New City Official Ready to Sell Businesses on Ventura’s Pluses

Even while living in the beauty of the Monterey Peninsula, Rochelle Margolin had no trouble spotting the lure of Ventura, particularly from a business perspective.

“You have the physical environment, you have the transportation of the [Ventura freeway] and rail transportation,” she said. “You’re outside a major population, but in the proximity of one. We are one of the few California coastal cities you can actually do business in.”

And that is the sales pitch Margolin will present to businesses in and outside Ventura as the newest member of the city’s Economic Development Division. Margolin will work alongside director David Kleitsch, the only other staff member.

Margolin’s initial duties will include implementing the city’s development and rehabilitation loan programs and encouraging small-business development. A loan program to aid businesses correcting code violations also is expected to be high on her list.

“We’re focusing on business expansion, retention and attracting new business--we want to generate higher-end jobs that require technical background, training and education,” Margolin said.

“The whole idea is to enhance the community’s economic vitality and quality of life.”

Margolin, who worked in business development in Monterey County, said she was hired in Ventura, in part, to serve as encouragement to businesses that could benefit from city government assistance.

“Businesses sometimes think that government is being nosy and is a barrier to business--but we want businesses to know that we’re there to help them,” she said. “One of the reasons I was hired was we want to be more customer-friendly.”

Kleitsch said Margolin’s arrival will enable Ventura to better promote its economic development program in and outside the area.

“What we’ve been doing over the last three years has been creating the building blocks for economic development, but we haven’t had the manpower to launch a concerted marketing effort,” he said.

“We’ve done a lot of legwork and we’ve got some excellent projects like the [Buenaventura] mall and the downtown redevelopment. The next step will be business attraction and expansion.”

Specifically, he said, businesses that would bring high-paying jobs to Ventura are out there waiting to be escorted into the city.

“Business like medical-device companies, bio-agriculture, multimedia that generate higher-value jobs are out there,” Kleitsch said.

“We have to sell the merits of our community. People like Ventura because of its address--we have an address that’s very salable. We’ve got some folks as close as Newbury Park and in the Valley that are interested in having a Ventura address.”

Kleitsch said he is working with three businesses interested in moving to Ventura and is assisting two existing Ventura firms looking to expand within the city.

Several of those moves should be completed within the next few months, he said.

The economic development department is working to connect these and other businesses with brokers representing office sites in the Market Street, McGrath Street and Telephone Road areas in eastern Ventura, as well as along Ventura Avenue on the west side.

“There are sites on The Avenue that are ripe for recycling,” Kleitsch said. “They can get land for 40 cents a square foot and turn it into $4 a square foot. Properties are large enough, there is freeway access and there is access to fiber cable. Several of Ventura’s major companies--Kinkos, Patagonia and Santa Ventura Studios--are located on the west side.”