County OKs Purchase of Ventura Building

Seeking to reduce the nearly $4.6 million the county spends each year to lease commercial space, supervisors on Tuesday agreed to buy the Chevron building across the street from the County Government Center in Ventura for $2.75 million.

Officials believe over a 15-year period the purchase will save more than $5.5 million in the amount the county spends to lease commercial space.

Officials say the savings will cover the cost of the three-story, 36,000-square-foot building in about eight years.

Moreover, officials consider the purchase for less than the appraised $2.9-million cost of the building to be a good deal as the local commercial real estate market continues an upswing.

“From a business standpoint, this is a really good opportunity,” Supervisor Frank Schillo said.

Chevron will continue leasing the building from the county over the next five years and vacate one floor every two years. The lease will earn the county $1.6 million toward the purchase cost.

County departments will begin moving into the building in January 1999.

“If we don’t do something like this, we’ll get ourselves in the position where we were before we built this county center, where we had things spread all over the place,” Supervisor John K. Flynn said.

Within a five-mile radius of the Government Center, the county leases 65,831 square feet of office space at an annual cost of $898,000.

The building will be purchased with interest earnings from the Public Facilities Corp., an agency set up by the county in the 1970s to finance construction of large public building projects.