Focus on Image, Consultant Tells City

Capitalizing on culture is the fastest way to develop a community, and Ventura should get started right away, a national expert on redevelopment said Wednesday.

“When I hear the word Ventura, what you really want me to do is form an image in a millisecond so that I will say, ‘You know I’d like to go there,’ and if I’d like to go there, maybe I’d like to invest there, and if I’d like to invest there, maybe I’d like to retire there,’ ” said Robert McNulty, president of a nonprofit community development organization based in Washington, D.C.

Impressed with what the city has to offer, McNulty told about 100 people at the Ventura County Museum of History and Art that Ventura needs to decide on the identity it wants to project and everything else will fall into place.

McNulty told of small- and medium-sized cities that have revived themselves through culture to inspire Ventura’s leaders, who are working to define and develop the city’s cultural district.

The city wants to build on the disparate elements in its downtown--among them the San Buenaventura Mission, the Ventura Theater, possibly the abandoned Mayfair Theater--to create an entertainment district to draw residents and tourists.

“I think his role today was to give us focus and demonstrate or articulate what other communities have been able to do under as difficult or more difficult circumstances,” Deputy Mayor Ray Di Guilio said. “It’s like going up on a hill and hearing a sermon and then coming down and having to implement it in your life.”

From Chattanooga, Tenn., which solved its pollution problems, to Gilroy, which capitalized on its formerly unsavory image as the world’s garlic capital, cities like Ventura have used culture to develop their communities.

But McNulty warned against sacrificing action for planning. The “visioning” trend so popular in cities as the 21st century approaches will result in many of those community plans becoming “shelf documents” whose recommendations are never implemented, he said.

“A cultural set of strategies are the easiest first step to get people to work together to achieve some of those aspirations,” he said.

Culture is much more than high-brow museums, theaters and symphonies, according to McNulty’s definition. It can include libraries, parks and beaches.

“Culture is humanity; therefore, the question is: What is your culture? How do you express it, how do you put it to work to make your children creative, tolerant and employable for the future?”

A community’s culture should attract others--and those others can’t just be tourists, he said.

“Any town that makes over its community for an out-of-towner, called a tourist, is really giving up the deed of quality to their town,” McNulty said to much applause. “The places that have long-term sustainable value are places where people love to live and therefore people are fighting to share that living experience.”

After a tour of Ventura with city leaders, McNulty said he was impressed by several of the city’s historic buildings, its topography and its beach. But he said he also noticed separations among these elements.

“It strikes me there’s a lot of bridge-building to be done to create better value in Ventura,” he said in an interview before his speech. “Bridge-building between neighborhood groups as to why the investment in the downtown is warranted, bridge-building between the city and the county in terms of some key institutions, bridge-building across the damn freeway and the railroad tracks so the beach is once again connected to the city.”

Being wedged between Santa Barbara and Los Angeles doesn’t mean Ventura can’t distinguish itself as being “as special as any other community in California or the country,” McNulty said before his speech.

“Los Angeles may have very high rents. Ventura may not,” he said. “Santa Barbara may have a population that is halfway in the grave. Ventura may not.”

McNulty is president of Partners for Livable Communities, which for 21 years has counseled communities around the country on quality of life, economic development and social equity. He was in California on Wednesday to give the keynote address at the California League of Cities conference in Monterey.

Di Guilio, who heads the city’s Redevelopment Agency, said McNulty may not be the last visitor to counsel the city on its planning.

“When appropriate, we will probably bring in additional speakers or experts or consultants of his stature or nature,” Di Guilio said, “but I think the primary focus is for this community to develop its own vision, and I think those other folks will help us through the process but not determine our vision.”

Museum Director Ed Robings said Ventura’s tourism industry is far from dominating the city and that he hoped McNulty’s warnings about tourism wouldn’t result in a community that is unfriendly to outsiders and their spending money.

“This museum wasn’t built for tourists, but I couldn’t keep it open without the tourists,” Robings said. The museum hosted the 45-minute speech, which was sponsored by the city and will be broadcast at 7 p.m. Monday on Channel 6.