Victoria Avenue and Wal-Mart

Last Monday night, the City Council adopted the long-awaited new Victoria Corridor Plan and Code. The intent of this code – which covers property along Victoria between the 126 and 101 Freeways – is to encourage a long-term transition along Victoria toward high-quality office uses.

In laying down the rules for this new generation of development, the code also seeks to move Victoria toward better urban design – so that the people who work in these office jobs can walk from one building to another, or to nearby retail, in a pleasant environment. The idea is to encourage high-end office-based businesses to move to – or stay in – the Victoria setting.

All these goals are in our General Plan, which the City Council adopted in 2005. Part of the impetus is to ensure that the Victoria corridor in the future can compete with the towers in Oxnard for high-end office tenants – an enormously important issue, in my opinion. But this larger concern has, of course, have been overshadowed by the Wal-Mart issue.

Wal-Mart has a lease on the old Kmart site by Trader Joe’s and currently has a propose to occupy the old building that housed Kmart and other businesses – 130,000 square feet in all. In the end, the council held the line by limiting individual stores to 100,000 square feet – but also permitted modernization, including new loading docks, for existing buildings.

This means Wal-Mart will be able to move into the old Kmart store if the giant retailer is willing to reduce its store footprint to 100 000 square feet.

Even though most of the discussion about the modernization issues was about Wal-Mart, there’s a larger issue here: how much is the city willing to push the owners of retail land to get them to redevelop their property over the next 10 to 20 years? The answer, thanks to the modernization rules adopted Monday night, is not much.

I voted for the code and against the modernization rules. My rationale for voting against the modernization rules had largely to do with Wal-Mart. In my opinion, if the largest retailer in the world wants to come into Ventura, we should hold them to a very high standard. The modernization rules lowered the bar for Wal-Mart.

In explaining my reasoning on this issue, let me begin by saying that, although I don’t much like Wal-Mart, I like the idea of using land use regulations to keep Wal-Mart out of town even less.

People don’t like Wal-Mart for many reasons, but most of the criticism that we heard Monday night – as we have heard for the last three years – has to do with their labor practices. Much of the opposition to Wal-Mart comes from people who fear that the company’s presence in Ventura will undercut unionized chain supermarkets such as Vons and Ralphs, which pay more than non-unionized Wal-Mart.

Throughout California, these folks have attempted to use land use regulation to keep Wal-Mart out of town. In some cases (like Los Angeles), this has worked. In other cases (like Atascadero) this hasn’t worked. And looming over this whole issue in Ventura is the fact that the anti-Wal-Mart forces have qualified an initiative for the ballot in November. This initiative would not keep Wal-Mart out of town, but it would prohibit any retail business of more than 90,000 square feet from selling groceries. In general, I think it's very difficult to try to use land-use regulations to deal with concerns about a business's labor practices.

My position on the Wal-Mart proposal has been pretty consistent: I’m concerned that a gigantic Wal-Mart Supercenter (these are typically 150,000 to 180,000 square feet) would undermine the Ralphs/Long shopping center across the street and generate too much traffic on Victoria. That’s why I have consistently supported the 100,000 square feet restriction. (Actually, I proposed 90,000 square feet but went along with 100,000).

Back in February, when we were supposed to adopt the code, my colleagues kicked it back to the staff one more time. The concern was that the code would render virtually all buildings along Victoria as “non-conforming” – meaning they could not be expanded or changed much. The council directed the planners to come up with a way of permitting some modernization of nonconforming buildings. I agree that this is a legitimate concern, but I feared that the direction to the staff (proposed by my colleague Neal Andrews) was too broad.

When the code came back to us the other night, it came back with a proposal to allow nonconforming buildings to modernize in a variety of ways – to expand their footprint slightly, to add “greening” (for example, upgrading the HVAC system), to add a new entrance – and, most importantly for the anti-Wal-Mart folks, to add new loading docks. Wal-Mart has asked for new loading docks.

Most of the 30 speakers on Monday night asked us to take the loading dock section out of the code, specifically to block Wal-Mart. A few of the speakers – including the manager of Victoria Village, where the 99 Cent Store is located – said that without the modernization provisions property owners would not be able to upgrade their properties to stay viable in the next decade or so.

As I said Monday night, the modernization provisions presented the Council with a difficult choice:

-- If we accepted the modernization provisions, we would make it easier for many retail businesses up and down Victoria to update their properties and continue their retail uses without redeveloping the property under the code. But we would also be allowing Wal-Mart to move into the Kmart building with minimal changes, assuming they could stay within 100,000 square feet.

-- If we rejected the modernization provisions and adopted the code as originally proposed, we would make it more difficult for the retail businesses to update – but we would “raise the bar” for Wal-Mart, forcing them to go through the entire planning approval process, follow the urban design principles contained in the code, and probably build an extremely “green” building.

In the end, Brian Brennan and I chose to vote for the latter course – and everybody else went the other way. I understand the concerns about other property owners, but to me we blew the opportunity to use the Wal-Mart project as a way to kick-start the new code. I was quoted, accurately, in the Star as saying, that our decision will “allow one of the richest corporations in the world to move into a crappy building with minimal improvements,”

The larger issue, however, is whether or not we undermined our own code with these modernization provisions. Our stated long-term goal – in the General Plan and in the Victoria Corridor Plan – is to facilitate a transition away from large retail and single-use developments toward a high-end office environment with some mixed use. Now we’ve decided that owners of existing buildings that don’t conform with that vision can modernize anytime in the next 10 years and stay in place for as long as they want after that.

