Channel Islands Harbor Hopes to Give Slump the Slip

Ventura County’s latest attempt to revive Channel Islands Harbor would bring a new four-star hotel and a revamped restaurant to its faded peninsula area.

The ambitious $19-million renovation of the county-owned harbor would be done by a private developer and may require state Coastal Commission approval before it could proceed.

But county officials are hopeful that the project won’t face the neighborhood protests that have held up previous attempts to redevelop the picturesque but dated harbor south of Oxnard.

The plan received unanimous support from the Board of Supervisors last week, and no one spoke against it during a public hearing.

“It’s essentially rebuilding something that is already there, so I don’t think residents will be opposed,” said county Supervisor John Flynn, whose district includes the harbor. “My office hasn’t received any calls on it.”

South Carolina-based Greystar Real Estate Partners has agreed to pay $71.5 million to buy out leases of the aging Casa Sirena hotel, the Lobster Trap restaurant and three apartment complexes. A Dallas company has held the leases for about a decade.

Greystar plans to raze the hotel and replace it with four-star lodging equivalent to a Doubletree or Marriott, said Harbor Director Lyn Krieger. A nearby annex to Casa Sirena will be transformed into an economy lodging, she said.

The Lobster Trap, meanwhile, will be gutted and rebuilt as another establishment, she said. Greystar plans to bring in a company with restaurant expertise to find a suitable tenant for the property, which looks out over the waterfront from the peninsula’s tip.

When the leases are transferred, the county will get a 20% cut of the sales price of the hotel, Krieger said. That would bring in as much as $1 million.

In addition, the contracts provide the county with a 6.25% share of revenue from room rentals and 3.5% on all food and drinks sold, Krieger said.

“We expect revenues to rise significantly,” she said.

Built in 1963, Channel Islands Harbor is viewed as a diamond in the rough by supervisors. With a little sprucing up, county officials say, the funky recreational boating harbor could be transformed into a retail magnet that would attract more tourists and their dollars.

The peninsula is the middle of three strips of land touching harbor waters that county officials have sought to redevelop. A master plan was created in 1998, but the ambitious projects set forth in it have been stymied.

It took years longer than expected, for instance, for the county to buy back leases on a dilapidated wharf on the eastern side of the harbor.

Harbor residents, meanwhile, stalled a planned boating instruction and safety center on the western side.

The boating center received Coastal Commission approval in March and is expected to break ground next year, harbor officials say. Fisherman’s Wharf so far has seen only cosmetic improvements, but a plan for that area will be announced soon, Krieger said.

The peninsula is the final area scheduled for improvement.

Krieger said that negotiations have been long and hard, but that the board’s vision for transforming the harbor was finally beginning to take shape.

“We feel like we’re coming out of a tunnel,” she said.