Tax-Sharing Deal to Expand Mall Is Unveiled : Ventura: Over 20 years, city plans to return almost $20 million in revenues to developers, who plan to spend up to $50 million on the renovation.

Flanked by owners of the Buenaventura Mall, the Ventura City Council unveiled a tax-sharing plan Wednesday that supporters said would transform the aging complex into Ventura County’s biggest shopping attraction.

The City Hall ceremony closed more than a year of negotiations between Ventura officials and executives from Los Angeles-based MCA Buenaventura Associates, which owns the 58-acre complex.

By the time the expansion is completed in late 1997, the mall will boast four major department stores, including Robinsons-May, which announced plans to leave The Esplanade mall in Oxnard.

Developers are still negotiating with the fourth major retailer and declined to identify it. But sources close to the deal said Sears is considering leaving The Esplanade in favor of Ventura. A Sears assistant manager said he was unaware of any plans to move, and other Sears officials could not be reached for comment.

At the announcement Wednesday, City Council members praised the agreement as a smart mix of public and private investment that would create about 1,000 new jobs.

“We have a wonderful marriage with a memorandum of understanding confirming the need for broad community support,” Councilwoman Rosa Lee Measures said after the agreement was signed.

The deal calls for the city to return almost $20 million in new sales tax revenues over two decades to developers, who said they would spend up to $50 million on the renovation.

Ventura also agreed to waive $3 million in fees and defer for five years another $2.3 million in development-related costs.

“It’s not $25 million in today’s dollars,” said Councilman Gary Tuttle, referring to the total incentive package. “It’s over a 20-year period of time.”

Tuttle said he does not typically support incentives for developers, but added that the mall could lose tenants without the city’s help.

“It’s been a hard process and a hard sell, but you have to look at the alternatives,” Tuttle said. “If you end up with a roller rink and a couple of video stores [at the mall], that’s a pretty hard hit.”

MCA Buenaventura Associates agreed to pay for street and freeway off-ramp improvements--new designs that could top $5 million, a company official said.

When the expansion is completed, the Buenaventura Mall will jump in size from 850,000 square feet to 1.2 million square feet, about 115,000 square feet larger than The Oaks mall in Thousand Oaks. It would also have two new multilevel anchor stores, a second story of shops and a three-level parking garage.

“It was a deal the city needed to make,” said David Jones, an MCA Buenaventura Associates executive. “We opened our books and showed them exactly what it would cost.

“They hired their own economic consultant and came up with the same conclusions.”

Representatives of The Esplanade management company declined Wednesday to discuss Robinsons-May’s decision to move to Ventura. But the executive director of the Oxnard Area Chamber of Commerce said the shopping center would bounce back.

“We still feel quite strongly that The Esplanade mall is a viable mall with easy access,” Don Facciano said.

“It’s always a concern if a major [department store] leaves the area, but we’re looking at 1997 and a lot of things can happen between now and then,” Facciano said. The Esplanade has its “own expansion plans and it’s a good location.”

For decades the economic hub of the county, Ventura in recent years has watched its sales tax revenue slip from almost $15 million a year to just over $12 million annually. The Buenaventura Mall generates about $1 million of that total.

But city officials said that without economic incentives, the mall owners would never have agreed to invest tens of millions of dollars in the 30-year-old shopping complex.

“Not only are we preserving a $1-million tax base,” Measures said, “we’re also enhancing the quality of being able to deliver services to our citizens and expanding the job market.”

Although city and development company officials toasted the agreement Wednesday, some critics said that offering millions of dollars worth of incentives to developers is not appropriate.

“It’s a very dangerous game to start playing,” said William Fulton, editor of the Ventura-based California Planning and Development Report, a planning newsletter. “Other companies quickly catch on that they can shake down their government.”

One mall merchant said the expansion was “too little, too late.”

“The mall has just really deteriorated to the point of no return,” said Kelly Yorke, whose family owns the Pacific Headlines beauty salon. “There aren’t a lot of merchants here who have two years to wait.”

At least one downtown Ventura merchant complained that the City Council was catering to big-dollar interests.

“It seems kind of ludicrous to me,” said Cliff Linder, who owns Poinsettia Collectibles on Main Street.

“But if I was the developer, I would take the money and run,” he said. “They’re businessmen too. I can’t blame them for grabbing the best deal they can scam off this City Council.”

Some residents west of the mall, who fought expansion when developers were pitching a larger project, worried Wednesday that their neighborhood might suffer from increased noise and traffic.

“I don’t know if we’re going to have a good neighborhood or a bad neighborhood with all the parking and people hanging around,” said Juanita Timberlake, who has lived on Dunning Street for almost 40 years.

“I lived in the country when I moved here,” she said. “I had a lemon orchard in my back yard--not a shopping center.”