I hope we can go back at some point in the future and tighten up these modernization provisions, so that landowners are not completely hamstrung but are encouraged to redevelop their property in conformance with the code.

The “Anti-Wal-Mart” Initiative

Last Monday, the City Council placed the “anti-Wal-Mart” initiative on the ballot for next November. Dozens of constituents had asked us to simply adopt the measure instead, but no one on the council made the motion to do so. I made the motion to place the measure on the ballot, and that motion passed 7-0..

Under state law, when an initiative’s proponents deliver enough signatures (in our case about 6,000 valid signatures from registered voters), we must either place it on the ballot or adopt it. I am generally not in favor of simply adopting an initiative. There are many reasons for this, but chief among them is the fact that, for us (as for the voters), an initiative is a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. Even if everyone agrees the measure could be changed or improved, we don’t have that option. If we adopt it, we must adopt it word-for-word as the initiative’s proponents have drafted it.

In the case of this initiative, I think it is important for the voters to have a lively debate over what our community’s goals are and whether this initiative helps us accomplish those goals. As with the VCORD height/view initiative (which will also be on the ballot next November), clarity about the impact of this initiative is very important.

I have not taken a position on this initiative and I have not yet decided whether or not I will take a position on it. However, I do think it’s important that everybody understand what this initiative will and won’t do. Many initiatives have unintended consequences that voters should know about.

This initiative prohibits any retail store of over 100,000 square feet from devoting more than 3% of its merchandise to selling non-taxable merchandise (i.e. groceries). That’s all it does. It does not name Wal-Mart or any other retailer, and it does not call out Victoria Avenue or any other part of town. It does exempt warehouse retailers such as Costco.

So, I think voters will probably want to measure this initiative against what they believe the city’s goal should be. Here are some examples:

If your goal is to prevent Wal-Mart from opening a store in Ventura, this initiative will not accomplish that goal.

We have heard from many people who don’t want Wal-Mart in town. But if this initiative passes, Wal-Mart could still open any store of any size in any location in Ventura. The only thing Wal-Mart could not do would be to open a “Superstore” – a store that’s typically 150,000 to 200,000 square feet and also sells groceries. Even if the initiative passes, Wal-Mart – which apparently has a 20-year lease on the old Kmart site on Victoria – could reoccupy that store or build a new store if it does not sell groceries.


If your goal is to prevent Wal-Mart or any other retailer from building a very large store on the Kmart site on Victoria, this initiative will not accomplish that goal either.

We have also heard from many people who fear more traffic on Victoria Avenue because of large retailers. But as I explained above, this initiative would not prevent a regular Wal-Mart or other retail on the Kmart site. Indeed, because of the warehouse store exemption, the initiative would permit a full-blown Costco on the Kmart site.

The City’s new Victoria Corridor code, scheduled to be adopted by the City Council in early 2009, will provide stronger protection than the initiative in this regard. The code will limit the size of any single store to 100,000 square feet, which the initiative does not do.


If your goal is to prevent very large retail stores from also selling groceries, then this is the initiative for you.

We have also heard from many constituents, including unionized supermarket workers and their supporters, who fear that a Wal-Mart Supercenter would undercut Albertsons, Ralphs, and Vons and cause the grocery workers to lose their jobs (which provide much higher pay and better benefits than Wal-Mart jobs). This initiative will make it impossible for Wal-Mart and other large retailers from building very large stores and also selling groceries.

Bear in mind, however, that if passed the initiative might affect other retailers as well as Wal-Mart. For example, the new Target at Pacific View Mall would not be permitted under this initiative. The Target is about 200,000 square feet and devotes about 6% of its square footage to groceries. If the initiative passed, Target would become a “non-conforming use,” meaning it would not be able to expand or remodel unless it conformed with the initiative – presumably by reducing the amount of square footage devoted to groceries. And no other store like it could be built in town, no matter whether it's a Target or anything else.

Clearly, the initiative’s proponents are hoping not only to prohibit a Wal-Mart Supercenter but also to discourage Wal-Mart. If a Supercenter is not permitted, the reasoning goes, perhaps Wal-Mart will not be interested in building any store in Ventura. It’s hard to know whether this will work, since Wal-Mart tends to get its corporate back up when challenged and has been very aggressive in fighting these ordinances throughout California.

And if Wal-Mart does not build a store in Ventura, it’s very possible that the company will build a Supercenter in Oxnard. This might make us feel good about having kept Wal-Mart outside our boundaries, but it will have other effects as well. Ventura residents are likely to patronize the store (apparently 20% of current Oxnard Wal-Mart shoppers are Venturans). This would mean that Ventura retailers would business to Wal-Mart anyway, even though there's no Wal-Mart in Ventura, and the City would lose all of the resulting sales tax to Oxnard.

As I say, I am not sure what position I will take on this initiative, if any. But I hope you can see that there are lots of issues that should be debated fully by the voters next fall.

Wal-Mart and Victoria Avenue: Let’s Unite Around Shared Goals, Rather Than Divide Over Tactics

One of the things I’ve learned in politics is that there are lots of ways to skin a cat. When you have a goal, you have to focus on getting to the goal itself, rather than getting stuck on any one particular way to get there.

