2nd Builder Proposes Downtown Complex : Ventura: A Burbank consultant pushes a 20-theater project. City officials favor a multilevel parking garage. They will review the two overall plans later this month.

Weeks after a Pasadena developer pitched a downtown movie theater to Ventura planners, a second builder also has requested exclusive negotiating rights to the complex.

Victor K. Georgino, a Burbank-based consultant who said he helped rebuild that city’s downtown, is proposing a 20-theater complex in one of two spots: Main and Palm streets, where the Rendevous bar is located, or California and Main streets, site of a Bank of America branch office.

He told three City Council members on the municipal economic committee Monday that he has ready tenants in the AMC Theater chain, and could open before the end of next year if the city provides a parking structure.

But the Georgino plan rivals that of another project proposed to Ventura officials last month, when Weirick Properties of Pasadena asked the city for the same rights to a downtown multiplex.

“It’s a free market,” said Michael C. Mulfinger, a Weirick consultant. Georgino “can do it if he wants to. But if we’re better, we’ll win.”

Mulfinger, whose eight-screen project is much smaller but includes retail shops and restaurants, said his proposal would take between two and three years to construct.

After short presentations by both development firms at the committee meeting, the companies came away without the exclusive agreement each had sought.

But for the first time, city officials agreed in concept to develop a multilevel parking structure for cars that such a complex would attract.

A parking garage could cost as much as $20,000 per space, although no size or details have yet been determined, planner Patrick Richardson said. It would be financed by the city to draw new investment downtown.

The dual proposals reinforce efforts the city has made to rebuild downtown, council members said. The city already has spent millions of dollars in redevelopment money to lure more pedestrians downtown, which many say has become run-down and blighted in recent years.

“This is probably one of the most exciting things for downtown,” Councilman Gary Tuttle said of the multiplex plans. “I think it’s something we really should act on quickly.”

Options on how to pay for the new garage, considered vital in reviving the area, will be brought before the City Council in three weeks. In the meantime, city staff will meet with Georgino and Weirick Properties to see if they could participate in a joint venture, Richardson said.

“If not, we’ll look at each proposal individually, and we’ll recommend one or the other,” he said.

The two companies were invited to present their plans to the full council later this month, when council members probably will make a decision on which project they prefer.

Both developers said the downtown location is ideal because there already are several attractions in the area, including the Ventura Mission and the county fairgrounds.

“This is a destination that people are already going to,” said Gary L. Mahler, another Weirick consultant who said he helped transform Old Pasadena into the entertainment center it is today. “It just doesn’t have the amenities.”

Mahler said the Weirick project would serve as an anchor to what would become a series of unique shops and restaurants in the six-block Main Street corridor.

“When we put that (Old Pasadena movie theater) in, it was literally Skid Row,” he said. Ten years later, Mahler told the committee, the area is one of the biggest leisure-time draws in Southern California.

Georgino, however, is pitching a much larger theater without the accompanying shops or restaurants that Weirick is proposing.

“I’m not red-hot on retail,” he said. “You build a theater and a parking lot now, and the retail will follow.”

The Palm and Main streets location is probably more feasible, he said, because the Main Street bank site is outside the existing redevelopment district and the complex may be better suited for the mission area.

“It’s user-friendly and people feel comfortable there,” he said.

The thought of building a movie theater where the Rendevous bar now pours drinks 18 hours a day does not sit well with one Ventura worker.

“I’ll be out of a job, so I don’t like it very well,” bartender Eileen Scovill said. “Jobs are hard to find.”