Hoping to Resuscitate the Heart of Downtown : Oxnard City Council to Consider Revitalization Proposal

For more than 20 years, Oxnard’s leaders have been trying to resurrect the city’s downtown, a once-booming strip of family-owned shops and department stores that has become increasingly run-down.

Dozens of city-sponsored committees and advisory panels have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars laboring to find the cure for the ailing 50-square-block area, but the vacant storefronts are a reminder that nothing has worked.

“The heart of any town is the downtown,” said Gloria Stuart, who with her husband, Bill, has owned BG’s Coffee Shop in the center of downtown for 23 years. “They’re finding that out all over the place . . . and I just hope Oxnard finds that out before it’s too late.”

The Oxnard City Council today will consider investing $1.6 million into the latest plans for downtown revival, including proposals to upgrade storefront facades, install theme lighting and walkways, recruit new businesses and schedule more cultural events in the area.

The city’s plan, put together by Andres Duany, a Miami-based consultant renowned for traditional town planning, involves using available redevelopment funds as a catalyst to spur private investment in the area and make downtown competitive with newer office complexes and shopping malls.

Council members today will review a combination of merchants’ suggestions and previous city proposals for sprucing up downtown and determine which plans should be funded.

Several cities, including Pasadena, Santa Monica and Glendale, were used as models for Oxnard’s plan, said

Richard Maggio, the city’s community development director.

“Geographically, downtown is still the center of the city and certainly has the possibility of coming back and being a viable area,” Maggio said. “What we intend to do is use the funds to induce capital investment, to give the area an extra edge.”

Oxnard Mayor Manuel Lopez said that downtown needs to become more dense, with retail businesses on the ground floor of buildings and offices above. He also said if the area is ever to make a comeback, it will need a make-over.

“I think having a unified theme would certainly add to the beauty of the area,” Lopez said. “If you just have a hodgepodge of development, it doesn’t look good. Something has to be put in place, architecturally or in another way, to make everything blend together.”

Among the proposals for bringing downtown back are:

* A program where signs and kiosks would be strategically placed throughout Oxnard pointing the way to downtown and detailing what can be found in the area.

* A centralized management program akin to a shopping mall that would coordinate the marketing efforts of downtown merchants.

* A facade program that would assist property owners in upgrading their buildings to create an attractive environment for pedestrians.

* A plan to enhance A Street, the center of downtown, by providing additional parking and greater storefront visibility.

Oxnard officials are also recommending that the city use the money to begin a $2.5-million program to upgrade downtown’s Plaza Park by closing off North 5th Street to traffic, providing more landscaping and building a colonnade.

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Downtown merchants remain skeptical of the city’s promises to improve the area.

They say downtown has been hurt by the city’s short-term efforts to increase revenue with developments such as the Oxnard Factory Outlet Mall and the Shopping at the Rose complex.

“We’ve become a freeway town,” said Stuart, whose restaurant is still frequented by many of Oxnard’s old-timers. “They forgot all the people who’ve been here all these years and never left.”

But Lopez said downtown could still be successful if businesses in the area offered similar goods at similar prices.

“If you have services that are of good quality, and those services are at a competitive price, people will come to the area,” he said. “Besides, there are a lot of people who live near downtown.”