Oxnard’s Courtyard Is Luring Retailers

It took a couple of years, but Linda Hagelis finally wore them down.

Armed with traffic counts, demographics and other sales pitches, the vice president of Capital Commercial Real Estate / NAI in Oxnard fought hard to persuade national and regional retailers to open shops at the proposed Courtyard at the Financial Plaza in Oxnard.

In 1997, Hagelis was assigned the task of pre-leasing most of the planned 12,000-square-foot center, to sit at the foot of the high-rise offices at Vineyard Avenue and Esplanade Drive. The recent groundbreaking is an indication of her success.

“This project wasn’t going to be built until it was 80% pre-leased,” Hagelis said.

Hagelis represented the developer, Channel Islands Properties, in tenant negotiations. Tenants signed on include Baja Fresh, Starbucks, the Habit, Quizno’s, Western Bagel, and Pacific Bell Wireless. Hagelis said she is looking for another food provider and a service business--perhaps a dry cleaner--to fill the two remaining vacancies.

Although Hagelis said the tenants are excited about the upscale center now, that wasn’t the case at the beginning of negotiations.

“Most tenants weren’t looking to find a home in Oxnard,” she said. “Starbucks originally wasn’t interested in the site at all. It took time to educate them, to give them the traffic counts, the population. Not being from the area, a lot of people didn’t know what Oxnard is.”

To sell the location, Hagelis said, she emphasized the 3,500 daytime employees who work in the financial tower and the 40,000 vehicles that drive past the site daily.

“We are misunderstood--some people think we are a little more of a country place,” she said. “Starbucks was impressed and surprised that we were at a high-rise building. There were several ‘no’s’ before we got a lot of the tenants.”

The land is a former site of a succession of chain restaurants--Bobby McGee’s, Jake’s, and A.J. Spur’s. Hagelis said a fourth restaurant was never a serious option.

“There are very few restaurant chains that large nowadays, and those that want to be on the freeway and in densely populated areas,” she said.

“They like, usually, a million people in their trade area, and we’re not even close to that in the entire county.”

Hagelis said the trend of the late 1990s is more toward courtyard settings like the Commons at Calabasas and the Promenade in Westlake.

“They all have a little outdoor dining element, the courtyard look with pedestrian-friendly walkways. It’s more of a gathering place,” she said.

Construction on the Oxnard project is expected to begin soon with completion around September and occupancy later in the fall, Hagelis said.