VENTURA COUNTY ROUNDUP : Oxnard : City Still Seeking Theater Developer

City officials are in talks with an unnamed developer to take on the downtown theater project after the unraveling of a 2 1/2-year relationship with Los Angeles-based CIM Development Corp.

Plans to build a 14-screen theater as part of a downtown revitalization effort have been stymied with the breakdown of talks with CIM. The project is expected to cost between $8.5 million and $9.5 million.

“We had what we believed was a fair deal and over the last couple of months they’ve tried to alter that deal by demanding unfair things from the city,” Councilman Dean Maulhardt said Wednesday.

CIM had demanded, among other things, that Oxnard purchase additional land as part of the deal, Maulhardt said. City officials also balked at building a parking structure near the theater, because there are already some 2,400 spaces within a five-minute walk of the proposed complex.

Officials from CIM Development were unavailable for comment.

The city wants a theater complex to be built on a two-acre lot between 5th and 6th streets that would feature a food court and other entertainment-related businesses in 10,000 square feet of adjoining commercial space. The project was scheduled to take about two years to complete and was expected to spur economic growth in the city’s flagging core.

“Our goal was to have it complete and ready to open by next summer,” Maulhardt said. “This will make downtown a very viable area and now this delay has cost us valuable time.”

Maulhardt said that the city and CIM reached an agreement more than two years ago and that in May 1998 the parties agreed to an exclusive deal. But earlier this year, Maulhardt said, the company began to ask for changes in the agreement.

“They kept asking for extensions and we kept giving it to them. We thought we had an opening date commitment as well, but I think what it came down to was that they . . . wanted to back out and this was their way of backing out,” Maulhardt said.