Sky’s the limit as high-rise fever soars in Oxnard
The Ventura County skyline is a flat and featureless expanse of suburbia and cropland except for two office towers that rise conspicuously above the Oxnard plain.
But if developers have their way, those twin towers could get some company.
Six more high-rises are proposed near the junction of Pacific Coast Highway and the Ventura Freeway. The tallest, a 37-story residential building, would dwarf an existing 21-story bank tower at the Topa Financial Plaza.
The vertical vision would add condominiums, offices, mid-rise row houses and mixed-use business-residential towers to a community now dominated by low-slung subdivisions and strawberry fields. The high-rises are part of a booming redevelopment area and hub of economic growth for the city.
“It’s harder and harder to build horizontal because of [local growth control laws] and the cost of land,” said Matthew Winegar, director of development services for Oxnard, “so you can justify high-rise development more and more nowadays.”
As empty nesters and seniors downsize from large homes to condominiums, builders and planners say a demographic shift is driving demand for high-rise living and working space in California.
In Ventura County, the shift is forcing people to consider the changing character of their communities. Many say they are not ready for a leap from suburban living to glass towers.
“I don’t believe we should be like New York, with people living in 30- or 40-story towers,” said Jean Joneson, an Oxnard resident and former chairwoman of the city’s Inter-Neighborhood Council Forum. “We’re not prepared for vertical building; we’re not ready. We’re an agricultural city.” Indeed, residents are still adjusting to a proliferation of subdivisions. Some of Southern California’s biggest land-use disputes have occurred in or adjacent to Ventura County, including plans at Ahmanson Ranch and in the Santa Clara River Valley.
As county residents watched farmland sprout business parks, houses and shopping centers during the 1990s, they enacted one of the state’s most stringent growth-control measures, Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources, known as SOAR. The measure, in force in the county and most of its 10 cities, requires that voters, not politicians, approve building on land designated for open space or farming.
Yet growth brings 10,000 residents to Ventura County annually. Existing development restrictions are most rigorous outside city boundaries, but cities have more latitude within their limits. And in Oxnard, that is driving development skyward.
One project, already approved, allows for a new 15-story commercial building in the Topa Financial Plaza along the Ventura Freeway. The 25-acre site is home to a 21-story and a 14-story building amid a cluster of banks and other commercial businesses.
Nearby, two more towers are envisioned for the so-called Wagon Wheel area, west of Vineyard Avenue along the Ventura Freeway. Messenger Investment Inc., a Newport Beach developer, is seeking approval to build two 20-story residential towers, 1,200 row houses and about 47,000 square feet of retail and commercial space.
The Channel Islands Center, in the same area calls for: a 37-story residential tower, a 28-story residential and hotel tower and a 19-story residential building off north Oxnard Boulevard. But the smallest tower might be replaced with more mid-rise structures.
City planners are reviewing the project, which would result in about 800 new residences and cost about $500 million to build, said Doug Austin, an architect for Austin, Veum and Robbins Partners in La Jolla.
Oxnard City Councilman Andres Herrera said he favors high-rise development because it would bring jobs and revenue to the city.
“The only real opportunity to accommodate population growth is to go upward instead of outwards,” Herrera said. “I’m looking for an opportunity to support those projects. I’m not opposed to the concept.” Proponents of the vertical growth say that Orange and San Diego counties had misgivings years ago when the first high-rises were proposed there.
But they said such developments are part of the urban evolution of a community and are the sort favored by planners who lament sprawl, desire less traffic and aim to use land more efficiently by keeping jobs and housing near each other. In Orange County, at least 30 high-rise condo and apartment towers are planned or under development.
William Fulton, a Ventura city councilman and a land-use expert, said the high-rise projects are unique to Oxnard.
For example, Ventura officials have been debating whether to allow three-story town homes in the city’s midtown, much less entertain ideas of high-rises.
Fulton said developers are attracted by Oxnard’s pro-growth policies and the existing twin towers at the Topa Financial Plaza. He said local growth-control laws are not driving the high-rise plans because Oxnard has plenty of land to develop.
Further, a softening real estate market may curtail demand for tall buildings before they break ground, he said.
Traffic is also proving a serious challenge. The high-rises would be built at one of the busiest junctions in the region, where the Ventura Freeway and California 1 merge at a bridge crossing the Santa Clara River.
The neighboring Esplanade, a popular shopping center, already generates considerable traffic at the interchange. RiverPark, a 2,800-unit housing project under construction at the junction is expected to add nearly 80,000 vehicles daily to the snarl.
Bottlenecks back up freeway traffic for miles in either direction during rush hour, and it can take an hour to clear the junction at peak times on a weekend. Oxnard city officials rate the traffic along Oxnard Boulevard and Vineyard and Gonzales avenues as among the worst in the city.
Felipe D. Alvarez, 50, a commodities broker in the Topa Financial Plaza, said the commute from his Ventura home is seven miles. Yet traffic on the freeway and along Vineyard Avenue is so heavy it can take him up to 45 minutes to get home in the evening.
“Rush-hour traffic is awful,” Alvarez said. “It’s impossible to get through.... Just imagine what the traffic will be like [if they build more high-rises]. Bringing in more people without widening roads first will just create new problems.” But the developers downplay those concerns. They say people will be able to live and work in close proximity without using cars. They also plan to seek a rail stop for the high-rises and use shuttles to get people to train stations. Oxnard City Councilman John Zaragosa is unconvinced.
“Years from now, we’ll have more high-density buildings,” he said. “But until somebody shows me we can accommodate the traffic, I am skeptical.”
Meanwhile, in neighboring Port Hueneme developers have proposed a $300-million, 46-story resort hotel and condominium tower one block from the ocean. The Pacific Pointe project would transform a 1.4-acre city-owned parking lot into the largest building on the coast between L.A. and San Francisco, officials say.
“High-rise development is the ultimate expression of smart growth, particularly in an environment where people are concerned about preserving hillsides and agricultural resources,” said Harvey Champlin, the project developer who plans to submit a formal application to the city in April. “It leads you to the inescapable conclusion that if you can’t go out, you’ve got to go up.”
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