By focusing on the goal rather than the tactics, you won’t get stuck if the tactic you have in mind doesn’t work. (Because there’s always another way to skin that cat.) Just as important, you’re also more likely to create a broad and enduring consensus about what you’re doing, because many different groups will come together to pursue the same goal, instead of fighting each other over which tactic to use. Focusing on tactics rather than goals can be divisive, because it can be harder to discover the things that different elected officials and different constituent groups have in common and how they can work together to get things done.

All this comes to mind because, in recent days, I have received quite a number of emails and phone calls from constituents asking me to immediately introduce a carbon copy of Santa Maria’s anti-big-box ordinance as a way of forestalling a Wal-Mart Supercenter at the Kmart site on Victoria Avenue. After thinking it over, I have decided not to introduce this ordinance immediately. In other words, although I share this goal I have decided pursuing this tactic is not the best way to reach the goal.

Here’s my reasoning: I think it’s better to work a bit more slowly and carefully toward a very broad-based and ensuring community consensus – which is what we’re doing with the Victoria Corridor plan and code right now. This plan and code will encourage the creation of high-quality office space in this area and almost certainly eliminate the possibility of new, extremely large-scale retail stores. To me, there’s not much point in pursuing a particular tactic, especially if it could be divisive in the midst of an election season, when we all have so much invested in a planning process already underway that will likely get us to the goal.

We in Ventura successfully used this approach – creating a broad coalition to achieve a common goal in a way that will endure over time – in passing the Living Wage Ordinance. I think we can do the same on Wal-Mart – if we focus on our shared goal.

Up to now, our local Wal-Mart opponents, such as the group Livable Ventura, have generally been supportive of our planning effort. When they have expressed an opinion about Wal-Mart itself, it has been a general concern – along the lines of, we don’t want Wal-Mart in our town because we don’t like their labor practices, or we fear additional traffic on Victoria Avenue, or we fear the impact of a Wal-Mart on other businesses in town. These are concerns I know many Venturans share and I share them too.

Recently, however, the typical communication from an anti-Wal-Mart constituent has changed. Instead of a generic concern about Wal-Mart, people have been making a very specific request that I introduce Santa Maria’s anti-big-box ordinance immediately. This is at least partly a result of some communications from the Ventura County Work People's Alliance and the Stop Wal-Mart Coalition Action Team, encouraging constituents to contact me and ask me to introduce such an ordinance.

I’ve had a good relationship with labor organizations over the past few years and the City Council has a good record on issues of interest to labor and working families. I was endorsed by the Tri Counties Central Labor Council and the Service Employees International Union in 2003. Since I have been on the Council, we have adopted a Living Wage Ordinance and we have pursued innovative inclusionary and workforce housing programs, which I have described in previous blogs. At both the city and Gold Coast Transit, whose board I sit on, we have re-established trust in negotiations with bargaining units that had long been missing.

This year, however, many labor organizations are intensely focused on Wal-Mart – and especially on Super Centers, which sell groceries. It’s understandable why. Most employees of large supermarket chains are unionized, but Wal-Mart employees aren't. There's a real concern -- a concern I share -- that a Wal-Mart supercenter enters the market, it will undercut existing supermarkets and placed unionized jobs at Vons, Ralphs, and Albertsons at risk. In other words, there's a fear that Wal-Mart will drive down the wages of supermarket workers generally. This kind of thing worries me too -- since I have always said that the gap between the high cost of living and relatively low wages is one of the biggest problems in our city.

A whole ago I had a meeting with Jim Alger of the Ventura County Working People's Alliance, an organization affiliated with the Tri-County Labor Federation, at which he asked me to introduce the Santa Maria ordinance. The Santa Maria ordinance is a typical – and perfectly legal – anti-big-box ordinance, which restricts all large retailers to using no more than 5% of their leasable floor area for the sale of non-taxable merchandise. Since groceries are exempt from taxation, such an ordinance effectively prohibits a Wal-Mart Super Center. These stores – typically 200,000 square feet or more – are a combination of a typical Wal-Mart store and a supermarket.

By the way, the Santa Maria ordinance doesn’t prevent construction of a regular Wal-Mart store (without the Super Center and groceries). In fact, there’s already a Wal-Mart in Santa Maria, which you can see from the freeway.

I told Mr. Alger that I was extremely unlikely to support a Wal-Mart Supercenter on Victoria and that, in the end, I did not think it would pass. But I declined to introduce the Santa Maria ordinance immediately, as he requested.

Over the past two weeks, I have received quite a few phone calls and emails from constituents and others asking me to introduce the Santa Maria ordinance. Many have been from people I don’t know; others have been from old and dear friends. Many have used exactly the same language that Mr. Alger used – that there is no reason not to introduce this particular ordinance if I really agree with their goal.

I always appreciate hearing from constituents, and I appreciate and respect all these communications. However, I would like to turn the “no reason not to” statement around so that we can focus on the goal rather than the tactic.

There is no reason not to vigorously pursue our broadly shared goal – a development strategy on the Victoria Corridor that prevents the construction of very large retail stores – and pursue it in a way that creates a broad consensus with enduring results, just as we did with the Living Wage Ordinance.

