OXNARD : Outlet Mall Builder Holds Ceremony

As the race between Oxnard and Camarillo to build the area’s first factory-outlet mall nears conclusion, the Oxnard developer on Tuesday held a groundbreaking ceremony that the competing builder dismissed as a marketing maneuver.

Oxnard Mayor Manuel Lopez and four city councilmen attended the ceremony Tuesday morning at the building site on the south side of the Ventura Freeway between Rice and Rose avenues.

A spokesman for developer Carl M. Buck Building Co. of Los Angeles said the groundbreaking is a sign their company will meet its goal of opening the first phase of the 90-store Oxnard mall this fall.

But the developer of a competing project a few miles east in Camarillo said builders frequently hold groundbreaking ceremonies as a stunt to attract financing and tenants.

“They’re a marketing tool, to add credibility to a project,” said Jeffrey A. Dritley, a spokesman for the Koll Leonard partnership that plans to build a 70-store factory-outlet center along the freeway, just south of Central Avenue. “There are a lot of groundbreakings that two years later there’s not a building there.”

Market studies indicate the Camarillo-Oxnard area can support only one retail outlet mall, pitting the developers of the two projects in a race to build their projects first.