County Cities Lose Bids for L.A. Museum : Attractions: The Southwest’s board decides against moving. It plans to buy nearby buildings to ease the space crunch.

The Southwest Museum announced Tuesday it will stay in Los Angeles, ending months of courting by leaders in seven Ventura County cities who had hoped to woo the prestigious facility to their communities.

Instead of moving from their cramped Highland Park quarters, museum Executive Director Thomas Wilson said board members plan to acquire nearby buildings that will ease the space crunch that has plagued the institution for years.

Wilson said the museum board was finally swayed by a promise from the city of Los Angeles to establish a blue-ribbon committee to help the museum expand and improve its present site. Key to the city’s bid, Wilson said, was a promise to support bond issues that will fund museums and to help secure a museum stop on the Blue Line light-rail extension through the area.

Although his city was among the most aggressive of the 80 offers that the museum board passed on, Thousand Oaks City Councilman Frank Schillo said he was not surprised by the news.

“I had a feeling they were just trying to drum up support for the home crowd,” Schillo said. “The idea was to get something for nothing.”

He said, however, he is not resentful. Schillo called the museum’s actions “shrewd.”

“I think that is an accepted way of doing the best for your board of directors and your patrons,” he said. “The game is to say that a famous museum is interested in relocating and then see what you can get.”

Simi Valley Mayor Greg Stratton said he “hates to think” that the museum solicited the bids in an effort to gain bargaining leverage with the city of Los Angeles. But the city must have made the concessions attractive enough to persuade museum directors to stay put, he said.

“I don’t know what they were offered,” he said. “Did they get boxes at the Coliseum?”

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Wilson said the museum’s proposed move was “not a ploy to play one place off against another. We were honestly looking at the best alternative for the museum.”

When museum officials announced they were seeking more space last summer and solicited bids from 140 cities in Southern California, seven cities in Ventura County expressed interest. Officials in Thousand Oaks, Ventura, Camarillo, Oxnard, Moorpark, Fillmore and Simi Valley began talking about what a wonderful attraction the museum would represent.

Moorpark sent a team to Highland Park to personally make a presentation to museum directors. Other cities sent letters touting their attributes.

The most unusual pitch, however, came from Fillmore rancher James Sandoval. Sandoval told museum officials that he envisioned a tourist mecca built around a Southwest Museum in Fillmore. The attraction would include a re-created Civil War battleground and live demonstrations of Chumash ceremonial rites.

But most cities dropped out of the bidding in November, when the museum requested at least $35 million to cover the costs of moving its collection of Native American artifacts and building new exhibition space.

Only Thousand Oaks and Ventura remained in the running. Ventura was the most aggressive, with the City Council voting in late November to tout two ocean-view properties as potential sites.

But as the process dragged on, some began to voice doubts on whether the museum was sincere in its intention to move.

“There were some people who suggested that they weren’t acting in good faith,” Ventura Mayor Tom Buford said. “But we were happy to be considered. We think we would have been a great location.”

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Moorpark Mayor Paul Lawrason said he believes the museum was serious about its intention to find a second facility, at least initially. But the lack of cities with the ability to spend $35 million in moving costs may have made them change their minds, he said.

“But it worked to their advantage,” he said. “The local community (in Los Angeles) kind of sat up and took notice. And they did a little sales job with the city and got what they wanted.”

Camarillo Councilwoman Charlotte Craven also thinks the $35-million price tag turned off a lot of cities.

“My guess is that nobody was willing to pay what they wanted us to pay for them to move here,” she said. “It isn’t that we didn’t want them. We just couldn’t afford them.”