VENTURA : Council Turns Down Downtown Expansion

The Ventura City Council on Monday rejected a proposal to stretch the city’s downtown boundaries to include the Ventura Avenue neighborhood.

In a 5-2 vote, the council decided to maintain the city’s downtown boundaries and allocate 400 more housing units to the city’s old commercial center.

Council members Rosa Lee Measures and Jim Monahan opposed the measure. They had instead endorsed a plan to expand the city’s downtown more than 20 blocks, from West Park Row Avenue to Delaware Drive. That plan would have siphoned off some housing allocations from downtown to the Avenue area to help developers who want to build a 330-townhouse project in the city’s old industrial sector.

But a majority of the council pushed for keeping allocations in the downtown area, which city leaders want to revitalize.

“We have to make a commitment,” Councilman Gregory L. Carson said. “Downtown needs to be a priority.”

Pro-growth council members who backed the proposal argued that no developers have stepped forward in the last year to apply for the downtown allocations and that the boundaries of what is considered the city’s downtown should be expanded to benefit other developments.

“We’re retarding our progress by withholding some allocations,” Measures said.

Measures and Monahan said they were in favor of expanding the boundaries because it would help fast-track a development by the Neel and Huntsinger families of Ventura, who want to build townhouses and offices in the upper Avenue neighborhood.

But Councilman Gary Tuttle said the council could decide to fast-track the project without dipping into allocations set aside for housing downtown.

The council last year set aside 500 allocations for downtown housing on a first-come, first-served basis to developers, hoping to encourage development in the city’s old commercial center.

But few developers have shown interest in building downtown.

Now other developers, including the Neels and Huntsingers, would like part of those downtown allocations to be used in areas outside the traditional downtown boundaries.

The council has 2,128 housing allocations to dole out in the next six years. A developer is not allowed to build without receiving housing allocations from the council first.