Downtown Oxnard is currently experiencing underutilization by the City’s residents and lack of strong real estate investment. This is not due to the lack of planning efforts, as the City of Oxnard has conducted numerous planning studies targeting the revitalization of its Downtown. For example, the Downtown Vision Plan created in October 2016 included a number of concepts and implementation actions. While this plan was never officially adopted by the City Council, it has served as a de facto framework for subsequent planning efforts.
The City is currently seeking to implement several aspects of these earlier concepts in an effort to spur economic growth in the area, but is in need of focusing these efforts due to the wide-ranging nature of the plans and strategies that have been put forward to date. Many proposed initiatives appear promising, including ways to facilitate the development of market rate housing, streamlining of zoning processes, and the development of a modern zoning code and urban design plan, but the City seeks assistance with the specification of implementation priorities.
The implementation priorities are intended to guide the actions to be taken by the City in order to maximize the effectiveness of limited resources it currently has at hand, with an eye toward developing more stable ongoing resources. The CPAT Team was asked by the City of Oxnard to provide assistance with this prioritization, as well as for any additional recommendations that would serve to spur the revitalization of the downtown area.
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