The Party’s Over : After a decade of growth, the county has a record amount of empty office space.

Outside the grandest building in one of Oxnard’s grandest new business complexes, 461 parking spaces lie in the afternoon sun. Four hundred and sixty are empty. And in the 111,478 square feet of office space above, there are no tenants.

Judged by such numbers, Ventura County may be the empty-office capital of California. The Oxnard building, once hailed as a new Chevron regional headquarters, is only one stop on a formidable tour of empty halls, quiet courtyards and echoing atriums. But before we start the tour, a few words from our realtors.

“The market stinks,” one agent in the Westlake area said recently, requesting anonymity. “Nobody has any money right now. Lenders aren’t lending money, so businesses aren’t growing.”

Some agents are more optimistic. Now that new commercial office construction has slowed to a standstill, many say, demand has a chance to catch up with supply.

At the Siracusa Co., a Westlake Village marketing research firm that tracks vacancy rates in new buildings of all sizes, Vice President Carolyn Siracusa notes that the county’s inventory of never-occupied office space fell slightly between January and April.

At Grubb & Ellis, commercial real estate agent Bill Kiefer asserts that it’s unfair to compare Ventura County figures with vacancy rates in larger, more stable markets, because “they’re not apples and apples.”

Still, there are all those empty spaces.

Nationwide, analysts estimate that a decade of busy building has pushed office vacancy rates from 5% in 1980 to 20% in 1990. That’s twice what many experts consider a healthy rate. And Ventura County’s figures are substantially higher.

Dirk Kittredge, research director at the Oxnard offices of Grubb & Ellis Commercial Brokerage Services, calculates that 27% of Ventura County’s completed office space, new and existing, was vacant when 1991 began. That’s 1.69 million square feet--or, at average rental rates, $2.6 million a month that this county’s commercial landlords weren’t collecting. And that excludes buildings with less than 10,000 square feet, which several agents said are struggling just as much as their bigger brethren.

Another dispiriting detail: Between December and April, Kittredge estimates, the vacancy rate rose two more percentage points, from 27% to 29%.

Timothy E. Grant, a senior associate at the Ventura office of CB Commercial (formerly Coldwell Banker), compiled similar end-of-1990 statistics for the western half of the county. Like Kittredge, he left out government buildings, medical buildings, owner-occupied projects and projects under 10,000 square feet. And like Kittridge, he came up with a 27% vacancy rate.

That was the highest rate here since Coldwell Banker started keeping track four years ago.

It was also the highest rate in the eight California metropolitan areas that CB surveyed, putting west Ventura County substantially ahead of such contenders as Fresno (18.2%), Los Angeles (17.9%), Orange County (20.7%), Sacramento (13.3%), San Diego (19.5%), San Francisco (13.9%) and San Jose (12.1%). Among 55 metropolitan areas nationwide, only Stamford, Conn., (29.3%) and Palm Beach County, Fla., (29%) showed higher numbers.

The contributing factors are clear enough. The Ventura County oil industry contracted. The defense-contracting industry did the same. And the overall economy, here and elsewhere, took a dive that left developers and their lenders holding the bag and the buildings.

“A lot of people look at their projects with rose-colored glasses,” said Vick Yates, co-owner of Troop Real Estate in Simi Valley. “And unfortunately a lot of people don’t plan for downturn situations.”

Now the tour.

If all the idle square footage in this county’s office buildings were laid out on a four-foot-wide bike path, you could pedal from Ventura to Palmdale. The following guide to vacant Ventura County, selective and unscientific, begins and ends closer to home.

THE RESOLUTION TRUST TOUR OF VENTURA COUNTY

Moon/Walker

The Moon/Walker Building

5700 Moon Drive, Ventura

It’s white and airy. It’s triangular, with a pair of Art Deco wings flanking the second story. And since the builders finished last September, this 5,800-square-foot building just east of the Ventura Freeway has been empty.

“It’s been a dry spell, trying to find tenants,” conceded John Davis, who is handling the property through his firm, Commercial West Investment Brokers. “We’ve had bottom-fishermen out there.”

The owner of the building is a Canadian investor named Louis Kuel, Davis said. Its design stands out, Davis said, in part because Ventura city officials “were quite interested in seeing a departure from the normal Spanish-style building. The Art Deco theme seemed to go over very well.”

The original occupants were to have been Real Estate Unlimited Commercial Investment Group (a former firm of Davis’) and Los Angeles architect John Ash, who designed the building. Then the economy soured, the would-be tenants decided to stay where they were and Davis found himself opening an empty building.

“It had its problems,” Davis said. But, he added, “there is currently a Fortune 500 company in negotiations for the ground floor. . . . We’re just looking to lock it up.” The asking price, he said, was $1.50 per square foot.

While he looked for renters, Davis was also advertising for a buyer. Asking price: $1.15 million.

