Construction Chaos Holds Silver Lining

When the city gave downtown Ventura its multimillion-dollar face-lift two years ago--ripping up sidewalks to put in fancy brick inlay, replacing leafy ficus trees with palms and reconfiguring the street parking--merchants say business plummeted 25% to 50%.

So this time around, shopkeepers say, they want to take preventive measures.

With construction of a four-story, 500-space parking structure for the corner of Santa Clara and California streets scheduled to begin in May, and construction of a 10-screen movie theater scheduled to begin in August, downtown Ventura will soon be ringing with the din of jackhammers and the grinding of cement mixers.

With a list of 11 proposals in hand, the Downtown Ventura Assn. met Wednesday with Tom Figg, planning and redevelopment manager, to discuss ways to minimize, or even capitalize, on the impact of the upcoming Century Cinema and parking structure projects.

They made creative suggestions for how the city and merchants might turn the fast-approaching construction chaos into a downtown draw.

“We want to make this into a theme park deal, where it’s an attraction to come down and watch this happen,” said Tim O’Neil, president of the downtown group.

O’Neil suggested that color renderings of the projects be distributed to merchants downtown to let the public see what is going on, that project models be displayed publicly, and that the trolley service be expanded to circulate downtown and to all the outlying parking lots.

Terri Vujea, an officer at the police storefront downtown, suggested that the city consider having youths paint the walls of plywood that will go up around the construction sites.

“If you can get the paint, we can get the kids,” she said.

City officials voiced financial concerns about some of the proposed projects but said they are eager to continue working with downtown merchants.