City Leaders Shop Around for New Ideas : Oxnard: Officials tour retailing hot spots to see a developer’s work and to get acquainted with recent trends in mall design.

It could not compare to their excursions to flashy Las Vegas or the quaint town of Solvang, but Oxnard City Council members seemed delighted with a bus tour of the Wal-Mart in Palmdale and other hot shopping spots in Southern California.

The five council members, accompanied by eight city staff members, spent 12 hours on a chartered bus during the decidedly unglamorous outing.

The cities on the tour--Riverside, Palmdale and Victorville--may not be known as exciting locales. But when it comes to shopping malls, according to Oxnard planners, they are definitely ahead of the curve.

The 353-mile field trip on Saturday was assembled by Oxnard City Planner Matthew G. Winegar as a primer for council members on shopping mall design. It was also an opportunity to view the work of Sherman Oaks developer Stanley Rothbart, who proposes to build a Wal-Mart in Oxnard.

“There haven’t been any new city halls or shopping malls in Ventura County in 10 to 15 years,” Winegar said. “A lot has evolved in that time, and we thought it would be good for the council to see the state of the art.”

Oxnard’s leaders will soon decide the fate of a 560,000-square-foot shopping center to be anchored by a Wal-Mart on a 56-acre tract at Rose Avenue and the Ventura Freeway. The council is also considering whether to continue plans for a major regional shopping mall in the Oxnard Town Center or to expand The Esplanade mall.

Oxnard planning staff thought it essential that council members see what Rothbart has built elsewhere, including the kind of projects that they want to keep out of Oxnard.

“Oooh, what a crummy-looking building,” Councilwoman Dorothy Maron said as the chartered tour bus pulled into the first of the day’s Wal-Mart stops in Palmdale.

Rothbart waited in front of the store as the group left the bus, then led them into the store.

“The thing you should look for as you walk through the store is the friendliness of the employees,” Rothbart said. At that moment, the tour group passed an elderly employee greeting customers while corralling shopping carts.

The massive interior of the Palmdale Wal-Mart exemplifies what Rothbart calls a state-of-the-art shopping complex. The brightly lighted store offers row after row of groceries, clothes and housewares.

Wal-Mart has not confirmed that it will be the anchor tenant in the mall that Rothbart plans for Oxnard.

But Rothbart said he is confident that the giant retail chain will be a part of his proposed $60-million shopping center.

“I’m sure we can swing a deal with Wal-Mart if they’re convinced we can make it through the governmental process,” he said.

Councilman Mike Plisky was not impressed by the Wal-Marts developed by Rothbart.

“If I had to count on what I’d seen so far on this trip to convince me we need a Wal-Mart, it hasn’t worked,” he said.

But Plisky said Wal-Mart is certain to move into Ventura County, and he said he preferred that Oxnard benefit from the jobs and tax revenue that the store will generate.

Council members were most impressed by the newly remodeled Galleria at Tyler in Riverside, a 22-year-old mall built by Donahue Schriber Co., which also developed The Esplanade in the same year.

The Oxnard group heard a presentation from Donahue Schriber’s representative, Bill Kenney, detailing how the $7-million renovation plan at the Galleria could be adapted to Oxnard’s Esplanade.

The Galleria had been an artificially lighted, single-story mall, much like many shopping centers built in the 1970s, Kenney said. The mall catapulted into the design of the 1990s, he said, by creating a second story, narrowing the hallways, increasing shop size and forcing all tenants to build new storefronts, Kenney said.

Kenney sought to persuade the council members that they should forgo plans to build a large regional mall in the planned Oxnard Town Center. He argued that renovating The Esplanade into a mega-mall such as the Galleria was a better idea in these uncertain economic times.

Mayor Nao Takasugi enthusiastically supported Kenney’s plans.

“It was eye-opening, what they were able to do with that 20-year-old mall,” Takasugi said.

“At this moment I have to consider very seriously about telling Donahue Schriber to go forward with a proposal on renovating The Esplanade.”

But Plisky questioned whether renovating The Esplanade would produce a nicer mall than building one from scratch.

“I’m not convinced that’s the way to do it,” he said.

Council members also viewed the Ontario City Hall to get ideas for a new city hall. Although a new city hall is included in the city’s General Plan, City Manager Vern Hazen said Oxnard is not considering building one now because of a lack of money.