However, there are good reasons not to pursue this one particular tactic – immediately introducing a carbon copy of another city’s anti-big-box ordinance in the middle of a campaign season. Doing so would end-run a planning process that has been underway for two years. It may not get passed by the City Council, either before or after the election. And, in my view, all this will make it harder to achieve the goal of preventing large-scale retail development in Victoria Avenue in the future.

The Victoria planning effort began with a one-year moratorium, which has now been replaced with a special conditional use permit required for all new retail buildings in excess of 50,000 square feet, while we debate what the specifics of this corridor plan and the accompanying zoning code. We have not yet adopted the plan and the code, which is why we have put the interim steps in place.

As I noted above, the Wal-Mart opponents have generally been supportive of this process. But not everybody likes it. Those members of the Chamber PAC who think we should just go ahead and approve Wal-Mart clearly believe that the whole Victoria planning effort has been a huge waste of time and money with no benefit for the community.

There’s no question that the Victoria Corridor effort has taken more time and more money than we thought, and that it’s been pretty frustrating at times. But it has been far from useless. After lengthy debate, the Council has reached general agreement that future development along the Victoria Corridor should be focused mostly on office development, with some mixed-use. Our goal is to attract higher-wage office jobs, especially in the professional services sector, that we currently lose to Oxnard. Existing retail could be retained, but greatly expanded retail operations would be prohibited. Maximum store size would be approximately 90,000 square feet, far too small for a Wal-Mart Super Center.

Our staff is currently working on revisions to the proposed code to reflect this carefully crafted consensus. If I were to introduce this Santa Maria anti-big-box ordinance now, I’d be undercutting a lengthy and careful planning process that I have championed from the beginning and that many of my constituents who are wary of Wal-Mart have supported. I’d probably be accused by my colleagues on the council of “grandstanding” during election season – and rightly so. I’d be sending the message that I stand for thoughtful planning processes and careful consensus building – except when I am pressured by a constituent group during an election year.

And frankly, I don’t think that if I introduced the ordinance, the council would pass it – at least not now. Oddly, neither Mr. Alger nor any of the constituents who have asked me to introduce the ordinance have ever asked me if I think it would pass. But to me it’s an important consideration. I have learned from many political mentors – including Assemblymember Pedro Nava, whom I respect a great deal – that you have to pick your spots when introducing legislation. There’s no point in introducing an ordinance if you can’t get it passed.

As I said before, the council has reached consensus that we should limit the size of new retail stores along the Victoria corridor. But the council is also committed to seeing the Victoria planning process through to the end. And the members of our council – like the voters who elected them – are independent, deliberative, and sometimes stubborn. If my colleagues think I am grandstanding or trying to muscle them into adopting this ordinance, they are not likely to go along with me. And if I introduce such an ordinance now and fail – after championing the Victoria planning process all along – it will harm my ability to work successfully with my colleagues in the future on Wal-Mart and many other important issues. It will create unnecessary divisiveness on a good city council.

Which brings me back to my basic point: Let’s focus on the goal and not the tactic. This is the technique that was used successfully in passing a Living Wage Ordinance. This ordinance took a long time to pass but when it did there as an extraordinary consensus.

If we had rushed the Living Wage Ordinance to a vote, it might have failed or passed on a 4-3 vote, which would have given opponents reason to believe they could bring the ordinance back and defeat it. But because the Living Wage Coalition, which included many of the same people and organizations as the coalition opposing Wal-Mart, worked patiently and effectively with the city – simultaneously keeping the political “heat” on us and seeking allies elsewhere in the community, while also cooperating with us – the result was quite different. The council passed the ordinance unanimously, with the support of the Chamber of Commerce – the first time that had ever happened in the United States.

The lesson of the Living Wage Ordinance is that we should strive to create broad consensus around controversial issues, so that when a decision is made, it is strong and enduring. In the end, I believe we will get there on Wal-Mart. We will pass a Victoria Corridor Plan and code that will focus on office and mixed-use development and prevent the addition of very large retail stores. We will also lay the foundation for a discussion about how best to use the Kmart site, since Kmart is likely to close no matter what Wal-Mart does and we do not want a blighted sight along Victoria.

I am well aware that many constituents who are inclined to support me do not agree with me and would rather see the immediate introduction of a stronger ordinance. However, I believe that by working through the planning process that is already underway, we will be able to reach a broad and enduring consensus that we will all be happy with -- and that won't be easily undone by City Councils in the future. I look forward to working with all of you on this in the months ahead.

Why I Backed Off On Reconfiguring Victoria

One of the things I hate about politicians is that when they run into political resistance, they often change course and don’t admit it. They make it look as though the changed course is a perfectly logical result of a thoughtful process, not the result of political pressure. So let me make something very clear: I backed off of the idea of reconfiguring the lanes on Victoria because most everybody in town seemed to think it was a bad idea.

On Monday night, the City Council voted 6-1 to move forward with the a new development code for Victoria Avenue – which requires an environmental impact report and other process considerations – but scrapped the “streetscape” part of the Victoria plan. This was the controversial idea of reconfiguring the traffic lanes in Victoria so that only six would be through-traffic lanes, while the other two would be local traffic and turning lanes. I voted to scrap the reconfiguration.

