Neighbors of Oxnard Project Fear Loss of Way of Life

For most of his life, Gil Regalado has been paving, coaching, lighting, guarding and building his El Rio neighborhood.

Regalado, 73, played as a child with a girl named Caroline who lived down Olive Street and later became his wife.

His great-great-grandmother was born here. His 86-year-old sister-in-law, Victoria Basua, still lives across the street.

Regalado and his family are among many who share deep roots in this unincorporated community just north of Oxnard.

Hovering between urban and rural, El Rio is home to more than 6,000 mostly Latino residents who live along the Ventura Freeway in an area sandwiched between the Santa Clara River and Rose Avenue.

It is a mostly blue-collar community where many of the lots include horses, cornfields and other remnants of rural life.

Through the years, while the Regalados raised nine children here, they have seen plenty of change.

Regalado remembers how freeway construction in the 1950s erased the last traces of New Jerusalem, a crossroads of Jewish-owned general stores and saloons.

Lemon groves and strawberry fields also have been replaced by car dealerships, furniture stores, cell-phone outlets and nail salons.

Now Regalado worries that what’s left of this onetime farming community is about to be overwhelmed by the biggest housing and commercial development in Oxnard’s history, the planned $750-million RiverPark project.

“Hopefully, El Rio won’t be wiped out,” said Regalado, whose neighborhood borders the project site.

The 2,700-home RiverPark development--which would include retail shops, office buildings, a first-class hotel and a convention center--would be built partly on strawberry fields at the northwest end of El Rio. These fields have already been approved for annexation by Oxnard.

No community, however, can be annexed without a vote of its people. And El Rio residents say they can do without Oxnard taxes and code regulations. They prefer to have their own identity.

Despite persistent development pressures, residents have managed to keep most of the area unincorporated.

The tiny community, an enclave of mostly modest stucco homes handed down from one generation to the next, is 77% Latino, according to 2000 census figures. About 87% of the households are families with children, and 64% are two-parent families, an exceptionally high number, even in family-oriented Ventura County.

More than 67% of El Rio residents own their homes. They hold fast to their independence and continue to fight against encroaching development.

But they worry about losing the battle.

“More and more, the El Rio community is becoming just a little island,” said Art Hernandez, a Ventura County Community College District trustee who grew up among El Rio lemon groves that have since been annexed by Oxnard.

The zigzag border between the city and county territory has created some confusion when it comes to government oversight. Regalado’s neighborhood, for instance, is surrounded on three sides by Oxnard.

“There are some jurisdictional issues,” said county Supervisor John Flynn, whose district includes El Rio. “You don’t know whom to call.”

After a fatal shooting on Memorial Day, Ventura County sheriff’s deputies and Oxnard police officers spent several hours trying to figure out where the shots were fired so they could decide which agency should investigate, said Sheriff’s Sgt. Guy Stewart.

Most often, the jurisdictional line between the city and county is distinguished by some of the amenities available in one area and not the other.

In the 1950s, Regalado’s service group, Los Compadres--”The Godfathers”--petitioned the city of Oxnard to pave El Rio’s dirt roads, which wreaked havoc on vehicles when it rained.

The city refused. So Los Compadres formed a work party and over several weeks laid concrete curbs along dirt roads. Soon thereafter, the city found money to pave El Rio’s streets.

The men of Los Compadres also served on the board of the Rio School District, installed lights at athletic fields, coached kids’ teams and even armed themselves with baseball bats and CB radios to patrol the streets because of their dissatisfaction with law enforcement.

Although the community has been scarred by gang violence over the years, residents believe the Sheriff’s Department more recently has done a good job of keeping a lid on problems.

Los Compadres’ tradition of making the school board a community institution continues today with the county’s first all-Latino board of trustees.

The school district, founded in 1885, is the area’s oldest institution and the only governing body with jurisdiction over the entire community.

The school board “acts as a city council for El Rio,” said President Anthony Ramos, making recommendations to Oxnard on issues such as street improvements.

School parks serve as community gathering places. They double as athletic fields for Little League and Bobby Sox games that always draw large crowds.

Residents such as Regalado worry that the small-town feel they love so much is now threatened, as the RiverPark project slowly moves through Oxnard’s planning process. The city held its first public meeting on the project last month.

They acknowledge that they would enjoy the movie theaters, shopping and better parks and jobs that the development would bring.

But they stand to lose the intimacy they cherish in a community where neighborhood streets run up against strawberry fields.

“There were fields over there,” said El Rio native Maria Valenzuela, 33, pointing down Stroube Street, “and they’re all gone.”

“Now,” she said, her arm sweeping around in the direction of the RiverPark site, “the fields over there are going to be all gone.”