Screen Test

On the wall of BG’s Coffee Shop, a front-page newspaper headline heralds a new day for this city’s beleaguered downtown: “Local Theater Situation Is Clearing Up.”

Gloria Stuart pours a cup of steaming coffee, then giggles. The clipping is dated Oct. 28, 1927. And city fathers are still singing the same tune today.

“I sent it over for the city to see,” says Stuart, pointing to the yellowed page, “and they didn’t think it was too funny.”

Oxnard’s current struggle to build a movie theater--the ballyhooed centerpiece of a promised downtown revival--is in its seventh year, over half a decade past a building boom that brought new multiplexes to every other major city in Ventura County.

Oxnard officials continue to say a deal is just around the corner.

Indeed, the City Council is expected to consider Tuesday a revamped proposal from a Burbank developer to finally bring 14 screens and 2,500 stadium seats to a prime city-owned block on A Street.

The $12-million complex would include half a dozen trendy eateries and a neon-lighted promenade to beckon customers from busy Oxnard Boulevard a block away. The city would build a $4-million, 350-space parking garage nearby.

“It’s been slow, no question,” redevelopment boss Curtis Cannon said. “But I say a deal is close.”

Cannon’s comments came after a recent swirl of negotiations among the city, developer Victor Georgino and an investment group headed by the Southland’s oldest theater chain, 60-screen Sanborn Theaters Inc. of Newport Beach.

Until last week, when negotiators apparently resolved a key sticking point on Sanborn’s share of project costs, Georgino and theater chain president Bruce Sanborn thought the deal might evaporate altogether--the third such failure with different developers since 1995.

“If it were an easy deal it would have been done five years ago,” said Georgino, who completed Ventura’s 10-screen downtown theater in 1998, then moved on to Oxnard last February. “But I think Oxnard has tremendous potential.”

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Yet, for now, Oxnard remains without a venue for first-run movies, leaving the core of the county’s largest city nearly lifeless after dark.

Despite the struggles of an overbuilt U.S. movie theater industry that has eight chains reorganizing under bankruptcy protection, developers and city officials still see downtown Oxnard as a good market for a large, new theater.

Other Southland cities are writing theaters out of their building plans, but Oxnard officials still say a multiplex makes sense because it could draw customers from the 200,000 residents in metropolitan Oxnard who must now venture to Ventura or Camarillo for new films.

“Even with the industry in trouble,” Sanborn said, “Oxnard is still the same. It still needs a first-run theater. It has the population to support it. And if the citizens of Oxnard will go there, then it will be successful.”

That, of course, is the gamble.

Nobody--not city officials, Georgino or Sanborn--is certain enough Oxnard residents will go to the movies in downtown Oxnard, where A Street night life is mainly a billiards parlor and the Garcia Mortuary.

Other theater chains have maintained that a downtown Oxnard cinema would fail because many residents--especially those near the Ventura Freeway--can easily go to the Century 16 in Ventura or to the 12-screen Edwards Palace in Camarillo, just a few minutes away.

With 21% of the county’s population, but with 40% of its violent crime, Oxnard still suffers from a perception that it is crime-ridden. In fact, the city’s crime rate is half what it was a decade ago and low compared with most U.S. cities its size.

And Oxnard officials are convinced they can make the heart of their blue-collar city bright, clean and safe enough that customers will come to catch a movie, have dinner and browse.

They point in particular to Georgino’s success in downtown Ventura, where a resurgent Main Street bustles with new restaurants and stores near the 2-year-old Century 10 theater.

“Many of our neighbors feel these types of projects work well in every other city but not Oxnard,” Councilman Tom Holden said. “I reject that notion.”

Georgino and a partner, David Augustine, have already shown their commitment to the Oxnard project, buying over the last year three large buildings near the theater site--a vacant Woolworth’s for $600,000, an old Penney’s for $1.05 million and another prominent two-story structure for $700,000.

The idea is to fill these street-level storefronts with restaurants, bookstores, record shops--tenants that will stay open evenings.

The top floors might also convert to residential lofts, Georgino said, as has been done in Pasadena, Long Beach and Santa Monica, where flagging downtowns were revived by new business and new residents.

“We wouldn’t be buying up here if we didn’t think we’d be successful,” Georgino said.

Downtown Recovery Is Slow and Ongoing

Once a bustling center of commerce astride the Pacific Coast Highway, downtown Oxnard withered after the Ventura Freeway opened three miles to the north in 1962, luring away banks, restaurants, auto dealerships and department stores that wanted to be freeway-close.

Today, after several failed redevelopment efforts, the downtown is an eclectic mix of old and new buildings along streets sometimes lined with palm and pepper trees. Although Oxnard is a medium-sized city, it has the feel of a small town.

It is comprised mostly of small shops, service businesses, government offices, coffee shops and Mexican restaurants. It is notable for its large number of parking lots and vacant parcels.

Even without a big movie theater, the downtown has begun a recovery of sorts.

Over the last decade, the city has added a stylish red-brick library and a matching train-and-bus station.

The redevelopment agency has spent $10 million to move 11 historic houses to Heritage Square and convert them into offices. It has donated land to three newly completed condo or apartment projects with a total of 218 units. It has spent at least $2 million to spruce up streets, install new lighting and renovate Plaza Park, just across B Street from the theater site.

