A Fitting Legacy

Is it ironic that one of Ventura County’s most prolific real-estate developers is endowing a chair at Cal State Channel Islands for the study of land-use planning?

Not at all. Ventura County is the perfect laboratory for that--and developers are as eager as anyone to find fair, workable solutions.

Last week Oxnard developer Martin V. “Bud” Smith became the second area resident within six months to contribute $5 million for building the county’s first four-year public university. The amount equals an earlier pledge from Oxnard rancher John S. “Jack” Broome that will be used to establish a library and media center.

Part of the earnings from Smith’s contribution to the university’s endowment will be used to reward faculty members for superior teaching and to provide scholarships. The rest will establish an endowed chair to study local land-use issues, something university officials envision as the first step toward creating a university think tank to explore development issues confronting Ventura County.

It’s a fitting legacy for one of the county’s most prominent real estate investors and developers. Smith, now 83, once owned more than 200 properties between Santa Maria and Calabasas, including the Lobster Trap Restaurant at Channel Islands Harbor, the Casa Sirena Marina Resort, more than 1,000 rental apartments and the 21-story Financial Plaza tower--the tallest building between Los Angeles and San Jose. He sold most of his holdings about four years ago for more than $150 million and is now semi-retired, although he still maintains a staff of 20 to manage about a dozen properties.

In today’s Ventura County, real estate developers are often cast as villains by those who fear that growth will erode the natural beauty and quality of life that make this area so appealing. The Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources anti-sprawl measures passed by two-thirds of county voters in 1998 were designed to slow development for 20 years in hopes that wiser ways of accommodating a growing population could be found than the patterns that helped to make Orange and Los Angeles counties what they are today.

We have often observed that Ventura County is a living laboratory for finding better, more sustainable ways to grow. Bud Smith’s contribution to Cal State Channel Islands will help to provide some academic horsepower for that most commendable effort.