A politician has to admit when he’s not on the same page as his constituents. I’ve never had so much negative comment on any position that I’ve taken in four years on the council. Though a few people came to our defense, most constituents who expressed an opinion did so in very strong terms – calling us idiots or morons. Frankly, I got tired of defensively explaining that I wasn’t advocating eliminating any lanes, just using them in a different way. And I was waiting to see what our traffic planners told us about how this would affect traffic flow.

But when an idea doesn’t get traction, it’s okay to move on. So we’re moving forward with what we agree on rather than dwell on what we disagree on. And what we agree on is this: Victoria should strengthen its position as an important business district, especially for professional services firms. It will continue to have important retail, restaurant, and residential components, of course – the Victoria corridor really is a truly “mixed use” area, with everything you need in one place. But given its proximity to the Ventura County Government Center, it only makes sense to try to strengthen the office base in the area. By changing the code to encourage more office uses -- without eliminating any existing retail or other businesses – we can make a long-term commitment to prosperity.

Not only have I never gotten so much negative comment on an issue, I’ve never seen an issue that had so many dimensions. They’re endless.

Jim Monahan quite rightly pointed out that part of the traffic problem is the fact that Victoria serves as the southbound connector between 126 and 101. On Monday night, I reiterated my promise to Jim that I would talk with my fellow transportation commissioners and Caltrans about moving the 126-101 connector project up the list (it’s currently last).

All of our planning efforts in East Ventura have led me to believe, even more than before, that we have to do something to move traffic north and south. Mills Road by the mall is very busy, as is Victoria at rush hour. Wells Road south of Highway 126 has gotten very crowded, especially in the morning rush. We could try to push Johnson Drive across the 126 freeway or Kimball Road down across the Santa Clara River. But both these efforts would require building a bridge and winning a SOAR vote. To do Johnson we’d have to widen the street between Ralston and Bristol, where people live in single-family houses close to the right-of-way; and to do Kimball we’d have to work with Oxnard, which may or may not be receptive.

Then there are all the large employers who rely on the Victoria corridor, especially the county, the school district (which has five schools in the vicinity of Victoria and Telegraph), and the college, whose staff and students come up Victoria and turn left on Telegraph. I still hope we can have a dialogue with all these employers and institutions to discuss whether we can alleviate rush-hour congestion by staggering everyone’s schedule.

Finally, of course, there’s Wal-Mart, which is preparing an application to build a store where the Kmart is currently located adjacent to Trader Joe’s. A lot of folks around town want us to keep Wal-Mart out, while a lot of other folks think we’re dragging our feet and foregoing lots of needed sales tax revenue by not falling all over ourselves to welcome them.

The truth is it’s very difficult to keep any individual company from doing business in our city . Constitutionally, our planning policies cannot distinguish between Wal-Mart and, say, Kmart or Target . Wal-Mart has already taken down a 20-year lease on the Kmart site and there would be nothing to prevent them from simply moving into that building (which is about 100,000 square feet).

But that’s not what it appears they are planning to do. In May, when they showed the city staff a new design (which apparently looked good in urban design and “green building” terms), they also hiked the size of the building from what they had previously discussed. It’s now apparently a 150,000-square-foot supercenter, complete with groceries. .

Some of the folks opposed to Wal-Mart have been encouraging us to pass an “anti-big-box” ordinance. But, as our Community Development Director Nelson Hernandez pointed out the other night, we already have mechanisms in place to deal with very large stores. Any retail store over 50,000 feet in the Victoria Corridor now has to go to the Planning Commission for a special permit, and under the proposed Victoria code it would be very, very difficult – if not impossible – to approve a store of more than 90,000 square feet.

All of which means that Wal-Mart might have to bag the groceries and settle for a smaller store, more the size of Kmart. But remember: Groceries are exempt from sales tax. So there wouldn’t be much hit on the city treasury.

Victoria Avenue Urgency Ordinance Extended

Last night, the City Council extended our urgency ordinance regarding large retailers on Victoria for 10 months, until the end of January 2008. The ordinance requires retail stores of 50,000 square feet or more to obtain a use permit from the Planning Commission. Because this is an urgency ordinance, it required 6 votes – which we got, but not without some very public horsetrading between Councilmember Monahan and myself.

You may recall that, at the end of January, we lifted the moratorium on commercial development along Victoria even though our Corridor Plan was not complete. Anticipating the possibility of Wal-Mart or some other large retail store proposing a project on the Kmart site, we created the use permit requirement in an urgency ordinance.

Under state law, however, this urgency ordinance could only be in effect for 45 days. That’s why we had to vote on it again last night. An urgency ordinance requires a 4/5ths vote – which means 6 out of 7 votes. By law, we can have an urgency ordinance in place for up to two years – and the staff recommended an extension of 22 months and 15 days (two years minus 45 days).

As the discussion unfolded it became clear that both Neal Andrews and Jim Monahan were opposed to such a lengthy extension. Neal seemed opposed on principle, but Jim seemed willing to extend the ordinance for some period of time – just not 22 months. First he proposed another 45 days, then he agreed to 8 months. The planning staff, however, said an 8-month extension might require us to put Victoria ahead of some other planning efforts such as Saticoy & Wells and Midtown.

Councilmember Ed Summers proposed a 10-month extension, to the end of January 2008. Jim was not receptive to that, but he did once again express concern that part of the Victoria effort ought to be to renew discussions with Caltrans about whether and when to build a southbound connector between the 126 and 101 freeways. (That traffic currently must go down Victoria).

