VENTURA : Council Bans Skating at Victoria Plaza

The Ventura City Council voted Monday night to ban skateboarding, bicycling and in-line skating in the Victoria Plaza Shopping Center in east Ventura at the request of business owners who say customers are routinely put at risk by reckless youths.

The decision came one week before the council is scheduled to vote on whether to spend more than $150,000 to build a skateboard park in downtown Ventura--a proposal parents, teen-agers and some city officials hope will give youths a place to enjoy their favorite sport without damaging public property or endangering others.

“Everybody thinks we are bad kids, but we just want to have fun,” said 13-year-old Robert Kimmell, a skateboard enthusiast who addressed the council Monday night.

“I just think Ventura should build a skateboard park.”

Matt Farrar, also 13, asked the council to approve a park.

“I am here to say,” Farrar told the council, “that if they are getting agitated . . . then you need to give us someplace to skate.”

Janice Aharon-Ezer, who works at a florist shop in the Victoria Plaza, said she supports giving local youths such a facility, “but Victoria Plaza is not the place.”

Robert Novick, who spoke on behalf of the shopping center owners, asked council members to impose a section of city law that allows them to prohibit skateboarding, bicycling and roller-skating in private shopping centers.

The Victoria Shopping Center, located at the southeast corner of Telegraph Road and Victoria Avenue, has posted signs prohibiting skating. But they have been ignored, Novick said. The city ban would authorize police to issue citations and crack down on violators, he said.

The council had imposed only one similar ban previously, restricting bicycling and skateboarding in the Borchard Shopping Center in 1992.

The skate park proposal will be discussed tonight at a meeting of the city’s Community Affairs Commission at 7 p.m. at City Hall.