Downtown Funk : Ventura Thrift Store Owners Say Shops Lend Character to the Area, but Critics Liken Them to a Cancer

VENTURA —  Pee-Wee Herman. Cindy Williams of “Laverne & Shirley.” Angelyne, L.A. billboard queen.

From time to time all of them roll into Ventura to browse through the vintage and vinyl at the Thrift Factory and other downtown thrift stores.

They symbolize a type of upscale clientele some people here would like to see more of.

Dressed in a lumberjack shirt, an earthy man who identifies himself only as “Gene” totes in yard-sale treasures and dumpster booty to sell to Willoughby’s Shoppe--a secondhand store on Main Street.

He symbolizes a part of Ventura’s thriving thrift store economy that some people would like to stamp out forever.

Acres of downtown retail space are filled with thrift stores, consignment and collectible shops and more upscale antique shops. Some say they give downtown Ventura its funky feel--bringing in movie stars from Hollywood and luring locals from the malls. Others liken them to a cancer that could prove fatal for the city’s ambitious plans for the area.

Now, as Ventura tries to change its downtown and its image, some stores may be on their way out.

In late September, the city signed a lease with Victor K. Georgino and Century Theaters to build a $5.4-million 10-screen theater downtown, along with a $2.8-million four-story 500-space parking structure on a city-owned lot on Clara Street.

The city is in negotiations with the property owners on the 500 block of Main Street where the theater will go--from the pink County Stationer’s building down to the sprawling Sav-Mor. City redevelopment manager Pat Richardson says ground will be broken in May, and the first reels could roll by next December.

The theater is part of the city’s recipe for a renaissance that could change downtown forever.

Property prices will probably skyrocket, and some of the thrift stores are expected to be driven out.

Prices for rental space downtown range from 35 cents to $1.05 a square foot--depending on location and size--still below most other areas in Ventura, as well as nearby towns such as Thousand Oaks and Ojai.

Defending the Genre

But already virtually every commercial space is full and rents are starting to edge up. Landlords are asking for double, or even triple what they asked a few years ago, some tenants say.

But thrift store owners and their customers staunchly defend them as the lifeblood of the city--the one thing that distinguishes Ventura from homogeneous towns up and down the coast. These old-timers want to defend their self-proclaimed title: Junk Store Capital of Southern California.

Paul Willoughby, a grizzled old-timer who owns Willoughby’s Shoppe, a secondhand store across the street from the theater block, doesn’t like to think about the changes it will bring.

“It’s going to change the whole stock of downtown--all the independent shops,” says Willoughby, who already moved from another downtown location to flee rising rents. “It’s going to jump the rents sky-high. I don’t look to be here,” he says, running his hands over used Playboys stacked on his counter.

A man named Ursula, who owns the Thrift Factory, also on Main Street, fears the day when chain stores will supplant the independent businesses. This Los Angeles transplant with eggplant hair and eyebrows sees chain stores as public enemy No. 1.

“Like with any city, downtowns are being recognized as jewels. People are tired of strip malls that are all beige,” says Ursula, rolling his tongue pierce around in his mouth. “If Ventura would just celebrate its own style, it would be much more successful than if we tried to copy another coastal town with old money.”

But some merchants embrace the plans.

“I would like to see fewer thrift stores downtown,” says Ed Elrod, owner of the Ventura Bookstore, also on Main Street. “It’s the politically incorrect thing to say, but the thrift stores are not good for my economy, not good for the citizens’ economy, and not good for the local labor force. It’s a subsistence level market.”

Government Offices

There was a time when downtown Ventura was the seat of county government, and people went downtown to work, shop, eat and play. Sitting on the corner of Chestnut and Main at the Daily Grind Cafe, Elrod remembers the way it used to be.

“The D.A. was upstairs in the Ventura Theater, the law library was in the Ventura Bookstore, and the Star Free Press was in that parking lot,” he said, pointing down Chestnut Street. “The office of public works was in the Sav-Mor, and the superintendent’s office was upstairs.”

The exodus came in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.

Government offices transferred to the new center on Victoria Street and stores fled to the malls.

