Planners Debate Freeway Shopping Center : Oxnard: A new advisory panel, residents and nearby cities all have concerns about the traffic impact of the big mall project at Rose Avenue.

Weighing the traffic impact of yet another development along the Ventura Freeway in Oxnard, the city’s new planning panel Thursday night debated a developer’s proposal to build a large retail complex across from Shopping at the Rose.

After listening to a traffic expert hired by the developer dismiss the proposed center’s effect on traffic flow, the five-member Land Use Advisors panel voiced concern about whether the area’s already tangled web of streets and interchanges could accommodate more cars.

“It appears to me that anything short of a new interchange at (the Ventura Freeway) and Rose would constitute a problem,” said panel member Albert Duff.

The project, titled Shopping at the Rose II, would be built on 21.5 acres next to the Ventura Freeway at Rose Avenue.

The plan requires approval from both the advisory panel and the City Council.

Eleanor Branthoover, chairwoman of the adjacent Rio Lindo Neighborhood Council, said the group has major concerns about the center’s impact on traffic. “We’re to the point where we don’t see any point in protesting,” Branthoover said in an interview before Thursday’s meeting. “They don’t even listen to us. They don’t have to live here.”

Officials from Ventura, Camarillo and the California Department of Transportation have written letters to Oxnard contesting the city’s finding that the proposed shopping center would have little effect on traffic west of the Conejo Grade.

“Oxnard has previously commented that Camarillo development should evaluate potential impacts to the U.S. 101 bridge over the Santa Clara River,” wrote Matthew A. Boden, Camarillo’s director of planning and community development. “The proposed development is less than two miles from the bridge, compared to Camarillo, which is seven miles away.”

Boden added that Oxnard’s environmental report understated the amount of traffic that will travel through the Ventura Freeway-Rose Avenue freeway connector, which was designed to accommodate farming traffic about 30 years ago.

Steve Chase, an assistant to Ventura’s city manager, also wrote Oxnard officials that the traffic impact of the project may have been played down by the city.

Chase also expressed concerns that Oxnard’s interim solutions for alleviating congestion at Rose Avenue and the freeway “appear to have become permanent,” a situation Ventura leaders find inadequate.

Ventura County officials stated in a letter to Oxnard that the city’s plan to pay for improvements through an assessment district that has yet to be formed “is speculative and may not be feasible.”

Oxnard is planning to build a new connector about the year 2000, at a cost of about $18 million, city officials have said.

And the Oxnard Union High School District has written a letter to Oxnard demanding money from the developer. School officials claim that the shopping center would lead to an increase of students in the currently overburdened district.

Rothbart Development, which built the 592,000-square-foot Shopping at the Rose center, is looking to build the new center. The new 223,000-square-foot complex would consist of several small shops and restaurants, a gas station and three large stores, including Best Buy, a discount appliance retailer.

“This new project is really a redevelopment of what were really some old dilapidated buildings,” said developer Stanley Rothbart.

Eleven buildings on the proposed site, some of them vacant, would be demolished to make way for the shopping center. And three businesses, including a Bible college, would be relocated. Rothbart Development officials have said that they plan to help the businesses find new locations.