Midtown Mall Wins City Council OK

With little fanfare, the City Council unanimously approved a zoning change and environmental study this week that paves the way to build a shopping center on the site of a former drive-in movie theater in midtown.

The project met with little opposition Monday compared with a July meeting in which the council rejected the zoning change for the corner of the 26-acre site at Telephone and Portola roads. Then, the development included a 108,000-square-foot Home Depot store to anchor the mall, which residents angrily opposed.

The revamped “Ventura Gateway” project features an 87,000-square-foot Kohl’s department store instead of the Home Depot, a change that pleased more residents and drew the council’s support.

“Everybody thought the project had really been improved,” Councilwoman Donna DePaola said Tuesday.

However, some residents criticized the plan as not being in keeping with the city’s long-term vision.

“Ventura gave up its vision for second-best,” said Val Bettin, who lives across Telephone Road from the site. “We had an opportunity here to create something vibrantly new, attractively new.”

The Kohl’s will be the Wisconsin-based company’s first store in California. With more than 300 stores nationwide, the company may be planning to open 30 locations in Southern California, a Milwaukee newspaper reported last month. Kohl’s officials could not be reached for comment Tuesday.