Aquarium, Skating Projects Collide

A skateboarders’ park planned for a patch of vacant land near the beach must now compete with a developer’s proposal for a hybrid aquarium and planetarium on the same site.

An architect will present conceptual plans for a $43-million astronomy and aquarium project Monday, the same night the Ventura City Council is tentatively scheduled to begin discussion of a skateboard park proposed for Promenade Park.

Both projects would use three acres across from the Ventura County Fairgrounds parking lot and owned by Texaco Oil Co. The aquarium project would include a 600-space parking lot on fairground property across the street. The project would also compete with several other proposals for aquariums throughout the county.

Ed Campbell of USA Engineers let the council know several months ago that he had something in the works, but this week revealed his project--a 65,000-square-foot aquarium and astronomy center, which he has dubbed the Sea Star Vista.

The huge elliptical building would be ringed with a wall of fish--some brightly colored Pacific fish, others monsters of the deep. Visitors would stroll from the parking lot across Figueroa Street, through a corridor of fish, into a grand theater. There, two spherical theaters--linked by fiber-optic cable to some of the world’s premiere star-gazing spots, such as Chile, Hawaii and perhaps even the Hubble Telescope--would project live transmissions of the universe. Campbell says he believes it would be the first of its kind anywhere.

“With the new technology available with telescopes we have the ability to look beyond what we’ve been seeing,” says Campbell, shifting the huge models in his hands to explain. “Mankind has a desire to see what the scientists are discovering.”

Campbell says he has talked with Texaco Oil, and should sign papers for the land this December.

He will meet with the fairgrounds board Oct. 15 to discuss the parking structure. He says the entire $43 million would be private money. He is asking a foundation to come up with some of the money, and private investors to cover the rest. Campbell hopes to begin pouring cement for his mammoth fishbowl within a year.

The aquarium proposal is merely the latest setback for skateboarders trying to find a place to skate in Ventura. This summer the city banned skateboarding downtown. Then this week the city approved a resolution that would prohibit riders from doing their stunts at the Ventura County Federal Credit Union on Telephone Road.

Already some supporters said the three-acre lot was too small to accommodate stunt-crazy skateboarders, who would need more space to do their tricks.

But others worry about where skateboarders will go now.

“They had promised the kids a park down on Figueroa Street,” said Billie Omstead, who lives in east Ventura and talks to local kids. “Now I see some other business interests come along and those kids are out in the street.”