Planner Urges Delay in Center Expansion

A developer should hold off on a massive expansion of a Rose Avenue retail complex in Oxnard until the city finalizes a financing plan to build a new freeway overpass nearby, a city planner has suggested in a report to the City Council.

Santa Monica-based developer Stanley Rothbart wants to add 120,000 square feet of stores at Shopping at the Rose II, which now features a Best Buy electronics store.

But the Rio School District and Oxnard City Manager Tom Frutchey appealed a decision by Oxnard’s Land Use Advisors panel earlier this year to allow the project to go forward, saying the city first needs to solve traffic problems in the area.

Oxnard’s City Council will vote tonight on whether to uphold the appeal.

Deanna Walsh, a planning official, has recommended that the city delay approving the project until it completes plans to create a special assessment district to pay for a new bridge over the Ventura Freeway at Rose Avenue.

Approval of the project “is premature until the assessment district has been formed,” Walsh said. “Once the assessment district has been formed, then it is up to the City Council to decide.”

Oxnard expects to set up in July an assessment district requiring property owners within a 900-acre area to help the city pay the cost of the bridge’s construction.

Rio School District officials argued in their appeal that the traffic generated by the expansion might trap emergency vehicles and endanger the lives of children who cross the existing two-lane bridge.

Frutchey called the advisory panel’s decision to approve the project “premature” since the city had not adopted a financing plan to pay for a six-lane bridge.

Rothbart could not be reached for comment Friday on the possible delay of his project. However, the developer has said that he supports the idea of establishing a special assessment district to pay for the new bridge.