of Camarillo as a slice of small-town Americana that both developers and pioneer families seem to share.

But Camarillo, the geographical center of Ventura County, is at a political crossroads as it struggles to balance its pastoral heritage against the pressures of growth.

The city--a blend of the suburban east county and the agricultural west that is fast approaching maximum build-out--has become the front line in a countywide battle over the preservation of farmland.

And the outcome of that battle could help to shape the very look of Ventura County in coming years, determining whether the suburban sprawl covering much of the eastern county will eventually consume the farmlands that extend beyond the western slopes of the Conejo Grade.

Later this month, the City Council will take up a citizens’ committee request that 1,653 acres of farmland--13% of the city--be kept in crops if at all possible.

Camarillo’s decision also will have implications on broader regional strategies to retain the stretches of cropland that keep the county’s farm industry alive and maintain its rural nature.

To the east, the farms and ranches of Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley were long ago covered with houses for white-collar workers who commute to Los Angeles.

Growth Confrontations

But confrontations over growth regularly flare in the west county, where city boundaries meet the fertile soil of the Santa Clara and Las Posas valleys and the Oxnard Plain.

Santa Clara Valley residents angrily fought the new jail that Ventura County is now building on a citrus grove near Santa Paula. And protesters packed Oxnard City Council chambers two weeks ago to try to block services to a new high school planned for a vegetable field.

Even in Moorpark, an east county community of explosive growth that expects to double its population, the City Council recently heeded requests to leave prime farmlands to its west out of a new development plan.

And in June the County Board of Supervisors approved in concept--but left unfunded--a private Agricultural Land Trust aimed at protecting thousands of acres of prime topsoil from urban encroachment.

In Camarillo, the issue has reached the critical stage because the fast-growing city is running out of space.

Land the city set aside for new houses and shopping centers has rapidly filled as Camarillo’s population has increased 4 1/2 times to 56,000 in the 28 years since incorporation.

And pressure is mounting to allow construction on the fields of row crops along the Ventura Freeway corridor that now serve as the visual gateway to the community.

“If we don’t fight now, we might as well not fight at all,” said Bill Torrence, a committee member who heads a large homeowners’ group. “If we don’t fight, we’re going to be another San Fernando Valley.”

Torrence is one of hundreds of city residents who for two years have noisily protested a Sammis Co. proposal to clear vegetable fields at the base of the Conejo Grade for a shopping center or planned community. Nearly 8,000 opponents signed one petition.

The City Council has delayed a decision on Sammis’ plan for a mini-city of 1,100 residences until members decide what direction they will take on the larger issue of farmland preservation.

“Once we make that decision, everything else will fall into place,” Mayor Daily said.

Ventura County and its 10 cities already generally protect farmlands in designated greenbelts and other open spaces by allowing large-scale construction only in or near cities.

That has clustered construction and kept cities separate, avoiding the sprawl of Orange and Los Angeles counties, where one community often blends facelessly into the next.

But in Camarillo, the battle has taken on a different twist. The 42-member citizens’ committee formed to help update the city’s General Plan not only favors saving the greenbelts that surround the city, but also many farms within the city limits.

That distinction has split the City Council down the middle.

“The whole premise of greenbelts and orderly development is to make sure that development occurs within city limits,” Councilwoman Charlotte Craven said.

Approval of the committee’s recommendation “would be a no-growth mandate,” Councilman David M. Smith said. “By the year 2000 or 2010 it will have stopped growth. I don’t see any middle ground on that.”

But Councilman Michael Morgan, an opponent of the Sammis project, and Ken Gose, who was elected to the council on a slow-growth platform in 1990, frame the issue differently.

Morgan said the council’s vote on farmland preservation and on the Sammis Co. project will help decide what Camarillo will look like from its Conejo Grade entry for decades to come.

“When people come off that hill they say, ‘This is a beautiful area, a beautiful city, because we’ve preserved some open space,’ ” Morgan said. “I think Camarillo is not just a test, but a model of how to preserve greenbelts and how to make the quality of life stand. That’s what this is about, keeping some breathing room.”

Gose, a onetime Tennessee farm boy with a degree in agriculture, said:

“I don’t want any of the good, flat agricultural land taken and houses put on it until we’re absolutely sure that the benefits outweigh the costs. We ought to look into what it will do for us 20 years from now.”

Swing Vote

The apparent swing vote on the council is Daily. He won’t say which way he’s leaning. He did, however, hint at the direction.