The vacuum created the perfect breeding ground for thrift stores.

“There is large retail space, basically free merchandise and, as rehab capital of the county, there is lots of free labor,” Elrod says. “You get this synergy . . . with 50,000 goods in one location.”

Thrift stores get most of their inventory free by making curbside pickups of donations. Labor is cheap, because many are run by volunteers.

And most of the thrift stores are affiliated with charities like the Humane Society, or the Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence. All the stores must pay sales tax, but some give their profits to charity, thereby receiving a tax write-off.

Visit the Battered Women and Children’s Thrift Store on a weekday afternoon, and the cash register jangles nonstop as people stream through the aisles, arms laden with clothing and used household items.

Though no one will say how much the thrift stores make, owners and fellow merchants say profits appear to be healthy.

But downtown stores generate only about 3.7% of the city’s sales tax revenue--about $360,000 in sales tax.

“It’s a thriving economy,” says Elrod, who describes a lively local market where dumpster divers trade their treasures in transactions that are never formally recorded. “But it generates no income for the city or the employment market.”

City officials think downtown can be a more lucrative source of income, and they have poured millions into revitalization efforts.

Efforts to Upgrade

In 1995, Ventura paid $3.6 million to rip out old ficus trees, plant palms, widen the sidewalks and put in more convenient parking, hoping to recoup its investment through enhanced tax values of downtown properties and greater sales tax revenues. They estimated spinoff benefits would boost sales tax revenues to about $500,000--or about 5% of the city’s total.

Some say the investment is already paying off.

“Not so long ago merchants had the pick of downtown,” says real estate executive Larry Tangi, who runs CB Properties. But with the downtown spruced up, landowners and tenants are realizing that prime spots are going to be harder to get. “Landowners and tenants . . . are saying now’s the time, it’s clean, it’s neat, and the theater is going in.”

City redevelopment manager Richardson says these days he gets two to three calls a week from out-of-town businesses interested in moving downtown.

Theater complexes have proved to be engines of economic growth elsewhere, making for more lively, vital downtowns in Santa Monica, Santa Barbara, Pasadena, Burbank and other cities in Southern California. Like Ventura, Santa Barbara was once filled with thrift stores--and Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade was a seedy slice of urban blight--where kung fu movies showed for a dollar, and merchants saw more homeless people than shoppers.

Now Santa Barbara is like a giant outdoor shopping mall, and Santa Monica is a lively quarter jammed with milling pedestrians, outdoor restaurants and street performers.

Raising the Rent

Some can’t wait for the transformation, but others fear the changes they see in these places. They say rising rents drive out all but the characterless national chain stores.

Currently, downtown rents vary. Generally, the larger the space, the cheaper the rent per square foot. California Street is the most expensive, says Tangi, with rents running 75 to 80 cents per square foot. On the lower end, thrift stores pay 35 to 50 cents a foot for 7,000- to 14,000-square-foot spaces. Smaller businesses such as the Daily Grind on Chestnut and Main pay about a dollar a square foot.

These rents are dirt-cheap for the region--lower than anywhere else except downtown Oxnard, Tangi says.

But already the developer is advertising space in the theater complex for about $2 a foot, double or more what Main Street is paying.

“My greatest fear about the theater complex is that it will be full of out-of-town agents,” says Jim Luttjohann, who runs the Daily Grind.

“If you look at theater complexes, the store spaces are full of Noah’s Bagels, Starbucks and Ben and Jerry’s--which a lot of the public loves. But I would so much rather see Joe’s Ice Cream and Daisy’s Donuts,” he says. Luttjohann, who participated in the AIDS walk and has given thousands of dollars to local charities, says chain stores rarely give back to the community the way local merchants do.

“I don’t see Starbucks doing that,” he says.

It’s true that large corporations and chain stores have traditionally given to large national charities rather than local ones, but that is changing, says Tim C. Mazur, vice president of the Council for Ethics in Economics, an independent nonprofit organization based in Ohio.

“On the whole, there’s an increasing trend for large corporations and chain stores to require that a certain amount of the money they give to charities each year be given locally,” Mazur says.

