VENTURA : Request for Veterans Home Is Rejected

A veterans convalescent home and the 400 jobs that come with it will not be opening in Ventura any time soon, a state task force decided this week.

Faced with competing proposals from city officials and a local developer, a governor’s task force on veterans nursing homes, meeting in Santa Ana on Thursday, agreed that Ventura should not receive one of the much-coveted convalescent facilities until the city irons out its internal divisions.

The 400-bed facility would have been paid for with state and federal funds and would have brought as many as 400 jobs to Ventura.

Instead, the task force recommended to Gov. Pete Wilson that nursing homes be built in Chula Vista and Lancaster. The commission will meet again in January, when it will again consider Ventura and other Southern California communities for one last facility, to be built within the next 10 years.

“Given all the things we need to do to make one of these facilities happen, we were reluctant to get in the middle of something where it seems like the community doesn’t have a unified approach,” said Michael Kilbane, a spokesman for the task force.

The City Council has worked for months promoting a deal whereby Wittenberg-Livingston, a Newport Beach developer, would donate 22 acres for the veterans home in return for permission to build homes on the rest of its 62-acre site in east Ventura.

But a local group of Chumash Indians oppose building on the site because it is near a Chumash burial ground. The group attended the meeting in Santa Ana and told the commissioners of its concerns.

In addition, local developer Rudy Contreras presented a proposal to put the home on his land on Olivas Park Drive, just outside the city limits. The council opposes using that site because it is zoned for agricultural use.

Mayor Tom Buford said he was disappointed by the commission’s decision but that he would work on smoothing out the community’s divisions so Ventura would be eligible for the next round of selections.