“Coming from an agricultural family, I really feel farmland is very important to the sense of ruralness of our community,” he said. “And I think we have to keep that perception alive.”

While there is disagreement as to where Camarillo should draw its line in the soil for developers, old-timers and newcomers alike say the city has largely retained the qualities that drew them to the community in the first place--low crime, good schools and a rural flavor that has survived three decades of dizzying growth.

For all its sprawling subdivisions and small shopping centers, residents say, their city has kept its small-town appeal.

“You know it’s still kind of a little haven here in Southern California,” said 10-year resident Marianne Porter, a curator at the Pleasant Valley Historical Museum. “The concerts in the park are the way life used to be everywhere. But it’s hard to find that now.”

Outdoor Concerts

Ten times this summer, large concert crowds have brought their lawn chairs, blankets and picnic baskets to the grassy slope that encircles the red-tiled bandstand next to City Hall.

Senior citizens in wheelchairs and teen-agers on bicycles joined clusters of families and friends at a performance of Caribbean music one recent Saturday evening, as the Lions Club sold barbecue burgers and supporters of children’s music hawked popcorn.

Earlier that day, in a pioneer ritual revived last year, Camarillo’s farmers’ market sprang to life under large trees in a parking lot on Ventura Boulevard in the city’s old downtown.

“Fresh corn, still growin’ when the rooster was crowin,’ ” sang Daryl Smith of Attaboy Acres as he rhythmically whacked the tops off cobs of juicy white corn. “Stopped pickin’ at dawn. Can’t get fresher unless you grow it yourself.”

Kurt Stiernelof, 25, of Camarillo bought a cob and ate it raw. “Look over there,” he said. “I’ve never seen fresh beans before.”

Keith and Leslie Graupmann, a young couple from Minnesota who had stopped to check out the corn, said they have been coming to the Saturday market since moving to town six months ago.

The couple settled in Camarillo, Keith Graupmann said, in part because “it gives you the feel of a small town when you come over the hill. It’s not like suburbia, where all the towns run into each other.”

“It’s friendly,” Leslie Graupmann said. “When you take walks, everybody says hi. Even perfect strangers.”

For Jan and Dale Ackerman, residents of Las Posas Estates since 1958, the open-air market is as much a social gathering as a shopping trip. “We patronize it every week,” Jan Ackerman said. “Camarillo’s larger, but it’s still small-town to us.”

“I think everybody here just wishes,” Dale Ackerman added, “that the rest of the world would keep on driving by.”

To County Supervisor Maggie Kildee, who had set up a table under a blue cabana to talk with constituents, Camarillo remains the town it was when she moved there 26 years ago and began teaching school.

“That’s still here,” she said. “It’s the history of being in a town where people know and care about each other and work hard for the schools and the hospital and the kids’ organizations.”

At the same time, said Kildee, the wife of longtime clothing store owner Bob Kildee, “it’s a growing community with a lot of people who don’t know each other. And I don’t think I’d feel the same if I lived over in east Camarillo.”

The supervisor’s son-in-law, Bill Tanner, is a newcomer who moved into the new Mission Oaks subdivisions of east Camarillo during the 1980s and who leaves town every day to go to work.

In Transition

Tanner, who works for Exxon Corp. in Thousand Oaks, believes his adopted city is in a transition where old family businesses are losing out as chain stores move in.

Commuters such as himself value the city for its good planning and greenbelts, Tanner said. But they are not really a part of town in the same way as those who still go to stores specifically to find old friends behind the counter.

“Camarillo is experiencing what small towns experience,” Tanner said. “It’s growing up. And it’s unavoidable.”

Even after enormous growth, Camarillo has retained the family orientation it had when it was small.

Families live in three-fourths of the city’s residences, and owners occupy 72% of them--well above the norms for Ventura County.

Camarillo is also richer, older, safer, better educated and more politically conservative than the county as a whole.

Of the local cities, only Thousand Oaks has a higher income per person. Only Moorpark has a lower crime rate. The dropout rate at Camarillo High School was less than 2% in 1991, the lowest in the county. And Camarillo elementary students regularly score in the top 25% statewide when basic skills are tested.

About 88% of adults have high school diplomas, 27% have college degrees and 34% of all workers are managers or professionals--white-collar numbers far exceeding county and statewide norms.