It has just begun a $525,000 project to light and landscape alleys and parking lots in preparation for the movie theater.

Slowly, private owners have also started to put money back into their properties. Vacant storefronts have reopened--often with shops oriented to the city’s largely Latino population. And new owners are buying into the downtown.

Several new apartment complexes have been built nearby. Two housing projects are planned just across Oxnard Boulevard next to the Boys & Girls Club. And Richard McNish, one of the developers of the River Ridge housing tract, is planning a replica of the old Oxnard Hotel with apartments for senior citizens.

Reiter Bros., the strawberry grower, bought three storefronts from the city and is building a headquarters on A Street. And the Naumann Building, a rebuilt set of offices just north of the theater site, recently sold for nearly its $669,000 asking price, said real estate broker John Fitzgerald.

“And everybody’s starting to move their rents up,” Fitzgerald said. “There isn’t much vacant space left.”

For downtown Oxnard, the increase is from $1 a square foot to perhaps $1.20. The Naumann Building has the highest rent in downtown, $1.25 a square foot, Fitzgerald said.

“Things have improved big-time, compared to two years ago,” he said. “If you try to go down A Street now at 4 or 5 p.m., traffic is backed up.”

Roberto Garcia has noticed. He paid $165,000 a year ago for an old building across A Street from the mortuary he owns and has rebuilt it as a coffee shop and art gallery. He also owns two nearby parcels he is holding for the future.

“It’s happening,” Garcia said of the downtown recovery.

As for the theater project, Garcia said he has been downtown for 23 years and heard many promises before.

“We’re not counting on it,” he said.

Developers Decry City’s Handling of Project

The movie theater’s role in this changing downtown is clear: Extend activity into the night, bringing new sales and property taxes to the city.

The City Council hopes the project will spur a rush to cheap downtown properties by private developers.

“What you see right now will not be the downtown landscape when the theater opens,” Holden said.

But theater developers who have staked their time and effort on Oxnard’s potential see things differently. They say Oxnard is trying to do the theater project on the cheap and that could blow up, again.

“We were in last-minute negotiations and they blew up,” said Rex Swanson, managing partner of an El Segundo firm that spent 2 1/2 years on a theater proposal only to have a deal rejected in 1997.

Swanson said his Oxnard project--the model for the one now before the council--was risky because the city would not commit to spending its own money to improve surrounding properties.

“It’s a triumph of hope over reality,” Swanson said. “The patterns of that city are to the freeway, not to the downtown.”

As it turns out, Oxnard had another developer waiting in the wings, waving an offer that was far more ambitious.

Shaul Kuba, a partner in CIM Group of Los Angeles, came to Oxnard with a plan for a grand new downtown covering a six-block swath of A Street.

His group had already helped rebuild downtowns in Pasadena, Santa Monica, Brea, Huntington Beach, San Diego and San Jose. The company is the largest property owner on Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade.

“We were prepared to invest $50 million in the downtown, and the city basically kicked our ass out of town,” said Kuba, now a big investor in Hollywood’s budding redevelopment.

“Our vision from Day 1 was to revitalize the entire downtown, not just build a theater” he said. “Unfortunately, the City Council just doesn’t get it.”

City officials say they rejected CIM’s proposal because it wanted too much city property for free--six city-owned parcels or buildings--and a $10-million city subsidy up front.

“Shaul’s plan was a great plan if we had $10 million to spare,” redevelopment chief Cannon said. “But there’s no way we could have done it.”

Holden said CIM didn’t mention the $10 million until the last minute, after 18 months of negotiation.

“He took us to the end and held us ransom and wanted 10 million bucks,” Holden said.

A Lot of Ifs Remain in the Theater Project

Then Georgino stepped in.

But it’s been a year since the city signed an exclusive negotiating agreement with him, and six months since it expired.

In addition, the city’s application on behalf of Georgino for an $11-million federally sponsored low-interest loan was returned last fall because the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development found the city had not provided proper public review of the proposal.

City officials say they will resubmit the application after two public hearings in the weeks to come.

Still unresolved, as well, are concerns that the theater might cost more than projected. Of particular concern, Georgino and Sanborn said, is the city’s insistence that construction firms pay workers the prevailing wage.

Sanborn’s investment group has agreed to pay $2 million to furnish and equip the theater, and $200,000 more if costs exceed estimates. But that’s it, he said.

Georgino has agreed to spend $6.6 million for a 55,000-square-foot theater shell, about $1 million for 8,500 square feet of restaurants and shops and about $1 million on upfront costs such as architects, attorneys and site clearing.

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The city would spend up to $4 million on a parking garage, $1 million on carrying costs during theater construction and $300,000 more to redo a few A Street store facades.

Sanborn was already worried because the theater project has shrunk 10,000 square feet and four screens because owners of the vacant Bank of America building on the theater site won’t sell.

Now he is worried that the city’s $300,000 estimate to spruce up A Street’s neon facades to beckon drivers on Oxnard Boulevard may be too low.

“There are still a lot of ifs in this deal,” Sanborn said.

The folks at BG’s cafe aren’t surprised. The lot out their front window has been vacant for two decades. Bill Stuart, Gloria’s husband, said he has witnessed three groundbreakings “with gold shovels and everything.”

“It’s always been, ‘We’re on track, we’re on track,’ ” he said. “Well, how long is that track?”