Finally I promised Jim that if he supported a 10-month extension on the use permit ordinance, I would take up the 126-101 extension question with Caltrans and with Assemblymember Pedro Nava, chair of Assembly Transportation Committee, this summer. (By then the draft EIR on Victoria will be out and we will have an estimate of how much traffic on Victoria is due to the freeways.) He agreed and the urgency ordinance passed.

I didn’t mind doing this – I think we should revisit the 126-101 connector question too – but it was a reminder that you should never underestimate Mr. Monahan’s political skill!

Chamber Still Swinging At Victoria

I don't know about you, but I was a little surprised and disappointed with the way Chamber of Commerce CEO Zoe Taylor framed her arguments in Sunday's Star against possible changes to Victoria Avenue. Remember that blog I wrote back on Jan. 30 reporting that we all seemed to be headed in the same direction on Victoria even though there will still some big differences? Zoe didn't sound like she was on the same page -- emphasizing the negative rather than the positive.

The Star ran a kind of pro-con on Sunday, including one article by me and another by Zoe, along with three letters (one for, two against). You can access the whole thing at http://www.venturacountystar.com/vcs/pulse_speak_out/article/0,1375,VCS_126_5377266,00.html. This is the link to my story, but it's got links to Zoe's story and letters to the editor as well. (Be sure to read the comments from readers -- especially the ones from Bill Winfield, who was active in the No on P6 Campaign. Is it an election year already?)

In the story Zoe takes a pretty hard swing at the whole Victoria effort, hammering especially on the Wal-Mart question and possible changes to Victoria's traffic flow. You have to read the fine print in Zoe's article to discover that, at the Jan 29th meeting, the City Council actually voted in favor of the Chamber's most important suggestion on Victoria, which was to favor the "workplace" development scenario over an "infill housing" scenario.

The irony is that Zoe's Star article is drawn almost entirely from the Chamber's "white paper" on Victoria -- and the "white paper" is focused mostly on opposing the "infill housing" scenario. Hey, Zoe, we're with you on that one.

To be fair, I called Zoe today to discuss this. She said that the article was reflecting the viewpoint of her board and members, many of whom are opposed to the Victoria reconfiguration on its face. We had a good conversation and we agreed that critical components here are (1) estimating how much traffic really is freeway-to-freeway traffic (anecdotal evidence being that it's not much, and (2) working with the "Big 3" employers (county, school district, college) to manage start times and therefore peak-hour traffic.

My original complaint stands, however. Zoe could have written an article saying, It's great that we agree on the workplace strategy, but we're still concerned about the street configuration. Instead, her article said, This street configuration idea is terrible and we're opposed to it and, by the way, we're happy that you green-lighted the workplace strategy. The overall message this send is negative rather than suggesting we are working toward consensus (which we are).

I've been thinking a lot about why the Chamber so often seems to be in opposition to the city's efforts and I'll blog more about that in the future.

Meanwhile, Monday night the City Council approved an ordinance subjecting large-scale retail projects on Victoria (meaning Wal-Mart) to a use permit until the new code is complete. (http://www.venturacountystar.com/vcs/ve/article/0,1375,VCS_251_5381398,00.html) The anti-Wal-Mart activists seemed to think this move would prohibit big box retail along Victoria. For that matter, the pro-Wal-Mart folks seem to think so too. I hope they both realize that while the ordinance creates another layer of Planning Commission review -- tied to the design goals in the General Plan -- it doesn't prohibit anything.

The 126/101 Connector

After I posted my Victoria Corridor blog last week, many people asked me just exactly why I thought the long-delayed 126-101 connector was off the table politically.

Most major transportation investments in these parts are controlled by the Ventura County Transportation Commission. That's a countywide entity created by the state to guide how transportation money in our county is spent. VCTC has 17 members -- all five county supervisors, one elected representative from each of the 10 cities, and two public members. Mayor Morehouse appointed me to be Ventura's representative in 2006. In addition there are two other Ventura residents among the 17 commissioners -- Supervisor Bennett and Keith Turner, our former county planning director, who is one of the two public members.

VCTC maintains a priority list of major transportation projects, and those projects get built as funding becomes available. This funding is typically from the state or federal governments; because we failed to pass Proposition B in 2004, we are the only large county in the state without a major local source of transportation funding, which means we must wait longer and lobby Sacramento and Washington harder to get transportation projects built.

The126/101 connector, which would take freeway-to-freeway traffic off of Victoria, is currently at the bottom on this list and there is no realistic possibility that it will be built in the foreseeable future unless something changes -- either we move it up the list and/or we pass a countywide transportation sales tax.

The politics of VCTC follows geographical lines. There is the West County, including Ventura and Oxnard; and the East County (Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley, Moorpark), and the Santa Clara Valley (Fillmore/Santa Paula). East County reps typically push hard for road projects and with considerable success. The Highway 23 widening in Thousand Oaks is a good example -- it was high on the list to begin with, and Congressman Gallegly, who's from Simi Valley, delivered a lot of additional federal money to make the project happen. It's now under construction. Another good example is the Lewis Road expansion in Camarillo -- supported by VCTC as a very high priority because it connects Highway 101 to the CSUCI campus.

In my view, West County concerns are often overlooked or outvoted at VCTC. This is not always true, but often it feels that way. So the politics of VCTC are stacked against the 126/101 connector. Countywide it is not viewed as a high priority.

