Bennett Revives Idea for Rooftop Convention Center

VENTURA — Time and again, the quest to build a convention center resurfaces as Ventura’s most elusive dream.

Now, Councilman Steve Bennett is resurrecting an old idea: to transform the top floor of the beachfront Holiday Inn parking structure into a convention center.

On Monday night, the City Council agreed to have city staff look at how much a feasibility study might cost.

But Councilman Jim Monahan said that over the years, he has seen such proposals come and go.

“That could probably be a community meeting room,” said Monahan, who contends that the space is simply not big enough for a convention center. “We might get a pigeon growers meeting. I used to be a pigeon grower. They could release their pigeons off the roof. But we couldn’t get a big facility up there. It’s been thought of before.”

Councilman Jim Friedman dismissed Bennett’s proposal as yet another effort to get his hands on the $9 million that was set aside a decade ago for construction of a new event center at the Ventura County Fairgrounds.

“This is politically motivated,” Friedman said Tuesday.

He recounted several proposals that Bennett has come up with in the past for the fairgrounds money. For instance, he said, Bennett first recommended that some of the money be used to build a sound wall along the Santa Paula Freeway, then proposing that it be put toward libraries, a planned downtown parking structure and the Ventura River Trail.

But Bennett says his intent is to put the ugliest building in the most beautiful spot in Ventura to some better use--and save some money in the process.

“It’s easier to build out the parking structure for $3 million than to start from scratch and spend $10 million to build a convention center at the fairgrounds,” Bennett said.

Part of the $9 million, according to Mike Paluszak of the Fairgrounds Board, would go toward building an event center that could host trade shows and computer exhibitions as well as conventions to fill Ventura’s hotels during the slower midweek.

The fairgrounds money now sits in a holding account until the council decides what to do with it.

Bennett added that his primary goal is to get a convention center built in Ventura, but building one more cheaply at the parking structure would also free up the remaining money.

“Then we have $6 million available for libraries,” he said.

In fact, Bennett is not the first to come up with the idea of building a convention center atop the nondescript concrete structure that occupies some of the best oceanfront real estate in the city.

Al Paris, former president of the Chamber of Commerce, has made a name for himself pushing for the project over the years.

“I have been trying for 20 bloody years to get them to spend just $30,000 and do a feasibility study,” he said. “Conventions are big business. They are the biggest business in California.”

To date, Paris has spent hundreds of dollars of his own money to get artists to draw up plans and he hand-delivered packages to city staff in recent weeks encouraging them to revisit the issue.

Paris says the bland, four-story block building, which was built in the 1970s, has a strong enough foundation to support adding an extra floor.

City officials, however, cannot say for sure that this is the case.

“Allegedly, this building was designed to support another level,” said Everett Millais, director of community services. But city staff has not been able to find any documents confirming this, he said.

A structural engineer did examine the building for the city in 1987 and found that it could bear the weight of a rooftop restaurant and banquet facility, Millais said.

“That was right at the time the city did the Fairgrounds Master Plan,” Millais recalled. “A multipurpose center building was to be built at the fairgrounds; that’s why it [the parking structure] wasn’t looked at as a convention center.”

Millais said that to revisit the issue, the city would have to do an updated structural analysis based on current building codes.