Swap Sets Stage for River Edge Project : Development: A deal between the county and a construction firm ends a decade of negotiations over 265 acres of property.

Ventura County has agreed to swap an aging 14-acre maintenance yard in north Oxnard for a new facility nearby, paving the way for construction of the largest commercial development in the county, officials said.

The deal with River Edge Development Co. will end a decade of sometimes-bitter negotiations between the county and a succession of builders with grand plans for a prime, 265-acre site northeast of the Ventura Freeway at the Santa Clara River.

Acquisition of the county yard has been critical to River Edge because it stands in the path of a new freeway interchange that must be completed before three-fourths of the company’s project can be built.

As approved by the Oxnard City Council in 1985, the $500-million project could have 4.4-million square feet of space and include office towers up to 24 stories high, a low-rise business park, a large shopping mall, a hotel and a cultural center.

Only the steel frame of a six-floor office building, a row of young palm trees and the county maintenance yard now mark the site.

Legal documents are being drafted to seal the maintenance-yard deal, which the Board of Supervisors approved in concept a year ago, said spokesmen for both the county and the developer.

A final agreement has been delayed by disputes about how much River Edge will spend to improve the 20-acre parcel off Vineyard Avenue, where the county’s new buildings will be located, the spokesmen said.

The improvements finally agreed upon, including septic tanks and perimeter walls, will cost between $4.5 million and $7.5 million, county Chief Administrative Officer Richard Wittenberg said.

In addition, the developer will pay up to $6.5 million to construct a 69,000-square-foot set of buildings for the county, Wittenberg said.

The new facility, like the old one, will include the county’s automotive repair shop, a fire station, a radio communications center, and offices for public works, flood control and weights and measures, officials said.

“It’s a very good deal,” Wittenberg said. “Instead of having a 1950s barracks-type facility that is literally falling down, this will give us a brand-new facility. But we’re giving up a very, very valuable piece of property.”

County Supervisor John K. Flynn, in whose district the project is located, said, “We wanted to make sure the deal added up to the market value of the land out there, and it does.”

Paul Denis, a River Edge vice president, said that the deal is nearly complete.

“The papers are drawn,” he said. “The issues we’re still talking about are not substantial. It’s an agreement to do all things necessary to build a new yard.”

However, during negotiations with the county, “we’ve had a lot of small points that became big ones,” Denis added. “We’ve moved from one issue to another and then back again. Everybody is a little impatient about this.”

If negotiators are impatient today, they once were angry.

Documents on file with the county show that county representatives have walked out of at least one meeting since 1981 to put pressure on builders to increase their offers for the maintenance yard.

In fact, developers first argued that the county should donate the 14 acres as surplus, since taxes from the project would flow both to the county and the city of Oxnard.

By 1985, when Oxnard approved the project, developer Robert P. Warmington Co. had set a value of $2 million on the county land. The same year, the company estimated that $5.3 million in sales, hotel and property taxes would go to Oxnard annually after the project is complete in the year 2000.

The county also would eventually receive about $1.6 million each year in property taxes, and about 11,000 jobs would be created, the company estimated.

In 1988, Warmington increased its appraisal of the county yard to $4.35 million, and Flynn, in a pointed letter, accused the developer of trying to get Caltrans to condemn the county property so the project could move forward.

Throughout the negotiations, Oxnard officials lobbied the county to sell the yard, county officials said. “Yes, they have wanted to have the interchange built,” said Richard Maggio, Oxnard’s community development director.

River Edge, which took over the project about two years ago, plans to begin construction on another five low-rise office buildings, a restaurant and a 100-room hotel during the next 18 months, Denis said.

Immediately after that, construction of the first half of a million-square-foot shopping mall is planned, he said. By comparison, the Oaks Mall in Thousand Oaks has about 1.2 million square feet.

The high-rise core of the project, about 1.5 million square feet in 12- to 24-story buildings, will be built to meet regional demand within the next 10 to 15 years, he said.

The vacancy rate in county office buildings is about 18%, which is lower than some depressed parts of Los Angeles County but high when compared nationally, industry analysts said.