City to Buy Site for Downtown Park : Moorpark: Most of the $5.5 million needed would come from redevelopment funds. Officials hope to include affordable homes.

The Moorpark City Council on Tuesday announced a major land deal that council members said could provide the city with a long-awaited downtown park, additional affordable housing, a second supermarket and Moorpark’s first movie theater.

Under terms of the transaction--which the council is expected to finalize at its meeting tonight--the city will buy 29.5 acres from developer Ken MacLeod near a newly opened K mart on Los Angeles Avenue for $5.5 million.

Nearly all of the purchase will be funded by the city’s Redevelopment Agency, with just $500,000 coming from a city park fund.

Eight acres will be developed as parkland and another eight will be devoted to 50 to 60 units of affordable housing, city officials said. The city will sell the remaining 14 acres to a private developer for $3.5 million with hopes that the land could eventually be the site for a new supermarket, restaurants and a movie theater complex.

The affordable housing would come in the form of 1,000- to 1,200-square-foot homes costing between $120,000 and $140,000, officials said.

“It’s a very positive situation as far as I’m concerned,” Mayor Paul Lawrason said of the deal. “This is all things to all people.”

The deal surprised Moorpark school board members, who were hoping that the city would buy a former high school site on Casey Road and develop it as a park.

As recently as the summer, city and school officials appeared to be close to finalizing the sale of the 10-acre site for $1.2 million. But school officials eventually balked at the city’s desire to pay the final $300,000 in installments over several years.

“I was very disappointed that we couldn’t come to a deal with them, but I’m glad the city was able to come up with another site,” said school board member Clint Harper, who joined board member Tom Baldwin in pushing for a sale in June.

Harper said the district, which had been looking toward the transaction as a much-needed cash infusion, will now probably be forced to hold on to the land.

“This is not a good time in the real estate market to be disposing of large pieces of property,” Harper said. “So, at this point, our plan will probably be to hold on to the property and watch the real estate market.”

Under the deal with MacLeod, the city will wind up paying about $500,000 for the park site, $700,000 less than it was prepared to give the school district for even less land.

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School board President Pam Castro, who with board member Greg Barker refused to join Harper and Baldwin in supporting the sale months ago, applauded the city’s announcement and said she believes that council members wound up with a more preferable park site.

“I think that’s great,” Castro said of the announcement. “The No. 1 priority is what’s best for the community, and that location by far would be a better site than the bottom of the (former) high school.”

But Councilman Scott Montgomery said purchase of the MacLeod property does not mean that city officials are no longer interested in the school district land.

“We’re still willing to talk about their land,” Montgomery said. “This park is the first downtown park; it doesn’t mean that we can’t have more than one.”

Lawrason said he would like the park to be completed in 1994, but conceded that that was an optimistic goal.