During its annual conference in Thousand Oaks last month, the California Lutheran University Center for Economic Research and Forecasting highlighted a sobering finding from the National Association of Realtors: Of all the metropolitan areas in the United States, the Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura market is America’s least affordable place to live.
That distinction is not just a function of high housing prices and elevated rents, although those are of course major factors. It’s also that wages here are low compared to other markets with high housing costs, such as the San Francisco Bay Area or Seattle.
If any data point ever summed up Ventura County’s two most pressing needs, it’s that one. Two things are needed here to boost the economy, improve the quality of community life and staunch the population declines of the last eight years: better-paying jobs and more housing options.
As it happens, societal change is forcing local governments here to rethink land-use configurations in a way that could help to address housing needs. The idea is to convert slumping retail venues to apartments, condos or townhouses. There is opportunity — and, importantly, also investor interest — to realize benefit from what might otherwise be a blight-producing source of community decay.
It’s a fact of life that the world of retail shopping has irrevocably changed. Shopping malls struggle to attract tenants and customers. Last month, the inevitable came to pass: Macy’s announced it will close 150 of its namesake stores. Among the first to be shuttered will be the one at Simi Valley’s Town Center mall.
The brief history of the Simi Valley Town Center has been cursed by bad timing. After years of planning, the mall opened in 2005 amid much excitement and anticipation. A year later, the owner of one of its anchor stores, Robinson’s-May, ceased to exist. Then the Great Recession hit. And all of this coincided with the rise of Amazon and the worldwide surge in online shopping.
Not even 20 years old, today the Town Center is marked by vacant storefronts and empty parking lots. It is a great disappointment because the mall had only briefly begun to fulfill one of its intended visions as a community gathering place.
There is an understandable reluctance to cede that vision, but change is an unstoppable force.
Discussions are under way — for the second time in recent years — to build apartments or condos on some, or even most, of the mall property. A formal proposal could come before the City Council within a year or so.
Over in Thousand Oaks, city officials will be facing similar considerations as the owner of Janss Marketplace will be seeking a residential component as part of its expansion plans. The property has already been rezoned for mixed-use development.
In Simi Valley, consideration of housing at the Town Center will be complicated by the remnants of the vision of the property as a true center for public life. As Council member Elaine Litster recently told The Star, “We would like to retain its central purpose, which is a shopping and gathering space for the entire community.”
That could happen, but it will take some creative thinking. Communal shopping experiences aren’t very much a thing these days. Perhaps there is a way to incorporate public attractions such as music venues, activity areas and other entertainment options into the plan, but the city can ill afford to turn its back on an opportunity to convert underused property into a use that can help meet the area’s essential need for housing.
“Abandoned shopping center” is not a land use anyone wants to see, especially not here in America’s least affordable place to live.
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