Buying Time, at a Bargain

It was hardly a “bailout” when the Thousand Oaks City Council voted to exercise its option and purchase the building occupied by the financially troubled Conejo Valley Chamber of Commerce--any more than it would be a bailout if the repo man towed the car from your driveway with only a promise that he’d think about renting it back to you.

We think a better description is “bargain.”

The city ends up owning a two-story office building at the gateway intersection of Lynn Road and Hillcrest Drive just by paying off the chamber’s mortgage debt of about $500,000. What it’s worth depends on the zoning--and that’s up to the City Council.

The chamber built the building nearly a decade ago when the economy was booming and membership was flush. Later, when both dropped sharply, it struggled to keep up with the $6,500 monthly payments and eventually fell behind. Because the city had co-signed the loan, it had first dibs on buying the property before the bank took it back.

Doing so was smart for several reasons.

The city bought more than a building. It also bought time. By forestalling foreclosure and becoming the chamber’s landlord, if only temporarily, the city ended the immediate crisis. And by postponing a decision on what to do with the property, the council has time to explore several appealing options:

* The city could sell the building and use the profits to reduce its debts.

* The city could keep the building. Every public entity from the county Parks Department to Cal State University is cooking up schemes to generate cash flow; an office building with a long-term tenant in place seems like a windfall.

* Or it could kick the chamber out. We enjoy imagining what fresh partnerships might result if the chamber rented space in the city-owned Under One Roof building, which houses many of Thousand Oaks’ social services nonprofits.

* In the long term, the city could use the building or site as bait for some business it wants to attract to town.

In any case, the council’s action kept that building from being sold and possibly used for less suitable commercial purposes and has the potential to earn a few bucks for the city. If it also assists the chamber in its moment of need that’s a nice bonus--but hardly inappropriate.

Not everyone in Thousand Oaks agrees with all of the Chamber of Commerce’s goals. But there is no denying that the organization and the 1,100 businesses it represents make up an important piece of the community. Like any nonprofit that lets excessive spending dig it into a hole, the chamber deserved a sharp wake-up call. Losing ownership of its headquarters seems to have done the trick.

We look for the business leaders who run the chamber to become a lot more entrepreneurial in their stewardship of its assets. That their misfortune has brought the city a chance to profit is a nice bonus in return.