Nevertheless, I do think it is probably worth revisiting this issue with our friends in Santa Paula and Fillmore and with Supervisors Bennett and Long (all of whose constituents must use Victoria) to see if we can lay the foundation to move the connector up the list in the future. But this is a long-term effort.

The Victoria Corridor

Last night, the City Council allowed the one-year moratorium on commercial development along the Victoria Corridor to expire. We voted 6-1 to move the Victoria Avenue Corridor Plan forward to the environmental review stage and 5-2 to draft an urgency ordinance subjecting large retail projects – new and remodeled stores of 50,000 square feet or more – to conditional use permits under the Corridor Plan is adopted. (The draft Corridor Plan can be found at http://www.cityofventura.net/newsmanager/templates/?a=1698&z=43.)

The urgency ordinance will surely ensnare Wal-Mart if they come in for a project on the K-Mart site before the Corridor Plan is adopted. This didn’t make the business community very happy (and it’s why Councilmembers Andrews and Monahan voted against it).

This was a joint meeting with the Planning Commission and it went well. Frankly, I was pretty surprised that we were all so close to being on the same page – and I don’t just mean the City Council but business interests and citizen groups as well. I was prepared for the worst. We’d gotten a lot of emails in advance in response to the story in the Star that focused on the possibility that we might limit through traffic on Victoria to three lanes rather than four. (http://www.venturacountystar.com/vcs/ve/article/0,1375,VCS_251_5311777,00.html)

Also, I knew the anti-Wal-Mart crowd would be out in force (http://www.coastalalliance.com/) and I feared that the Chamber of Commerce would come out and suggest that the proposed plan was wildly unrealistic.

The new plan does call for some significant changes. It has an extensive set of proposed streetscape improvements that would create a more boulevard feel. It would also alter our approach to private building regulation to create a more urban feel, with, among other things, buildings up closer to the street (once Victoria has been “tamed”) and a form-based code. Through traffic would be limited to three lanes, with the fourth lane devoted to a “slip road” serving businesses and buildings along the side. One real estate broker I ran into on the street said she thought everybody at City Hall was smoking crack, and a Victoria Avenue commuter wrote us to tell us that he thought that this was the most idiotic idea he had ever heard.

That’s not what happened at the meeting. The consulting planners gave us three choices for what to emphasize on the corridor in the future – neighborhood infill (mostly housing), town center (heavily retail), and workplace (mostly office). We green-lighted the workplace scenario, as the staff recommended, adding some retail components at least to analyze in the EIR. The idea is to create a Class A office district that can compete for Class A tenants. But we don’t want to just create a bunch of nice office buildings. Along the way we want to create a “place” along the way that has some retail and other services for employees and residents in the area. I personally think that’s the only way you’re going to win the competition for high-end office users and high-wage jobs in the years ahead.

The anti-Wal-Mart folks, while clearly still focused on their goal, have changed their name from “Ventura Stop Wal-Mart Coalition” to “Livable Ventura,” and they are trying to fuse some of our quality of life goals to their social equity agenda about Wal-Mart – but they supported the direction the plan was going in. The Chamber folks – though by no means showering us with universal praise – nevertheless liked the workplace alternative. (They had prepared a stinging white paper criticizing all the ideas contained in the neighborhood infill alternative, only to be deflated by the fact that the staff recommended that it not be adopted.) Chamber Chair-elect Ted Cook was very gracious in suggesting that we have made progress.

There was a lot of skepticism from many quarters, of course, over the idea of redesigning Victoria as a boulevard and limiting it to three through lanes in each direction. Many people want to jump to the conclusion that this will create further bottlenecks on Victoria, especially for commuters who go to the government center from out of town.

I’d rather wait and see what the EIR says. The one thing we know for sure is we can’t keep doing what we’re doing on Victoria. We can’t make it any wider than it already is, so we’re going to have to find a different way to operate it. And it already functions as a kind of 3+1 street already, with the fourth “through” lane serving mostly as a local turn lane. So we’re going to have to do something, and it will likely be something along the lines of what’s being proposed.

Our Public Works Director, Ron Calkins, was asked to make some “on the spot” guesses as to how the more formal 3+1 boulevard approach might affect traffic flow. He said the 3 through lanes would probably flow better, but the 1 local lane probably would flow less efficiently. Overall, he guessed that 2025 Level of Service would drop by one grade from what it otherwise would be – meaning most of Victoria would be a B or a C instead of an A or a B (I think that’s what he said).

Most members of the council said, in one way or another, that they believed the Victoria re-do would have to be accompanied by other traffic relief on parallel corridors. Jim Monahan voted against my motion to move forward with the Corridor Plan because he wanted language saying that we should beat on Caltrans’ door to get them to finally build the 126-101 connector so trucks don’t use Victoria to get from one to the other. (I’m sympathetic but, as a member of the County Transportation Commission, I know that the politics aren’t right for this anytime soon.) Neal Andrews and others talked about the possibility of widening Johnson Drive (requiring the taking of private front yards north of Bristol) or another river crossing at Montgomery or Kimball (this last would require a SOAR override vote).

I suggested that, in planning for the long term, we work with commercial landowners on the west side of Victoria to create a new north-south street from Telephone to Moon. Most other councilmembers liked this idea and the staff agreed to analyze it in the EIR.

