Shopping Center Proceeds With Plans for Renewal and Expansion : Business: Owners of a retail complex at Kimball and Telegraph roads in Ventura plan to add a supermarket, three new buildings and to renovate the existing site.

The owners of a stagnant east Ventura shopping center are moving forward with plans to spend millions of dollars to revive the plaza and lure customers from other areas of the city.

With hundreds of new homes sprouting around Kimball and Telegraph roads in recent and coming years, owners of the Kimball Center plan to upgrade the 32,000-square-foot complex and add another 66,000 square feet of retail space.

The Ventura Planning Commission on Tuesday approved the renovation, which some tenants are eagerly anticipating but which will force the relocation of a 100-student day-care center.

“It’s a growing area,” said Jaime Santana, a member of the Santana Trust, which owns the 50 acres along with the MacLeod Trust.

Plans call for the trusts to build a new supermarket on vacant land at the Kimball Center within the next nine months, then renovate the existing 32,000 square feet of retail space, he said.

A new 45,000-square-foot Albertson’s will join three new buildings on the vacant land, and a chain drugstore is being sought to lease the current market site.

“I think the center’s probably going to be more of an asset to the neighborhood and the neighbors,” Santana said. “If you look at the center now, compared to what it’s going to be, it will be a beautiful complex.”

But one casualty of the 98,000-square-foot complex will be the Green Valley Child Development Center, which has run a day-care center out of portable bungalows across from Juanamaria School for years.

Preschool teacher Celly Zaragoza said the day-care center already has found a new home, but that she would miss the east Ventura site.

“They’re relocating us to Park Row over on (Ventura) Avenue,” said Zaragoza, who has taught children at the center for four years. “But we don’t know when anything’s going to happen.”

The day-care center enrolls about 100 students and employs about 15 teachers and other personnel, she said.

“I’m really sad,” Zaragoza said. “I’ve been here so long. But I’m glad we’ll have a whole new center. That will be a good experience.”

Santana said the operators of the day-care center have been paying a lower-than-market rent for years.

Associate planner William Hatcher said the existing layout does not put the property to its best use.

“There could definitely be more retail uses on this site,” Hatcher said. “Especially given the fact that there is the expanding residential sector out there.”

Hundreds of new homes have been built in the area, and hundreds of others are planned within the two or three miles around Kimball Center, Hatcher said.

Earlier this week, the Ventura City Council found that the expansion would pose no threat to the environment, negating the need for a lengthy and costly environmental review.

Tenants in the Kimball Center, which was built in the early 1960s, welcomed the renovation and new supermarket.

Robert Wilson, who has owned the nearby Video Odysee rental shop for six years, said he expects the improvements to increase business.

“It will also bring in more competition, though, because Albertson’s will be renting videos,” Wilson said. “Hopefully the two will balance out.”

Sara Nicholson and Shirley Bruce opened Blondie’s Salon almost a year ago. The two hairstylists said the growing neighborhoods around their shop are full of potential customers.

“There’s a lot of people that live at this end of town that don’t want to drive to Victoria (Avenue),” Nicholson said. “We figure the rent will go up, but the new customers will help that.”

Santana wound not say whether rents will increase after the project is completed.