College Cashes In on Trade

The closure of Ventura County’s largest swap meet has sent hundreds of vendors and customers to a weekend bazaar at Oxnard College that may generate more than $300,000 this year for scholarships, building projects and to help needy students.

Operated by the Oxnard College Foundation, the swap meet has grown from 50 to between 350 and 400 vendors since August, and now operates on Sundays as well as Saturdays.

“We are a little different because we are actually raising money to give back to the students,” said Connie Owens, the college official who administers the sales.

Long a modest source of income, netting the college about $35,000 last school year, the swap meet benefited greatly when the 101 Drive-In on Telephone Road in Ventura shut down in the summer.

The shift of thousands of customers to Oxnard each weekend means the college’s income from vendor fees could grow more than eight times, accounting for nearly a third of the foundation’s fund-raising.

“It’s a big, big help,” said Owens, sitting in the college’s Reentry Center, a service for older students that benefits from the funds.

Some vendors who left the 101 Drive-In moved to the Ventura College Market. But officials there limited the number of vendors because they wanted to remain the same size, Veronica Beltran of Ventura College said. It has 270 vendors on Saturdays and 150 on Sundays.

“I was able to take some of them,” Beltran said. “But we did not want to make any problems for the neighbors.”

Hosting swap meets has long been an innovative way to raise funds at some California colleges.

Campuses are natural settings for weekend marketplaces because they have large parking lots that are typically empty on weekends, and campus police who can provide security.

Oxnard College’s swap meet had been operated by its community services office for years, but it declined until it closed for a few months four years ago, Owens said. Then the Oxnard College Foundation, with the Latino-advocacy group El Concilio del Condado de Ventura, decided to take it over.

Owens said the new managers wanted to capitalize on the area’s Latino, Filipino and Asian residents, who account for most of the vendors and customers.

On a recent Sunday, a mostly Latino crowd trickled into a parking lot on the eastern side of the campus as salespeople hawked everything from produce to jewelry to western wear.

Some of the sellers are local, but a number are Los Angeles vendors who sold goods at the Ventura swap meet.

“Many of the ones I know say they like it here better,” said Alicia Dominguez, who with husband Juan frequently travels to Oxnard from Torrance to sell inexpensive shoes.

Like the other vendors, the Dominguezes pay $25 to set up their booth for a single day, or $20 a day if they sign up for the entire month.

Some of the Oxnard College Foundation’s increased revenue will go toward fulfilling its $70,000 endowment goal this year, Owens said. The college is participating in a five-year federal program that will match the first $70,000 raised each year by the foundation.

The foundation also gives about $20,000 in scholarships annually and supports a program that aims to provide a computer for each Oxnard College student, Owens said.

This year, the foundation also may help the college pave a parking lot and buy furniture for a new building to house the Reentry Center and other school groups.

“We started the swap meet thinking it was going to be small--just to make sure we had enough capital to do our projects,” Owens said. “But now that it has gotten larger, we’ll have enough extra income to help in all the different areas.”