OXNARD : Council OKs Bank’s 12-Story Building

The City Council has decided to allow Wells Fargo Bank to build a 12-story office building in northeast Oxnard, overriding the Planning Commission’s ruling that the project is too big.

Granting Wells Fargo’s appeal Tuesday, the council praised a revised design softening the contours of the building. “This is such a beautiful building compared to what we saw the first time,” Councilwoman Geraldine Furr said.

The decision will allow Wells Fargo to construct a 221,000-square-foot office building on a 6.5-acre parcel in the Sammis Business Center south of the Ventura Freeway and west of Rice Avenue. The project will include a separate, three-story parking structure.

In November, the Planning Commission criticized the height and bulk of the building. The building will be 192 feet high in a zone where the city limits building height to 35 feet without a special-use permit.

The building’s flat top also conflicted with Oxnard’s 2020 General Plan that requires builders to create “a varied and interesting skyline,” the Planning Commission ruled.

At Tuesday’s hearing, Wells Fargo representatives showed a new design that rounded off two of the building’s corners and emphasized the stepped-back top with lighting. Neither the height nor size were changed.

Several residents objected to the new design, saying that the building remained too large for its site.

But the council did not mention the building’s height or bulk during its discussion.

Instead, Councilman Michael Plisky called for Wells Fargo to improve the proposed landscaping. “If we’re going to do this building right off the freeway, we have to have more than five-gallon plants,” Plisky said.