Ventura Rejects Plea to Change Mall Plans : Retailing: Requests from Oxnard for a new environmental study and a joint project are turned down by council members who say it is too late.

Determined to move ahead with plans to expand the aging Buenaventura Mall, the City Council on Monday firmly rebuffed appeals from Oxnard leaders and lawyers representing the Esplanade shopping center to conduct a new environmental report on the project.

And after their meeting, Ventura council members sharply criticized a proposal by Oxnard council members to cast aside the long-awaited expansion to jointly develop a new regional mall from which both cities could share the revenue.

“A joint regional mall would only stall this project beyond the time frame the retailers are looking for,” said Mayor Jack Tingstrom, who described the proposal as simply “too late.”

During the meeting, Oxnard City Councilman Andres Herrera suggested that the neighboring cities develop a shopping center together and split the sales tax revenue.

“We think the city should find cause to give important discussion to a revenue-sharing plan,” said Herrera, who spoke on behalf of the Oxnard City Council. “How can we collectively, cooperatively, address that Ventura-Oxnard corridor?”

But Ventura City Council members said they were too far along in negotiations with Buenaventura Mall owners to consider scrapping that project for an entirely new one.

“If they wanted a compromise, it should have been a long time ago,” Tingstrom said. “We are well on our way to breaking ground.”

Oxnard’s proposal was the latest plot twist in a bitter, decade-old saga between the two cities to determine who will develop the first regional mall in western Ventura County.

So far, Ventura has the clear lead.

Plans for the long-awaited Buenaventura Mall expansion are nearly complete. A development agreement has been drafted. Finishing touches on the design are now being made.

Tonight, the Planning Commission is set to review the project for the first time at a special televised 6 p.m. meeting. The project is expected to come before the City Council for final review next month.

MCA Buenaventura Associates, the owners of the Buenaventura Mall, want to add a second level of stores and two new department stores to the 30-year-old shopping center.

Sears and Robinsons-May have agreed to leave the Esplanade in Oxnard for the new and improved Buenaventura Mall, a move that Oxnard leaders say will hurt their city’s economy for years to come.

It is for that reason, paired with concerns over increased traffic, that Oxnard leaders asked their Ventura counterparts to conduct a new environmental study of the proposed expansion.

“If this is a regional mall, then it has regional concerns,” Oxnard Councilman Dean Maulhardt said before Monday’s meeting. “We think the project is significant enough so a full environmental impact report should be done.”

During the meeting, Richard J. Maggio, Oxnard’s community development director, handed the Ventura council a thick report on the expansion’s potential impact. “This in particular will create, without a doubt, physical blight in Oxnard,” he said.

But Ventura city staff told its City Council members that representatives of the two anchor stores have indicated they would leave the Esplanade next year whether the Ventura mall is expanded or not.

In a lengthy oral report, the staff said that Oxnard’s appeal of the project’s environmental report was filed after the deadline. And they provided statistics to show that Oxnard now has the “lion’s share” of retail dollars of two cities.

Ventura Councilman Jim Friedman said that the argument that the Buenaventura Mall expansion would hurt Oxnard’s economy was of little concern to Ventura.

“I think Ventura’s No. 1 concern is the economic health of Ventura,” he said. “Oxnard has made its own bed and is now going to have to sleep in it. They put in a brand new outlet mall right next to the Esplanade mall. It is not going to take a genius to think it is going to pull business away. . . . And that is what has happened.”

After the meeting, which ended with the council voting 5-0 to deny Oxnard’s request, Maggio said the council would discuss other options for saving Oxnard’s shopping center from economic collapse, including a possible lawsuit.

“We will look at all our options,” he said. “That [a lawsuit] is an option.”

In separate letters to Ventura officials last month, Oxnard officials and Esplanade lawyers appealed a decision by Ventura’s Environmental Impact Review Committee.

Last month, the committee approved a smaller addendum to a phone-book size environmental impact report conducted two years ago.

Oxnard officials appealed that decision on the grounds that the supplementary document failed to review the project’s potential impacts on Oxnard.

In the letters, Oxnard officials and Esplanade attorneys also argued that the report was not made available for public review.

But Ventura leaders argued Monday that the addendum to the original environmental impact report was satisfactory and criticized Oxnard officials for trying to delay the project in the 11th hour.

“There is no reason to believe that the information is flawed,” Friedman said of the environmental study.

“To say that Ventura is creating this problem is ridiculous,” he said before the meeting. “Ventura is simply looking to revitalize a mall that is very much in need of revitalization--period.”