Oxnard Planners Approve 708-Home Project Near Channel Islands Harbor

The Oxnard Planning Commission has unanimously approved a $100-million residential project, which includes hundreds of houses and condominiums, a marina and commercial buildings on 135 acres near the ocean.

The Seabridge project, an extension of the Mandalay Bay development, is the last major element of a 20-year-old plan to develop the Channel Islands Harbor area, officials said.

Plans include 708 new homes, a new marina with 241 boat slips connecting to the harbor, a public three-mile waterfront promenade, two public beaches, a community center and an outdoor amphitheater.

About half of the 276 single-family homes would be in a gated community, but pedestrians could enter the subdivision on walkways and on a bridge from shopping areas along Victoria Avenue, developers said.

“It’s really a product that’s designed for the public to be able to access the water” in the project, said developer Bill Wynne, a developer with Mandalay Bay Partners in Oxnard, one of three companies that are financing the project.

The new homes and condominiums would range in price from about $400,000 to more than $1 million for the houses on the water, Wynne said.

Developers are not certain what they would build on all of the 35 acres of the project reserved for shops and businesses. The project would include neighborhood specialty outlets such as coffee shops, grocery stores and drugstores.

City zoning already allows for such tourist-oriented uses as boat and bike rentals, skating rinks, theaters, hotels, conference facilities, restaurants, boat sales and sport fishing operations.

Seabridge, which will be considered by the City Council in January, is the most recent in a flurry of new construction projects that have added thousands of homes and a large new shopping center to Oxnard.

As Ventura County’s largest and fastest-growing city, Oxnard’s population increased nearly 20% in the 1990s to about 170,000 residents. It now stands at about 182,000.

This year, the City Council approved construction of the RiverPark project along the Ventura Freeway, the largest business-and-residential development in county history.

The project calls for about 2,800 living units centered on village greens. Last week the City Council agreed to support construction of a $12-million downtown movie theater, plus 10,000 square feet of new shops. The city pledged to build a 545-space parking garage nearby.

Planning Commissioner Morey Navarro called Seabridge a quality project.

“This is going to be a shot in the arm for the whole west side of the city,” Navarro said. “The developers went way out of their way to satisfy the community. If there was any question left unanswered, then we must have forgotten to ask.”