Oxnard’s Identity Crisis : Real estate: A broker sends 5,400 invitations but can’t lure agents from upscale L.A. communities to view beachfront houses.

Poor Oxnard. For years it has tried to shake the image of being a backward, hick town by promoting its beautiful beaches, clean air and the annual California Strawberry Festival.

But once again Oxnard’s image has been given the raspberry.

The slight came this week in the form of a snub by thousands of Los Angeles area real estate agents and brokers who were invited to tour some beachfront properties in Oxnard Shores.

Tom Conway, a real estate broker in Port Hueneme, came up with the idea to send 5,400 invitations to brokers and agents in upper-crust communities such as Beverly Hills, Bel-Air and Malibu. The invitations offered free lunch and an “opportunity to evaluate Oxnard’s Channel Islands area.”

However, the effort to promote Oxnard’s luxury houses was a dismal failure. Conway had to cancel the event scheduled for today after receiving no responses to his invitations.

Part of the reason, he later discovered, was that “the general perception of Oxnard as a beach resort city is non-existent,” he said.

That’s nothing new, said a spokeswoman for the Oxnard Convention and Visitors Bureau. The perennial problem for the bureau has been getting people outside the city to take Oxnard seriously.

Millie Norman, a bureau spokeswoman, said Oxnard has long been perceived as a “little agricultural town,” an image her office has been trying to change.

Through advertisements, promotions and word-of-mouth, the bureau has tried to publicize the city’s qualities: uncluttered beaches, affordable housing prices and low crime.

“But it takes a long time and you don’t change people’s minds overnight,” she said.

In choosing whom to invite to Oxnard, Conway said he sent his invitations to agents and brokers in areas where the income level is comparable to or better than the Beverly Hills income level.

Conway said his plan was to invite agents and brokers whose clients would be interested in a second home, near the beach and away from the stresses of Los Angeles.

The 22 houses he had to offer range in price from $360,000 to $1.6 million, he said.

After no one bothered to respond to his invitation, Conway said he called some agents and brokers in Los Angeles. He found that the real estate market throughout Southern California is very slow and agents and brokers are content to stay in their own back yards.

But mostly he found that land buyers in Los Angeles have a less than positive perception of Oxnard.

“The response was so under-whelming,” he said. “We aren’t even perceived as an area with viable beachfront homes.”

While that was a setback for Conway, it was not unwelcome news for everyone in Oxnard.

Eleanore Branthoover, chairwoman of the Inter-Neighborhood Council Committee, an umbrella group that represents more than 30 neighborhood councils throughout the city, said she couldn’t be happier to hear that Oxnard is not attracting land buyers from Los Angeles.

“If they think we are a big joke, that’s fine,” she said.

Branthoover, a strong advocate for growth limits on residential development, said Oxnard has many amenities. But she would be happy if the whole world didn’t know it.

“We’re a pretty well-kept secret, and maybe that is why we have not exploded like Orange County,” she said.