Planning Commissioner Martin Johnson made the suggestion that a re-do of Victoria might only be triggered by the creation of an alternate route. I guess my feeling is (1) we’re going to have to do an alternative route no matter what, and (2) I haven’t seen the numbers yet on whether a boulevard approach will really harm the Level of Service on Victoria.

But back to Wal-Mart. (You didn’t think I was avoiding this issue, did you?) Not surprisingly, the Chamber’s Ted Cook said the interim CUP requirement on big retail was essentially extending the moratorium. I don’t agree with that – but I do agree that the biggest question along Victoria, after the road configuration, is how to handle retail. The “workplace” scenario assumed no large-scale retail, but of course there are several large retail sites along Victoria and Wal-Mart has its eye on the Kmart site.

Inevitably, the first – and maybe only – large retail project that will go through the interim CUP process is Wal-Mart. That’ll obviously be fought largely over social issues, with Livable Ventura determined to keep Wal-Mart out and the Chamber determined to bring Wal-Mart in. But the interim CUP requirement will also allow us to take a look at what the effect of a new large-scale retail project will have on the Victoria Corridor and whether we think, on balance, it’s a benefit to the overall Victoria strategy. That’ll inform the whole Corridor Plan and help shape how much retail – versus high-quality office space – will be created in the area.

Yet another plan that will be back to us later in the spring. And of course Wal-Mart might now come along with a proposal that will trigger the CUP. Stay tuned.

The Star site on Ralston

Last night I joined the 4-2 council majority in denying a General Plan pre-screen request to change the land use designation on the Ventura County Star site on Ralston from industry to commerce. The vote came on the motion of Councilmember Andrews, who once again eloquently defended the need to reserve as much land as possible in the city for non-residential development.

I can see already that this will be cast by our critics as yet another example of either (1) our anti-development bias, or (2) the mixed messages we sent to developers. In my view, it was neither. Rather, it was a vote in favor of maintaining the integrity of our General Plan, which we passed less than 18 months ago.

In spite of what has been reported in the press and elsewhere, we did not "deny a rezoning" nor did we "turn a project down". Rather, we properly used the General Plan pre-screen process to indicate that we were not favorably disposed to a mostly residential project on this site. The whole idea of the pre-screen is to give early signals to developers as to what kinds of General Plan Amendments we might or might not view favorably.

When we passed the General Plan in 2005, our discussion included several factors relevant here:

1. Based on real estate market research, we concluded that we do not have enough commercial and industrial land in the city to meet future needs; therefore, we made significant statements that we should reserve industrial land in particular for future job growth.

2. We decided to target new infill efforts in specific focus areas -- downtown, for example, and Wells-Saticoy. Ralston was not one of those areas.

I think what happened last night was a majority of the council concluded that there was no reason to back off of either of those General Plan conclusions.

The Star site is 8 acres in between Ralston and the 101 freeway near the police station. It is an extremely underutilized parcel to begin with -- an outmoded 40,000-square-foot building on a 350,000-square-foot site. The Star, which built a new facility in Camarillo some years ago, is vacating the site in March.

The new owners, Sheridan Ebbert Development of Sylmar, came to the city for a pre-application meeting in late 2005 with an idea for a number of small office/industrial buildings. This would have been permitted without a change in the General Plan designation of the parcel. Eventually the owners changed their mind and began to craft a project that would be mostly housing. This required a change in General Plan designation from industry, which permits only live-work units as a second use, to commerce, which permits straight-up residential-commercial mixed-use.

The applicant then used our General Plan pre-screen process to come to the council with a request to change the General Plan designation. This action was initiated by Sheridan Ebbert and it is not without some risk. If we turn a pre-screen down, an applicant can't come before us again for a year. The staff suggested the possibility of changing the General Plan designation of the northern part of the site along Ralson to commerce while leaving the southern part of the site, near the freeway, as industry. However, the staff made no recommendation one way or the other.

It is very tempting to allow the General Plan to be amended whenever a landowner or developer comes along and requests it. But this process undermines the whole idea of a General Plan. This happened repeatedly in Ventura during the 1990s. As a result, the General Plan's credibility was gradually eroded until the ideas in the plan had no meaning to anybody. This lack of credibility was one of the reasons the public could not buy in to that General Plan -- and one of the reasons we saw so many ballot initiatives on land use during that time.

As I said above, in the General Plan we decided to reserve most industrial land for jobs and focus mixed-use and housing in certain centers and corridors elsewhere in the city. Last night, there was no compelling reason to devite from those two policies just because a developer came along and asked us to.

In the material it presented to the Council, Sheridan Ebbert stated that its original office-based development project wouldn't pencil out because costs were too high and rents were too low. In my experience, what this usually means is that the developer paid too much for the land.The Star site is a prime site and over time it will emerge as an excellent location for good jobs.

Sheridan Ebbert did attempt to make the argument that the location would make excellent workforce housing. I don't disagree that the Ralston corridor is a good location for workforce housing. It is adjacent to housing of various densities and it is located in extremely close proximity to lots of jobs and lots of day-to-day retail. But there was no guarantee from this proposal that the people who work in the area would actually live in the housing. If Sheridan Ebbert returned with a large employer like the County in tow, with an iron-clad guarantee of workforce housing, that might create a more compelling argument to deviate from our General Plan policies.