Home Depot Plan Vetoed by Ventura City Council

The City Council has told Home Depot to rethink its plan to locate a warehouse-size store at the site of a former neighborhood drive-in, a decision applauded by midtown residents who feared too much noise and traffic.

After a four-hour meeting at which almost 50 speakers urged the council to reject the proposal, the panel voted 7 to 0 Thursday night to ask developers to return with plans for a retail center without the 108,000-square-foot home improvement store.

Supporters said the center would bring more tax dollars to Ventura, while opponents said a Home Depot would make the area near Telephone and Portola roads too congested and noisy.

Bill Fulton, who oversaw a citizens committee considering the city’s future, said the proposal was a “lowest common denominator” project for the site and contradicted Ventura’s long-term vision.

Council members made it clear that they wanted a new retail center but without a Home Depot.

“It’s the wrong project for the wrong spot when you put a Home Depot in,” Councilman Ray DiGuilio said. He proposed a compromise to keep the retail center alive minus a Home Depot.

Councilwoman Donna DePaola asked the mall’s developers to consider a “softer and a smaller” anchor tenant.

Councilman Jim Friedman said the drive-in site was the ugliest spot in the city and that this project was a chance to bring some beauty to the location, adjacent to the Ventura Freeway.

Architect John Monavian, a real estate official for Pacific Theatres, which owns and seeks to develop the 26-acre site, declined comment after the meeting.

Earlier this week, Greg George, real estate manager for the western division of Home Depot, said if the plan is rejected he will focus on Home Depot’s efforts to build in Oxnard and Camarillo.

By Friday morning, signs reading “We won. You CAN Fight City Hall. Thank you” had cropped up on lawns along Portola Road, across the street from the site. Homeowners weighed in on other things that could be built there.

“Personally, if they want to put more apartments in there, cool,” said Claudia Hart. “There’s plenty of room on the other side of the freeway where other businesses are.”

Pete Baptiste, who lives in the nearby Orchard Lane community, saw it as a victory for the neighborhood.

“I’d love a grocery store, a Barnes & Noble. I’d get a latte and read a book,” said Baptiste, looking over the signs and the drive-in Friday morning. “I would like to see some kind of retail, but I’m leery of substituting one kind of big box for another.”

But the developers have insisted for months that it was Home Depot’s involvement that attracted other retailers to the project, and that without its presence the project would not get built.

Representatives of Staples office supply stores and of Pier 1 Imports told the council Thursday they were unsure whether their businesses would stay in Ventura if the project is rejected. Both retail chains were prepared to relocate to the new mall.

Dave Rackliff, a district manager for Staples, said the Ventura store would likely move to Oxnard.

Brian Brennan and other members of the council apologized to Pacific Theatres, saying the city had sent them mixed messages, which led the company to expect its project would be approved.

But the council’s latest decision might be yet another mixed message, said Fulton. Because Pacific Theatres insisted its project hinged on Home Depot, the developer now may be stuck on how to proceed.

“The City Council is asking him to create a project he can’t do,” Fulton said.

David Kleitsch, Ventura’s economic development manager, said the message is clear: The public wants a say in whatever is to be built on the site.

“It was truly a big-box issue,” Kleitsch said. “But coming up with an alternative to the big box is going to be part of a more public process.”