No other city in the county votes more regularly than Camarillo, where Republicans outnumber Democrats 3 to 2. About 55% of its voters turned out for the June primary election. Countywide, the turnout was 46.5%

Camarillo has the county’s oldest population. That’s because 2,500 retirees live in gated Leisure Village and because so many “empty-nesters” have kept their large homes for tax purposes even though their children have left.

Camarillo lies in the bucolic heart of Pleasant Valley, and it seems to belong there.

But signs of tension and trouble are showing through.

Over the past two years, thefts and burglaries are up 65% citywide and residents who never thought of locking their doors before, now say they do.

Law enforcement analysts say Camarillo and the affluent east county increasingly have been hit by Los Angeles County thieves who sweep north on freeways in search of late-model cars and unprotected residences and businesses.

Local teen-agers also do their share of stealing, authorities said.

Ramon Espinosa, a resident of one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods--west of Lewis Road and north of the Ventura Freeway--said he knows several youngsters living in rented houses who dress as gang members and have stolen property on his street.

“This is not a bad neighborhood. It’s a petty type of crime,” said Espinosa, 47. “But the kids target certain homes and steal from them. And my buddy here had graffiti written on his garage.”

Police say there are no hard-core youth gangs in Camarillo, just “wanna-bes.”

But Espinosa, a painter, said, “Camarillo is not the sleepy little community it used to be. The businessmen who commute to L.A. can go up to the Heights and turn on their security systems, but down here in the flats, it’s happening.”

Racial tensions have also mounted in Camarillo in recent months.

The organizer of a Latino parents’ group filed a series of brutality and harassment complaints in April against deputies who police the city.

And in May, 40 Latino students and adults staged a public protest at Camarillo High School over what they called a pattern of racist behavior by school employees.

Principal Donald G. Bathgate denied the allegations, but he said some students had been unfairly labeled as gang members by some white parents and students because of their black jackets and clothing.

“Part of this was the result of disciplinary action (against Latino students),” Bathgate said. “It had not been an issue before.”

As a result, Bathgate said, he has brought in speakers to help teachers and administrators “understand Hispanic culture better.” About 17% of the school’s students are Latino and 73% are white.

The city of Camarillo was born from the efforts of the merchants who ran the stores on Ventura Boulevard in the early 1960s. And from the distressed land sales of the Camarillo family.

Adolfo Camarillo died at age 94 in 1958, leaving behind his 10,000-acre Rancho Calleguas and inheritance taxes that eventually forced his heirs to sell off more than half of the ranch at the foot of the Conejo Grade.

Real estate broker George Longo, the husband of Camarillo’s granddaughter Gloria, lured 3M Corp. to the family rancho and set up the town’s first industrial park on Dawson Drive near the ornate Victorian residence that Adolfo had built for his bride Isabella in 1890.

Then in 1962, Longo began to meet at Carmen’s Cafe for breakfast with boulevard business people who wanted to run their own community instead of leaving it in the hands of county supervisors.

Over coffee served up by Carmen Quinn, pharmacist Charles Cooley, insurance agent Bill Fuller, restaurant owner Bill Parker, shop owner Tweedy Camarillo Rouce and several others would sit with Longo and plan the future. Shoe store proprietor Earl Joseph, the city’s first mayor, would regularly attend.

“We had a beautiful little town in those days,” Longo said.

And big plans.

Incorporated in 1964, Camarillo was a city of 12,000 people and 5.5 square miles. Since then it has grown to 19 square miles and 56,000 people, moving rapidly north and east and filling dozens of subdivisions with names such as Blue Lace and Sunshine that quickly lost their distinctive identities.

As the city dispersed, so did the merchants, opening shops in the small malls that popped up around town and leaving Ventura Boulevard to slowly die as the focus of city business.

The Camarillo ranch--divided among four branches of the family--was transformed initially into the Camarillo Springs Golf Course and Mobil Home Park, the Lamplighter Mobil Home Park and Leisure Village.

Then in the 1970s, Pardee Construction Co. began its succession of Mission Oaks subdivisions on the old rancho. The company has built 2,200 houses and expects to build 2,000 more.

Meanwhile, the expanse of citrus orchards and row crops that had separated the Heights from central Camarillo all but disappeared.

After a doubling of population in the 1970s, city voters tried to apply the brakes in 1981, approving a ballot measure that limited housing allocations to 400 units a year.

Even so, the city grew by 14,506 residents, or 38%, in the 1980s, a breakneck rate surpassed only by Moorpark in fast-growing Ventura County.

