Report Recommends 3 Arts Venues in Downtown Ventura

VENTURA — The release of a long-awaited report that recommends creating three arts facilities downtown drew dozens of art and music lovers to City Hall on Thursday night.

The Downtown Cultural District Plan examines the lack of performing and exhibition space in downtown Ventura, a problem that has plagued community leaders for three decades. The document makes 43 specific recommendations for the kinds of facilities the city needs.

“The city of Ventura is prime for having a cultural district downtown,” city Cultural Affairs Coordinator Elena Brokaw said during a presentation of the report. “But the one thing Ventura does not have is a satisfactory arts facility.”

The 114-page report is the result of a study conducted by the Wolf Organization, a consulting firm based in Cambridge, Mass., that was hired last year for about $48,000.

The three arts facilities suggested for downtown are: a 100-seat facility for small performing arts groups and experimental performances at the Livery; a medium-sized studio facility in either the medical/dental building at the corner of Santa Clara and Chestnut streets or at the Beverly Fabrics building on Main Street; and an 800-1,400 seat theater at the Ventura Theater.

The report also recommends creating a gallery within the medium-sized theater for local and traveling art shows.

The consultant advocated converting existing buildings downtown, such as the Livery, the medical/dental building or the Art Deco Mayfair Theater for the theaters and art spaces, rather than building anything new.

But it recommends against building a performance space of 1,200 or more seats, because facilities in nearby Thousand Oaks, Oxnard and Santa Barbara appear to have saturated the regional market for blockbuster attractions, touring companies and high-profile entertainers.

Some of what the report suggests has already happened, such as with the new management of the Ventura Theater, said Sonia Tower, the city’s cultural affairs manager.

“One of the report’s recommendations was to assist the city in finding new management for the Ventura Theater,” she said. “Finding someone who would be interested in investing in it, and wouldn’t let it deteriorate any further, and someone who would be interested in broadening the kind of shows they put on.”

The theater’s new operators, Back Street Entertainment, are refurbishing the 1928 theater. It is set to reopen May 10 for the biggest performance of this year’s Ventura Chamber Music Festival.

The consultant estimates that creating a cultural district downtown could cost as much as $8 million during the next decade. The report also notes that public money sources are extremely limited, and that Ventura does not have a strong tradition of private philanthropy.

Tower called the 43 recommendations a wish list. She said finding money would be the biggest challenge.

“We need to come up with a strategy for how to achieve our critical goals,” she said. “Because there will be strong competition for funds.”

Ed Elrod, chairman of the Arts and Cultural Affairs Committee, was more optimistic.

“You know, they just released that $9 million in fairgrounds money,” he said, alluding to a fund that was set aside for more than a decade to build a convention facility, but was moved into a holding account by the council this spring.

Elrod said the idea would be to use public funds as seed money to get someone to come into the city and manage a theater facility. He compared it to what was done with the Ventura Chamber Music Festival, which opens Saturday.

After three years, it is largely self-sufficient, and eight of its 17 performances are already sold out.

A 1992 Ventura County Cultural Plan called for a 300- to 600-seat city theater. A separate city cultural plan done that same year noted an overall lack of performance venues and called for a downtown cultural district.

City officials said that 85% of the goals laid out in that 4-year-old plan had been accomplished.

The arts committee created a Downtown Cultural District Task Force on Thursday to develop recommendations from the report. Those recommendations will then be forwarded to the City Council.