Wrong Site for a Big-Box

The Ventura City Council will grapple Thursday night with a problem some other cities might wish they had.

The choice before the council: Allow a big-box store on a vacant lot bordered by residential neighborhoods or bow to protests and reject it. If the council approves a shopping center anchored by Home Depot, the city stands to gain as much as $500,000 in sales tax revenue. On the other hand, approval also would increase traffic on an already congested roadway and disappoint Ventura residents who are upset about the prospect of suburban sprawl.

We side with the residents. Big-box stores have a definite place on the American retail landscape. But not in this particular place.

By rejecting the so-called Gateway project, council members will take a small step toward planning on a human scale--even at the expense of sales tax revenue.

The proposed Gateway project would consist of a 108,000-square-foot Home Depot, a two-story Barnes & Noble bookstore and several other stores. The buildings and their 1,300 parking spaces would occupy the site of a defunct drive-in theater bounded on two sides by residential neighborhoods. The 26-acre property sits near one of the city’s busiest corners at Telephone Road and Main Street.

Unlike other controversial development proposals in Ventura County, the Gateway project does not entail slathering farmland with a layer of asphalt. Instead, the argument is over the highest use for an empty lot that’s been slathered with asphalt for decades.

Convinced that the project was too large for its setting and would generate excessive traffic, the city’s planning commission already has recommended rejecting it. Judging from the number of impassioned speakers at public hearings, we would conclude that most residents agree.

Before they vote, City Council members should imagine themselves living in one of the apartments or condos near the old 101 Drive-In. As neighbors, they should ask whether they would welcome the additional traffic, the din of big rigs, the increased air pollution that a big-box center would surely bring.

While they’re at it, they might picture increased traffic at the already congested corner of Telephone and Main. Long after they’ve left the council, they might be stewing in that automotive morass, wondering: Would it have been so awful to settle for a project that brought the city less revenue but was more in keeping with its character?

Such questions are raised in “Ventura Vision,” a blueprint for growth that was cobbled together in a yearlong process by city officials and hundreds of residents.

Released with great fanfare earlier this year, it envisions Telephone Road as a “grand boulevard”; developments beside it should be carefully landscaped “urban villages” that de-emphasize cars and parking lots, the document advises.

That vision would be obscured by any kind of big-box store on the site. We would prefer a number of alternatives: a project incorporating both apartments and shops . . . an office park with restaurants to draw the public . . . a mini-version of a themed retail development like the Promenade in Westlake Village.

If there were no other big-box hardware outlets within easy driving distance, Gateway’s developers might make a more persuasive case. But there are several, and Ventura need not compromise a neighborhood’s livability for another.

We would encourage city officials to help the developers find a more appropriate setting for the project.