Board to Look at Purchasing Building

Ventura County supervisors Tuesday will consider spending $2.75 million to purchase a three-story building to be used for administrative offices.

Supervisors are looking at buying the Chevron building across the street from the Ventura County Government Center in an effort to reduce the nearly $4.6 million that the county spends each year to lease commercial space.

A public hearing is scheduled for 10 a.m. in the county’s Hall of Administration building in Ventura.

The supervisors have already passed a resolution announcing the county’s intention to buy the building, a move officials consider to be a good deal as the local commercial real estate market continues on an upswing.

Chevron wants to continue leasing the 36,000-square-foot building from the county over the next five years and vacate one floor every two years, officials say. The county would begin moving departments into the building in January 1999. County projections show that the five-year lease to Chevron will earn an estimated $1.6 million.

Officials believe that over a 15-year period, the purchase will save more than $5.5 million in the amount that the county spends to lease commercial space. Within a five-mile radius of the Government Center, the county leases 65,831 square feet of office space at an annual cost of $898,000.

Officials say the savings will cover the cost of the building in eight years.

County officials have not decided which departments would move into the Chevron building, which will be purchased with interest earnings from the Public Facilities Corp., an agency set up by the county in the 1970s to finance construction of large public building projects.