Ventura Builds on History for Future of Its Downtown
A dozen years after Ventura approved a detailed plan to revive its sagging downtown, the seaside city is riding the crest of a real estate boom toward construction of nearly 800 dwellings and the transformation of its historic business core into a bustling, balanced neighborhood.
With 18 housing projects and 787 dwellings in the pipeline, city officials say years of planning and preparation, of false starts and half steps, are paying off for the ailing downtown.
“The Dramamine has kicked in, and we’ve finally found our sea legs,” Mayor Brian Brennan said.
Ventura, settled as a Spanish mission in 1782 and a farming, oil and government center since then, is already considered a model of how older cities can begin to reinvent themselves.
In recent years, it has opened a bevy of new restaurants and a movie complex downtown, and attracted live theater and trendy boutiques. Two popular Santa Barbara eateries -- The Taj Cafe and Dargan’s Irish Pub & Restaurant -- plan to open soon, as does a Montecito favorite, Tutti’s.
Now officials say Ventura can show how a land-poor city in Ventura County, where outward expansion is strictly controlled, can look inward to accommodate growth by building new housing in aging areas.
“We’ve sent out a message that this community wants in-fill housing,” Brennan said.
Following the successes of Pasadena and San Diego, Ventura officials are adding that missing residential component to their downtown plan by approving mixed-use projects that combine street-level storefronts with condos and lofts above.
Just one 13-unit housing project was built in Ventura’s downtown in the 1990s. But two new downtown condo projects opened -- and sold out quickly -- within the last 18 months. So homebuilders are now standing in line at City Hall.
“There was a sense a couple of years ago that this wave was coming,” said Nick Deitch, a Main Street architect who is designing five downtown housing projects and three more on nearby Ventura Avenue. “But I don’t know that any of us anticipated it doing what it’s doing now.”
Officials say that a new cooperative climate at City Hall will result in several groundbreakings for downtown housing projects within the next year. One developer is set to pull building permits this week.
“We need to tell [developers] specifically what we want, then get out of the way,” said Councilman Bill Fulton, a planning expert elected last fall. “We should take advantage of this market while we can and use it to shape the best downtown possible.”
Developers say they are encouraged by the city’s new attitude.
Mark Hartley, a music industry executive who has completed several downtown restaurant and office rehabilitations in recent years, said the city works with developers.
So as Hartley relocates Tutti’s restaurant from exclusive Montecito to a converted 1875 livery blacksmith shop this summer, he’s planning condos atop a Main Street shop that sells antiques.
A fan of historic buildings, he’s already rebuilt not only the livery but also the Palermo Building around the corner on Main Street, converting a rowdy Metro night club into an elegant office space for marine engineers, and an espresso and dessert bar.
Hartley’s also purchasing one of Main Street’s most impressive landmark storefronts, the ornate tile-and-brick Bahn’s Jewelry Store building near the movie theater. He hopes to convert it from a fashionable dress shop to a restaurant and bar.
“This town has changed a lot in the last five years, and I think it will change an unbelievable amount in the next five years,” Hartley said. “You put 2,000 residents in here and it will have an effect on everything.”
General contractor Doug Clements, who is converting an old thrift store building into an upscale bakery and restaurant for a Phoenix entrepreneur, said he’s done projects up and down the Pacific Coast but never found a city more builder friendly.
“Even the inspectors are nice people,” he said.
That’s a change, said architect and developer Ray Maloukas, who tried to build a townhouse project in downtown Ventura for 20 years before he was finally able to finish 33 Italian villa-styled condos last year across the street from City Hall.
Maloukas said he sold 31 of the units for between $370,000 and $900,000 in five months, and kept two $1-million penthouses for himself and a partner.
“We hit a home run,” Maloukas said. “We targeted young professionals and empty-nesters, and we got them all.”
Now Maloukas said he is helping build a 50-dwelling mixed-use project next to the Patagonia outdoor clothing company, and three more mixed-use projects with 56 total units just outside of the downtown area along Ventura Avenue.
“There’s a ton of projects waiting,” he said.
Still, no one seems exactly sure what the reconfigured Ventura downtown should look like, what mix of housing, office space, mom-and-pop retail and larger mainstream shops is right, or what architectural design the new downtown should follow. Mission? Mediterranean? Victorian? Or Italian Renaissance?
“Ventura doesn’t see itself as the poor man’s Santa Barbara,” said City Manager Rick Cole, a nationally known “smart growth” advocate who took office last month after helping reshape Pasadena and Azusa.
“Ventura sees itself as a distinctive, eclectic environment where the common thread is high quality, not red tile roofs,” he said.
The marketplace is already making those decisions and in a variety of styles. For example, on the corner of Santa Clara and Palm streets, 30 live-work row houses with courtyards are planned on about half an acre, while on the corner of Palm and Poli streets, 21 condos are planned for a half-acre lot. “Everybody will have their own front doors and stoops and porches that transition to the street,” said architect William Growdon, who is also a city planning commissioner.
The Palm and Poli project reveals another aspect of Ventura’s transformation that is suddenly gaining more attention: preservation of buildings of historical significance. City officials and developers have vowed to save the landmark Hartman House, a 1911 Craftsman-style home now used as a beauty salon.
“We’re about to develop new historic guidelines that may affect assumptions [about moving the house],” said Cole, the city manager. “We’re not committed to developing all of these projects, at least not at the density proposed, given historic sensitivity on a couple of these sites.”
A controversy about the pending demolition of the Art Deco Mayfair Theater for 18 housing units prompted a City Council discussion last week about how the city can encourage new housing but preserve the historic character of the downtown.
Cole said he expects the guts of an amended downtown plan to be hammered out in a series of community meetings this summer.
“We want buildings that are not only fabulous places to live, but which contribute to a historic downtown fabric,” he said. “That means we design around people and streets and not around the number of units and parking stalls.”
