Approval Likely for Revamped Downtown : Ventura: Twenty-year ‘road map’ aims to reverse faded area’s business flight. But some shop owners find much to criticize in the planning document.

Ventura’s downtown in 20 years will be teeming with tourists, buzzing with thriving businesses and offices, and home to hundreds more residents. The Ventura Pier will be restored. New apartment complexes will be added. Main Street storefronts will be renovated.

That is the vision the Ventura Planning Commission will consider on Tuesday.

After more than a dozen public workshops and at least $225,000 in consultants’ fees over the last three years, city leaders are poised to approve the Downtown Specific Plan--the proposed policy-and-regulatory document that outlines a strategy to revamp the old commercial center.

The commission is expected to make a favorable recommendation, and the plan would then go before the City Council next month.

“It’s going to be a road map this council and future councils can follow, using a vision of what we want our downtown area to look like,” Mayor Gregory L. Carson said. “This is where a lot of our city’s character and history and assets are.”

But the proposal has its share of critics.

Some downtown business owners say they will be forced out by the city’s plans to put housing in commercial areas. Others lament that the plan does not allow them to expand. Many doubt that the city can draw the businesses needed to support the area.

In its 1940s heyday, when Ventura was a booming oil town, the downtown area drew thousands of residents from throughout the county to its theaters, businesses and restaurants. It was the political, cultural and entertainment hub of the county.

Now it is a faded neighborhood, home to shabby thrift stores and secondhand furniture outlets. It has one of the worst homelessness problems in the city, and businesses have been moving out of the area for years. The county superintendent of schools’ office, the latest big employer with plans to leave, will take about 110 workers with it when it moves later this year.

Civic leaders hope to reverse this exodus with the Downtown Specific Plan. If approved, the project--which could be completed as soon as 20 years from now--will be among the most ambitious endeavors the city has undertaken.

City officials have been trying to revitalize the downtown area since the 1970s, but all construction in the city came to a halt in 1990, when the City Council declared a water emergency and imposed a moratorium on new water hookups.

In May the council lifted the ban and allocated hundreds of housing units, paving the way for growth for years to come. Five hundred housing units were allocated in the downtown area and more units may be allocated in 1997, officials said.

Now that the water shortage has been declared over, city planners are hoping to move ahead with long-range redevelopment goals.

“The downtown has tremendous potential,” said Pat Richardson, associate planner for the city. “Hopefully the plan will recapture some of its past glory.”

The theory is that increasing the number of retail businesses, hotels and restaurants would lure more tourists to the area. Sprucing up streets with landscaping and public art to create stronger links between downtown and the beach would also attract visitors.

Other aspects of the city’s face lift include:

* Changing commercial areas into residential neighborhoods.

* Promoting public landmarks such as City Hall and the San Buenaventura Mission.

* Encouraging the construction of combination live/work units for the arts and crafts community.

* Imposing strict design standards on new buildings so that architecture is compatible with the Victorian, Art Deco, Mission or California bungalow styles prevalent in the area.

The city has already initiated some of its redevelopment plans. The Ventura Pier is being renovated, the state Court of Appeal project is under way and a landscape architect and street engineer are examining ways to make Figueroa Street more attractive.

Richardson said the city would take the lead in revitalizing the downtown, but acknowledged that “a lot of it’s market-driven, and right now there isn’t a market.”

However, Richardson said he thinks developers and business owners will discover Ventura’s downtown soon.

“The market is going to improve,” he said. “We’re two blocks from the ocean.”

Some downtown business owners, however, aren’t as optimistic. They predict that the same city that drove away Cal State officials from building a four-year public university at Taylor Ranch will fail to carry out its revitalization plans.

“I don’t think too much of their plan,” said Orv Dittman, who owns an automobile body shop on the corner of Garden and Thompson streets. “They talk tourists, tourists, tourists. Tourists aren’t going to do anything for my business.”

His body shop lies in a commercial area roughly bounded to the north by the Ventura Freeway, to the south by Main Street and to the east and west by Figueroa Street and Ventura Avenue. According to the plan, that area would eventually be converted to residential housing.

Although city officials say Dittman and other business owners will be allowed to stay when condos and apartments rise up around them, merchants are quick to point out that the city can use its power of eminent domain to be rid of them.

“They can force me out,” said Dittman, who has been at the location for 10 years. “They would have to pay for my relocation costs, but I’d have to find a new place, and rents are astronomical.”

Dittman said the city’s track record--losing the university--is a bad omen. He has been waiting for redevelopment for years and has hesitated to expand because he will lose the investment when he has to move later. Now he has decided to push ahead anyway because he doesn’t think the city will do anything soon.

“They’re driving businesses away,” said an angry Dittman, who could have expanded years earlier, he said. “We’re going to be this little ghost town on the beach.”

Bob Shields, who owns a brew pub in the redevelopment area, said he is in a similar situation.

He does not own the building, but has sunk hundreds of thousands of dollars in improvements into it.

“We can’t get it out,” Shields said. “If we move out, we take a loss.”

When he opened up his brewery three years ago, Shields and his wife worried that the city’s redevelopment plans would force them to vacate.

“We had heart failure every time there was a story in the paper,” he said.

Now the couple are no longer worried. They think it will take the city a long time, if it happens at all, to redevelop their neighborhood and put in condos where commercial property currently stands.

In the meantime, other cities have been courting the Shieldses to open brew pubs as tourist attractions, and the couple say they are looking for investors.

Shields said he would like to stay in Ventura, but city officials have not gone out of their way to help him and his expansion plans. It took him more than two years to open his business because of bureaucratic hurdles at City Hall, he said.

“I think they should be trying to get local businesses to invest in Ventura. We may be moving out, and we’re the type of business that attracts tourists. They need a reason for tourists to come.”

For Tony Brandal, the idea of flooding downtown with tourists is great for business.

His family owns a pizzeria at the corner of Figueroa and Thompson streets. It could be in jeopardy because it lies in the area targeted for residential zoning, but Brandal thinks officials will allow it to stay because it has been there for 36 years.

“I think the redevelopment is great,” Brandal said. “This whole area needs a change. You put a couple thousand condo units across the street, and I’m sure it would improve business.”

He does have reservations, however, about some of the low-income and affordable housing in the plan. Downtown already has a homeless problem, and redevelopment could worsen it, Brandal said.

The Downtown Specific Plan does not address the homelessness issue, but city officials say that providing low-income and affordable housing could get some people off the street. The Salvation Army is also expected to build a homeless shelter within a few years, city officials said.

“If the city revitalizes the downtown, it won’t be at the expense of the homeless,” said city planner Richardson.

But business owners are wary. Redevelopment could save the area or it could worsen it, Brandal said.

“There’s a lot of mixed feelings about it. Who knows what the city is going to do? Nothing ever turns out the way it’s planned.”