Fate of Area’s 2 Broadway Stores Stirs Fear, Hope : Retailing: Thousand Oaks site appears vulnerable to closure or consolidation, while Ventura mall could wind up with a more upscale anchor operation.

News that a Cincinnati-based retail giant will acquire Broadway Stores Inc. has raised concern--and some hopes--about the fate of the two Broadway department stores doing business in Ventura County.

The store at The Oaks mall in Thousand Oaks appears particularly vulnerable to closure or consolidation because it is situated just a few feet away from Bullock’s, another retail chain operated by Federated Department Stores of Ohio.

But officials at The Oaks and at Ventura’s Buenaventura Mall say the loss of the Broadway could mean an opportunity for attracting another, more upscale anchor store.

Federated officials announced Monday that they plan to purchase Broadway Stores Inc., the financially troubled company that operates 71 stores in five Western states, in addition to the two Ventura County sites.

Federated said it would close and sell off some of the outlets and reopen the rest as Bullock’s or Bloomingdale’s stores, both subsidiaries of the Ohio retailing giant. Federated officials have said stores in the same mall with another Federated chain could be closed or converted to furniture stores.

A Federated spokeswoman declined Tuesday to say what is planned for the two Ventura County stores.

“That will be addressed after the merger,” spokeswoman Mary Anne Shannon said. “We won’t know until mid- to late October.”

That hasn’t eased fears of loyal customers at the Thousand Oaks store.

“We’re quite concerned,” said Camarillo resident Helen Smith, shopping at The Oaks with her husband, Harold, on Tuesday. The Smiths rely on the Broadway for clothes and bedding, she said.

“They’ve always been very reasonable and had such good quality,” Smith added.

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While some shoppers Tuesday said they have shifted their shopping habits away from the large department stores, choosing instead to patronize small specialty shops, others were dismayed at the possibility of losing the familiar chain.

“I’d be disappointed if it closed,” Linda Ah Sue of Camarillo said.

Barbara Teucher, who manages The Oaks mall, said even if Federated elects to close the three-floor Broadway store, she does not expect to have a vacancy for long.

“We don’t anticipate losing a major department store at all,” she said. “We’ve been in negotiations with other department stores. So this could be an opportunity.”

Until the merger is complete and decisions on individual stores are made, shoppers won’t see any difference at the stores, Broadway spokesman Bill Ihle said.

“It is business as usual today, tomorrow and in the immediate future at the Broadway,” Ihle said.

Conejo Valley Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Steve Rubenstein said he believes the Broadway was the first store to open at The Oaks in April, 1978.

“It is sad for our community to see that very first store go,” he said.

After the merger is complete, four of the five anchor stores at The Oaks will be owned by two companies.

In Ventura, the Broadway store is included in a $50-million face-lift proposed for the Buenaventura Mall, which would be expanded to two levels and from two to four anchor stores by the end of 1997.

But Ventura city officials and owners of the Buenaventura Mall said the merger could be a blessing for the shopping complex.

“I don’t see any problems,” said David A. Jones, a vice president with LaSalle Partners, the company that owns the Buenaventura Mall.

“Federated’s a very good merchant and retailer and I would expect them to see that marketplace the way everybody else does,” he said. “It would be something they would probably step into with a Bullock’s operation.”

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Walter Kieser, the city’s economic consultant who helped negotiate the expansion plans for the Ventura mall, said Federated’s purchase of Broadway Stores Inc. would probably boost the expansion.

“We’ve known for a long time that Broadway was in financial difficulties, so there were any number of possibilities,” Kieser said.

“A purchase by Federated, given the options, could be a good outcome,” he said. “Every indication is that they will be given the motivation to invest the dollars they need to be consistent with the way Broadway intended.”

Mall owners plan to spend tens of millions of dollars upgrading the Buenaventura Mall over the next two years to make it the county’s largest regional shopping center. Both Sears and Robinsons-May have agreed to vacate The Esplanade mall in Oxnard in favor of the renovated Ventura mall.

Developers and city officials now are working out details of an agreement that would return nearly $20 million in future sales taxes to the investors over the next 20 years.

The city also has tentatively agreed to waive or defer another $5 million in developer fees--provisions that City Manager Donna Landeros said were too enticing for the mall owners to pass up even if the Broadway does close.

“We would have been much more at risk if we had not reached an agreement with the mall ownership,” she said.

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Landeros said Ventura’s Broadway is less likely to close because its sales tax contributions to the General Fund show that it performs better than other comparable Broadway stores.

Converting the Broadway to a Bullock’s would make better sense because it would result in a wider range of tenants at the expanded mall, she said.

“Sears and [J. C. Penney] represent one end of the market, and Bullock’s and Robinsons-May would represent the other,” Landeros said. “The stores themselves want that kind of mix.”

Most customers browsing the three-level Broadway store in Ventura on Tuesday said they would miss the retail chain.

“I like to have a choice of going to Bullock’s or the Broadway,” said Jane Kirkpatrick, a Simi Valley mother of six vacationing in Ventura. “Even though they carry the same things, they carry different kinds.”

Others looked forward to the possibility of Bullock’s moving into west Ventura County.

“I’d miss the Broadway,” said Monica Flinn, shopping Tuesday afternoon for back-to-school clothes for her children. “But I wouldn’t mind if they put in a Bullock’s.”

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McDonald is a correspondent and Pols is a Times staff writer.

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