Mayor’s Speech Cites Business Growth

Strong growth in Oxnard’s eastern business corridor is helping to offset continued downsizing at Navy bases, Mayor Manuel Lopez said Tuesday in his state of the city address.

“We’re at the point where the military is pulling away some of its resources,” Lopez told 40 community leaders at the Casa Sirena hotel. “It’s a real challenge, not only for the city of Oxnard but for the entire county.”

The mayor noted that Point Mugu and Port Hueneme Navy bases plan to merge civilian departments this fall, meaning that more military jobs will be lost. In addition, companies such as Nabisco have left in recent years, weakening the city’s job base.

But the retail and industrial corridor near Rose and Rice avenues has taken up much of the slack, Lopez said. He GTE and Haas Automation are enjoying particularly robust growth. Haas brought 450 jobs when it moved to Oxnard from Chatsworth last year, and its work force is expected to double, the mayor said.

Moreover, Lopez said, the city’s downtown is beginning to recover after years of neglect. “There’s been reinvestment, with new businesses opening up,” the mayor said. “There’ll be more of them. Success begets success.”

Lopez’s remarks received a strong positive response from business and civic leaders at the morning gathering, hosted by the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Ventura County. Officials in the audience included Councilmen John Zaragoza and Bedford Pinkard and Police Chief Harold Hurtt.

The mayor also noted that elected officials in Oxnard and across Ventura County are wrestling with the issue of farmland preservation.

“There’s a parallel in which groups of the city are developing their own way to control growth,” Lopez said. “We don’t know what the final product will be, but something will be done to control what some consider urban sprawl. I personally feel we’ve done pretty well, despite the pressures we’ve had, when compared to Orange County or L.A. County.”