He estimates that in 1980 only 5% of large corporations gave locally. Today that figure would be closer to 35%, he says. He cites Home Depot as an example of a corporation that requires its franchises to give to local charities. Starting in 1997, AT&T; will give employees a paid day off to do work in the local community.

But even if that’s true, some merchants fear that by trying to go upscale, Ventura may lose the only identity it has. “Up until today that’s what made this downtown--the thrift stores and the boutiques,” says Frank Toms, who runs Frank’s Furniture. “People come here for that.”

Attracting Tourists

Thrift store fans talk about L.A. icon and billboard queen Angelyne zooming up in her pink corvette, and swaying into the Thrift Factory in her pink stilettos. And they point out that the stores draw the crowds of German and French tourists that swamp the town in summer.

But others say it is Santa Barbara that draws the real celebrities--stars that people have actually heard of--and the busloads of foreign tourists. They are eager for Ventura’s urban metamorphosis to take off--and they don’t want delays.

“I wish the business changes would start now,” said Brian Selos, who runs the Italian Cafe on Main Street. “Eventually it will become more upscale. Merchants need to face up to it. No matter how much some of them don’t want to upgrade, that theater is gonna make a big difference.”

Selos doesn’t want to see the thrift stores disappear. He just wants them to upgrade--or move.

“They smell like mothballs . . . they cater mostly towards the lower end. The Avenue has lots of customers, and places are available over there . . . that would leave space available for upscale shops to move in,” Selos says.

When they spin out their visions for the downtown’s future, many are careful to make a distinction between thrift stores--with their racks of used clothes and old silverware--and antique stores--which sell Queen Anne tables and ancient Oriental art. Both are drawn to Ventura by the low rents--and may suffer together as rents rise.

Ed Whitely, who runs the Antiquarian, says he is paying $2,800 a month for his retail space on Main Street that would go for $10,000 in Los Angeles.

Now he is leaving.

“In the direction things are going, with the downtown redevelopment program, eventually antique stores will wither away and become a thing of the past,” Whitely says. “They will be replaced with gift shops and tourist shops.”

Planner Richardson says he wants Ventura to keep its unique character. But he acknowledges that a mix of stores is important.

To this end, he says, it may be necessary to enact an ordinance that would prevent an explosion of cookie stores and tourist shops. Laguna Beach has already enacted such a law.

“Our whole philosophy is to get a balance. Ventura hasn’t done that yet,” he says.

As the debate whirls around them, most of the thrift stores remain undisturbed by the impending changes.

Bep, a bright-eyed, diminutive woman who manages the Humane Society Thrift Store in the 500 block of Main Street thinks the theater idea is terrible because she thinks it will bring more crime. However, as she sorts through boxes that emanate musty odors, she says her own rent is safe because she has a nice landlord and a long-term lease.

At the other end of town, Cliff Ward, who manages the Battered Women and Children’s Coalition Thrift Store, is equally complacent.

“They were talking about putting it [the theater] down here--that would have shut us down,” Ward says. “But we’re three blocks away so I don’t think our rent will go up. We have the Mission, the thrift stores--this is the nostalgic end of town.”

More than anything, there is fear of the unknown. Many shop owners, thrift and non-thrift alike, worry they will not survive.

One merchant, who asked to remain anonymous, said she is in negotiations with her landlord, and her rent is likely to double. She and her friends are looking for properties on the Avenue and in midtown--just in case.

“It’s kind of scary to think that we won’t be able to make it,” said Kris Pustina, who runs Franky’s Restaurant. But she also imagines staying put and raking in business in a revamped downtown. “It’s also exciting to think we could make hundreds of thousands of dollars and retire to Tahiti.”

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Commercial Property Rents

Average market rates per square foot for properties of less than 10,000 square feet:

Santa Barbara

(State Street area): $4-$5

Ventura

(Main Street Corridor): $1.35-$1.50

Thousand Oaks

(Westlake Promenade): $5-$5.50

Ventura

(Downtown): $1

Source: Larry Tangi, CB Properties