Consultant to Study Midtown Ventura Redevelopment

City leaders took the first step toward establishing a redevelopment zone in the city’s midtown area Monday, giving a consultant the go-ahead to survey the business corridor’s blight and languishing economic health.

The move comes as community activists work to revitalize the commercial thoroughfares of Main Street and Thompson Boulevard, which over the years have been beset by spotty business successes and declining tax revenues, officials say.

“It’s a business corridor that has been somewhat ignored over the last 15, 20 years,” said Councilman Ray DiGuilio, who serves as chairman when the City Council meets in its role as the Redevelopment Agency. “It is an economic corridor that time has passed by with malls and downtowns and [discount retailers]. We really need to address that as an economic issue.”

The state created redevelopment zones two decades ago to help cities transform blighted areas. Using a complicated process called tax-increment financing, cities are able to set aside property-tax revenue in the designated areas that would otherwise be used to support government programs.

Cities are then able to use the increment--any increase in property taxes--to borrow against, to raise money to finance development or provide low-interest loans to property owners to spruce up their buildings.

The hope is that such improvement projects will spur private investment.

Ventura’s only existing redevelopment zone is in its downtown area, where redevelopment money has been used to build a $4-million parking garage and put $6.5 million toward a cinema and retail complex on Main Street.

Preliminary studies have shown that redevelopment could help raise as much as $12 million for midtown improvements, said David Kleitsch, Ventura’s economic development manager.

But, Kleitsch said: “Redevelopment is not done for the money. Redevelopment is done to address conditions of blight.”

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On Monday night, the agency went about determining whether midtown’s physical, economic and social conditions qualify it under state law for a redevelopment project.

The council agency established boundaries for a midtown redevelopment survey that will run from Ash Street down both Main and Thompson to Mills Road and include the Buenaventura Mall, which is on the verge of a major expansion and revitalization. The survey boundary area also includes portions of Loma Vista and Telegraph roads.

A private consulting firm, Rosenow Spevacek Group Inc., will conduct the redevelopment survey. The company has already been hired by the city to conduct a series of workshops with midtown residents to get their ideas about the community’s future. The redevelopment survey will take four to six weeks to complete, Kleitsch said.

The city is at least six months away from deciding whether a redevelopment zone would be the best way to revitalize the midtown business corridor, said DiGuilio, who as a midtown property owner will be unable to vote on the matter.

“Redevelopment is not simply a magical tool that becomes a money tree for you,” said DiGuilio, who describes himself as a redevelopment skeptic. “The trade-off is that you need value received for what you do.”

Residents, property owners and midtown merchants are expected to weigh in with their opinions before a final decision is made.

“We want to look at all of the options we have available to us,” said Bill Barbee, president of the Midtown Community Council. “Redevelopment is just one of them.”