COUNTRYWIDE PLANS OFFICES IN MOORPARK; TEMPORARY FACILITY NEEDED BY FIRM.

Byline: Sylvia L. Oliande Daily News Staff Writer

Countrywide Home Loans officials said Friday that they will establish a temporary office in Moorpark to handle rapid companywide growth while they implement an expansion plan in Simi Valley.

The national home mortgage corporation is expected to sign a lease on the former Seagate computer manufacturing property early next week. It plans to transfer 300 to 350 people from existing offices in Southern California, as well as hire about 100 new employees.

``We have a lot of things going on in the Simi Valley area that offers us tremendous space availability, but our expansion has forced us to look for additional space right now,'' said Patrick Benton, senior vice president of Countrywide.

Benton said the Calabasas-based company will sign an 18-month lease for the 100,000-square-foot office building on Los Angeles Avenue. Officials would not disclose the financial terms of the lease.

Benton said the move is an interim fix to its space needs as the company grows by leaps and bounds - averaging 100 new employees a month.

Last month, the company reported funding $22.9 billion of mortgage loans in the second quarter, from June to August. The expansion is an effort to bring on new workers to handle the new accounts.

And last June, the company announced a plan that would double the size of its Simi Valley campus and add more than 1,000 workers by converting a Madera Road warehouse into an office building.

As those plans moved forward, the company also looked for alternative, temporary space in Simi Valley and surrounding areas to house new and current employees. It finally settled on the building where Seagate once produced computer hardware.

``The proximity (of Moorpark to the Simi Valley site) was part of the solution,'' Benton said. ``It's two off-ramps from our larger Simi facility.''

City officials said they were pleased with the announcement and eager to draw more large employers to the area in an effort to spur the city's retail economy.

``It's hard to get retailers here,'' said Graham Mitchell, senior management analyst. ``We have a high median family income, but we don't have a lot of the dense population retailers are looking for. By bringing in big employers, it helps bolster our day-time population, which supports retail economy, restaurants and such.''

He said that even if Countrywide chooses not to extend its lease past the original term, the time the company spends there would help make Moorpark an attractive investment for other companies.

``We hope that in the 18 months, they'll realize this is actually the place they should be,'' Mitchell said.