MOORPARK : Developer Kills Plan for Hotel, Restaurant

A developer who had planned to build a 135-room hotel in downtown Moorpark has scrapped the proposal because of the poor economic outlook.

Mayor Paul W. Lawrason Jr. announced at a City Council meeting Wednesday that Oxnard-based developer Martin V. Smith & Associates has decided not to build the Country Inn with a free-standing restaurant on Spring Road, just south of High Street.

City officials approved plans for the hotel and restaurant last year.

The developer’s chief financial officer, Dick Spencer, said they were unable to get a bank to finance the project because of the economy.

“Our market study indicated that only 10% of our rooms would be utilized” for the foreseeable future, Spencer said. Around Southern California, the hotel occupancy rate dropped 6.8% last year, to 48.9%.

“It is not only hard, it is virtually impossible to get financing on a hotel or a free-standing restaurant in this economy,” Spencer said.

The developer is holding discussions with the U.S. Postal Service about using a portion of the vacant, 7.5-acre site for a new Moorpark post office, he said. There are no plans now to sell the property.

Lawrason said city officials are partly to blame for losing the hotel because of their approach to another Smith development proposal.

Smith had also proposed building a 50-unit apartment complex just north of the hotel on Spring Road. But discussions about the project ended last year when city officials asked that the complex include units for low-income families, Councilman Roy E. Talley said Thursday.

Lawrason indicated that the city’s affordable-housing committee, which consists of Talley and Councilman Bernardo M. Perez, had possibly asked too much. But Spencer attributed the decision on the hotel solely to the economy.