Pressure on Council

That has put the Camarillo City Council on the spot.

About 22,500 of the 24,300 housing units planned for the city have been built or approved for construction. That means land designated for housing under the city’s General Plan will hold fewer than 1,900 additional dwellings.

Also, 90% of the land set aside for offices or stores has been developed. Only in the city’s large industrial parks--already the county’s most developed--is there plenty of room to grow.

“There’s really not a lot of expansion possible unless you start pushing into the agricultural properties,” Planning Director Matthew A. Boden said. “There’s going to be some real pressure to do that.”

The City Council is expected to begin debate Sept. 30 on a set of goals that its citizens’ committee wants included in a once-a-decade General Plan update.

Although recommending preservation of farmland, the committee gives the council some wiggle room. It says cropland could be converted “if a demonstrated need for the project is evident.”

The city Planning Commission has recommended a tougher standard. It would prohibit building on farmland unless there is both a city need for the project and no alternative non-farm site where it could be built.

The issue has forced council members to look into the future and try to decide what they want Camarillo to ultimately be--and how it should look in decades to come.

Councilwoman Craven said that is not an easy task.

“I have no idea,” she said. “All I can say is that if it’s within 200 feet of the freeway it’s going to look Spanish, because that’s in the General Plan. I’m not a visionary. That’s what planners are for. Our job is to react to them.”

Smith said the ideal size of Camarillo is something less than 100,000 people, but how much less he’s not sure.

Morgan and Gose said they would like to see a city not much larger than today’s, and one that still has some farmland within its borders. And Daily, who was a member of the original Camarillo council in 1964, said:

“I do believe it’s possible to keep part of your greenbelt and your farmland and your open space. Way back in the ‘60s when we created the General Plan, we created agricultural areas within the community. We attempted to have a well-ordered community.”

The current General Plan allows for about 67,000 people within city limits, and Boden said 70,000 to 75,000 might be included once city boundaries are rounded off by annexing existing neighborhoods such as portions of Camarillo Heights.

Since much of the city’s agriculturally zoned farmland is along the Ventura Freeway, a basic question for the council concerns what does it want built in the freeway corridor.

Farm owners, developers and many local business people argue that growth is inevitable along the freeway.

“I see the freeway corridor being developed from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara eventually,” said farmer Phil McGrath, whose family owns about 300 acres near the freeway and Central Avenue.

“I’m ready for those people who’ve been here 10 or 15 years and say they want it to stay the way it was when they moved here,” McGrath said. “My family has farmed this land since 1874. And if the (newcomers) want to keep development out of the heart of the farmland, the freeway corridor will have to be developed.”

Longo, whose branch of the Camarillo family still owns 130 acres of farm-zoned land near the freeway, said his farming operations are marginal and becoming more so every day because of the tax burdens and increasing cost of water.

“These idiots say, ‘We don’t want any more development. Let the farmers farm,’ ” Longo said. “Well, the farmers can’t afford to farm.”

The Sammis Co.’s project southeast of the freeway at Pleasant Valley Road will serve as an early test of the City Council’s political resolve to protect farmland.

Prime Target

City planners say Sammis’ 85-acre parcel and two adjoining farms included in the company’s plan were considered prime for eventual development when the council last changed its General Plan in 1984. As a result, the General Plan designates 10 of Sammis’ acres as an urban farmland reserve, Boden said.

“This was an area we felt was reasonable for eventual conversion,” the planner said. “The question is when and to what. Timing is very important in planning, and the question is whether the timing is now right for Sammis.”

While the political winds seem to be blowing against the current Sammis proposal, Camarillo faces enormous pressure to approve projects such as the huge outlet mall Sammis had initially planned for its property.

That project, which fell before a storm of residents’ protests last fall, would have provided the city $2.3 million a year in sales taxes. That compares with a total city budget of $30 million annually.

Camarillo needs more sales tax, in part because it gets such a small share of property taxes generated within its boundaries--just 4% compared with about 17% for most cities, City Manager Bill Little said.

Also, about 18% of revenue to the city’s $10-million general fund now comes from new construction, and that money will dry up as the city is built out, Little said.

“I’ve expressed a concern about that 18% not being there,” Little said. “Down the road we need to have an ongoing, long-term revenue source.”

So the city faces much the same predicament as its farmers. Both are tied emotionally to the farmlands that distinguish Camarillo. But both have a vested interest in their development.

