Ventura : Shopping Center to Be Completed by Fall

Construction of a new shopping center at one of the few remaining undeveloped commercial parcels in central Ventura should be completed by fall, developers say.

The project, headed by local developer Glenn Hartman, will occupy five acres at the northeast corner of East Main Street and Telephone Road.

Architect John Ash said the shopping center’s chief tenant will be a Barnes & Noble bookstore. “It will not be your normal bookstore,” Ash said. “The store will be open late at night and will have a coffee bar where people can sit and talk or read.”

Barnes & Noble is a large-volume, discount bookstore, according to Christine Campbell, who manages the West Los Angeles branch. The stores usually carry as many as 100,000 books and extensive periodicals, she said.

Also planned for the mall is an 11,000-square-foot Kinko’s copy center, described by a Kinko’s corporate official as the model for the 650 stores the company operates nationwide.

The Kinko’s store will be the first to offer video-teleconferencing, according to Adrianna Foss, the vice president of human resources at Kinko’s, which is based in Ventura. She described the service as being “kind of like the Jetsons,” in which businesses can hold conferences between different cities via large-screen video monitors and telephones.

The other retailers in the mall will be a Petco pet supplies store and Stroud’s, which sells linens, bath and kitchen supplies.

Construction of the 51,525-square-foot retail center is scheduled to be completed in the fall, with stores opening by Christmas.