In Chevron’s Wake

1800 N. Solar Drive, Oxnard

The grass is neatly mowed, the flowers bloom yellow and purple, and through the windows you can see yards and yards of bare concrete office floor, awaiting corporate identity. If you’re a pessimist, this is Tombstone with elevators. It happened this way:

In the late 1980s, Chevron had 200 office workers spread among three sites in Ventura. Company officials decided that the time had come to put them all in one place. Up went this building, a three-story structure of green, white and gray that dominates the fledgling Sammis Business Center near Rice Avenue and Gonzalez Road in Oxnard.

The offices would serve as headquarters for Chevron offshore exploration and oil production facilities from the Los Angeles Basin to San Luis Obispo County, housing up to 250 employees. A silver kinetic sculpture rotated out front. The entryway walls were lined with stylish wood. The floor was laid with granite.

But while the building rose, corporate analysts were watching their business prospects here fall. In November, 1989, just six months after groundbreaking, Chevron backed away from the building.

“We took a look at existing public opposition to offshore development, as well as existing public policy,” Chevron spokesman G. Mike Marcy said. “And it became increasingly obvious to us that we would not be able to develop the existing offshore leases we had, let alone bid on any offshore lease sales in the future. . . . It just didn’t make any sense to move to a new building.”

The sale of some gas-producing properties in the area was another factor, but the bottom line, Marcy said, is that oil is a receding business in Ventura County. Chevron transferred dozens of workers to Bakersfield and now counts just under 100 employees in this county. Most work in a Ventura office near the County Government Center.

And the former future office? Grubb & Ellis is handling the 7.6-acre site for Chevron, looking for a corporate owner-user, and asking $15.5 million.

“We’ve had a couple dozen companies through the building, but nobody’s been willing to step up,” said Bill Kiefer, the Grubb & Ellis agent handling the property.

Neighboring buildings in the Sammis Business Center, he noted, are leasing steadily. Chevron might be willing to lease its space at $1.30 or $1.40 per square foot per month, Kiefer said, but it would take a big tenant to make it worthwhile.

Otherwise, Kiefer said, “it could take years to lease up a building like that.”

Second Life

WaterCourt at Westlake

890 Hampshire Road, Thousand Oaks

In a hulking, unleased room, two dozen balloons hover in still air, slowly deflating after a recent celebration. At the Eatz Bistro down the hall, plates and cutlery lie ready.

A decade ago, this mall was christened Olive Grove and billed as the next hot retail center in Thousand Oaks. But through years of gangbusters growth in the Conejo Valley, the Grove struggled and ultimately failed. In certain real estate circles, it was re-christened Olive Graves.

“It’s a good location,” said Ted Rohlfsen, membership executive for the Thousand Oaks Chamber of Commerce. “It just never took off.”

Then Trammell Crow Co., one of the state’s largest commercial developers, bought the complex. Immediately, the developer launched a $10-million plan for the rehabilitation of the project, this time as an office complex. In thebargain came yet another name: WaterCourt at Westlake Village.

The official reopening, with 133,000 square feet of office space, came last December. To lure tenants, Trammell Crow kept 20% of the complex for retail uses, including a gym, a laundry and the Eatz Bistro.

“We watched this empty for three years before we came here,” Eatz co-owner Neal Rosenthal said. He got a good deal from the landlord, he said, and he expects to hold onto his customers from his former location a block away.

Lease rates at the time varied from about $1.50 to $1.80 per square foot, and office sizes ranged from 22,000 square feet down to 500, and are still in that range.

Four months after reopening, the project was 75% vacant. A lone mallard paddled in the central pond, and in the courtyard, the trickle of water was the loudest sound. Trammell Crow project manager Katherine Laster was unfazed.

“I’m right on track. . . . We estimated a 20-month lease-up period,” she said. Prospective tenants “have to see what’s inside. . . . It’s not like I sit back and the project leases itself.”

Business was “really slow” in January and February, Laster said. But in mid-April, she said, she signed contracts on two more leases and entered into serious negotiations on three more.

“It really does seem that activity in the marketplace is really picking up,” she said.

Pink Thinking

216 Moorpark Ave., Moorpark

Real estate agent Shirley Baher tells people that she’s handling the office building near Moorpark and Los Angeles avenues, then she waits for the inevitable response:

“Oh. The pink building.”

“Every time,” Baher said recently.

The building has been coated in mildest beige for more than a year now. But its brief and controversial history has not yet faded. Nor has its tenant list changed much.

By realtors’ standards, this is Moorpark’s first major office building. That would seem a canny investment in a town that in 10 years has grown from 7,800 residents to more than 25,000.

But by the time of its completion, the building’s hue--”Pepto-Bismol pink,” in Baher’s words--was already a point of contention among city officials, neighbors and builders. The builders were unable to lease it out, Baher said, and it eventually passed on to another owner.

The buyer, who prefers anonymity, repainted it early last year. He also added tile roofing over the walkways and moved a stairway. But a year later, the 13,260-square-foot building is less than half occupied.

Baher, who works out of the Simi Valley office of Prudential Mitchell Co. Realtors, tried for months to lease it out, asking $1.25 per square foot. Since then, she has rethought her strategy.

“The clientele that we’re searching for is just starting to develop in Moorpark--accountants, doctors, lawyers,” Baher said. “We hadn’t had much input on the building, so we decided to take it off the market for a while.”