Final Decision Nears on Ventura Super K Mart

The possible developer of a jumbo-sized K mart on Ventura’s Victoria Avenue, across the street from the existing K mart, says it will decide within two weeks if the development will get off the ground.

Gary C. Mull, general partner with Lundin, Beaver and Mull Development Co. in Huntington Beach, said it is premature to discuss the cost or when the Super K mart Center might be built.

But K mart officials in Troy, Mich., said construction of the superstore, which would provide 800 full- and part-time jobs, could begin by the end of this year. The current Ventura K mart employs about 100 workers. A Super K mart is the discounter’s own version of the massive Wal-Mart discount stores, such as the one in Oxnard at Rose Avenue and the Ventura Freeway.

Michelle Deland, a representative at K mart’s Michigan headquarters, said the 170,740-square-foot superstore would be 2 1/2 times the size of the existing K mart, and it would sell a combination of discount general merchandise and groceries 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Plans filed with Ventura city officials last month show that in addition to the Super K Mart, the 219,540-square-foot complex would house a major retail tenant and two smaller commercial parcels on the 21-acre site.

One of the hang-ups to the project, developer Mull acknowledged, might be the $910,000 in freeway-access and traffic-improvement fees Ventura officials would impose on any developer building at that site. But Deland said that K mart “very routinely” handles such fee obstacles.