Mall Project Brings Delays for Shoppers

If it seems to take longer these days to travel the short distance from Telegraph Road to Main Street via Mills Road, it does.

Harried motorists can chalk up the extra minutes to the $100-million makeover of Ventura’s Buenaventura Mall.

The problem is not that the mall is doubling in size, it’s that the renovation has forced the closure of a widely used mall entrance and spurred the revamping of the northbound Ventura Freeway ramp.

The combination can mean near-gridlock at the Mills-Main intersection at the noon and 5 p.m. rush hours, and at least a four-traffic-light-wait to progress half a block.

The expansion will double the number of stores in the Buenaventura Mall.

“We’ll just have to take it on the chin for a while. They’re improving the mall,” said Robert Sterling of Port Hueneme. “It’s one of those things.”

Shirley Wolfe of Ventura wasn’t so sanguine. “It’s a pain. I wanted to go to Penney’s and have to park all the way around on the other side. I’ll only come here when I have to.”

Nazir Lalani, Ventura’s transportation engineer, said that as motorists and shoppers become acquainted with the changes, clogged traffic will probably ease off.

“We’ve also asked the mall to install two new signals at the northerly driveway on Mills Road and on Telegraph Road near the old Barker Brothers building,” he said. “Those two signals will help, and they may be operating by March of ’98.”

Bus riders who thought they knew the whereabouts of their SCAT bus bench now see bulldozers instead.

“Our only mall stop now is nearby, closer to Telegraph Road by the Circuit City store entrance,” said Laura Caskey, SCAT’s planning and marketing director. SCAT will wait until all the dust settles in 1999 before deciding on new permanent bus stop locations.

When the expansion is completed, Penney’s will be in a new building, Robinsons-May will be in the old Penney’s and a new Sears, Roebuck & Co. anchor store will have been built on the west side of the mall. The fate of the huge, vacant Barker Brothers is still up in the air while Macy’s, which was once the Broadway department store, is undergoing interior renovation.

But meanwhile, dedicated shoppers are making do.

“Yes, I got a little lost,” said Alice Warner of Saticoy. “I was headed around to the other side of the parking lot to get my watch fixed and got headed off by this fence. I didn’t know this was going on, but it’s OK.”