Bert Lamb, great-grandson of Adolfo Camarillo and whose family has lived in the patriarch’s old Victorian home since 1977, understands the dilemma better than most.

Lamb savors the solitude that a remaining island of farmland provides his family, but he chafes at restrictions the city has placed on development of the property.

“We literally live in town but on a ranch at the same time,” Lamb said. “It’s convenient because milk’s right up the road at Vons. But the children are still tied to the old ranch and their family history.

“I guess we want to have our cake and to eat it too.”

The City at a Glance

FAMILIES

Median Age: 36.1 Camarillo; 31.7 countywide

Median household income: $48,219 Camarillo; $45,612 countywide

Living in Poverty: 4.4% Camarillo; 7.3% countywide

Racial makeup: 80% white Camarillo; 66% white countywide

*

EMPLOYMENT

Total Workers: 25,188

Managers and Professionals: 34.4% Camarillo; 29.2% countywide

Average commute: 21 min. Camarillo; 25 min. countywide

Where residents work: 39.9% in Camarillo

Commute to another county: 14.4% Camarillo; 25.0% countywide

*

HOUSING

Built since 1970: 70.8% Camarillo; 54.0% countywide

Owner-occupied: 72.2% Camarillo; 65.5% countywide

Overcrowded: 5.1% Camarillo; 10.5% countywide

Median housing value: $249,500 Camarillo; $245,300 countywide

*

CRIME

Violent crime: Rate is one-third of county average.

Property crime: Rate is three-fourths of county average.

Low crime: Despite recent increases in theft, crime rate is 2nd lowest of county’s 10 cities.

Crime rate, crimes per 1,000: 31.1 Camarillo; 43.7 countywide

Camarillo Population, 1960-90

In thousands

1960 1970 1980 1990 Camarillo 11,946* 19,480 37,797 52,303 Ventura County 199,138 378,497 529,174 669,016

* At incorporation in 1964.

Camarillo Farmlands

Within city limits, designated for agricultural uses

Owners Acres Proposed Change 1. Knightsbridge Holdings 213 Golf-course residential 2. Borchard Family 21 Mixed uses* 3. TMI 60 Commercial, research and development 4. Friedrich Family Trust 112 None 5. M. F. Daily Investment Co.; 78 None Daily-Springfield Partnership 6. John J. Menne Inc. 40 None 7. Louie Beltramo Family Trust 33 None 8. Robert Banner Trust; 63 None Patricia Mae Terzian 9. Southern Pacific Property Inc. 208 None 10. Cal-Cel Marketing Inc.; Gloria 129 None Petit Longo and Rosita Petit Marvel 11. EJM Development Co. 101 None 12. Kaye Melvin 95 None 13. St. John’s Seminary 56 None 14. Sammis Camarillo Associates 85 Residential, commercial 15. Stuart Enterprises 85 Part of Sammis plan 16. Foster Family Trust 25 Part of Sammis plan 17. Adamson Cos. 138 None 18. Mary Smith Trust 105 None Miscellaneous 3 Total 1,653

Outside city limits, expected to be annexed

Owners Acres Proposed Change A. Allwin Investment Corp. App. 40 Mixed uses* B. William H. McGrath Ranch 23 Mixed uses* C. LA Land Co. 17 Mixed uses* D. Theresa Vacca Trust 31 Mixed uses* E. Ran Rancho Associates 108 Mixed uses* F. Wucherpfennig Ranch Co. 39 Mixed uses* G. William H. McGrath Ranch 144 Commercial, research and development** Total 402

* Property is part of 258-acre strip north of the Ventura Freeway on which Ran Rancho Associates has asked the city to do a development plan.

** City has changed General Plan to allow the proposed development.Source: Planning Department, city of Camarillo

+ Agriculture-designated land within city limits

* + Agricultural land expected to be annexed to city

+ * Farmlands included in city-county greenbelt agreements

Source: Planning Department, city of Camarillo

Camarillo Development Under General Plan

Total Developed or % Developed/ at buildout approved approved Residential 24,339 Units 22,463 Units 92.3% 4,871 Acres 3,549 Acres 72.9% Office, commercial 449 Acres 405 Acres 90.2% Industrial 1,085 Acres 585 Acres 53.9% Public Uses 1,122 Acres 985 Acres 87.9% Quasi-Public Uses 341 Acres 101 Acres 29.6% Farmland 1,653 Acres Open Space 492 Acres Rights of Way/ 2,056 Acres Waterways Total 12,070 Acres