Define Oxnard Boulevard Gateways

Define Gateways at 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th

With Oxnard Boulevard finally under the City’s control, the strategy for using it as an effective conduit to bring increasing numbers of visitors, shoppers, employees and residents to Downtown is as simple as one, two, three:

1. Bring large numbers of motorists through Downtown on the Boulevard every day: Done,
   they’ve been driving past for decades.
2. Make the Downtown boulevard look, feel and function like a Downtown boulevard, so that
   motorists understand that they are in Downtown, not just driving : See page 2.2, above.
3. Create a series of very clear, attractive gateways – at the north and south ends of Downtown and at each of several key cross streets – that bring Downtown buildings and activity right out to the Boulevard to greet visitors.

Although 4th Street is the first available entry to the Downtown core for southbound motorists – and the pedestrian link from the core to the Oxnard Transportation Center – its intersection with Oxnard Boulevard is surrounded by surface parking lots, conveying no sense that one has arrived in a successful city center. The colored perspective drawing on the right illustrates how high quality mixed-use buildings could be built on all or most of those corners to extend the Downtown
environment out to the Boulevard.

The drawing below illustrates a potential 3-story building at the corner of the Boulevard and Fifth Street, with the existing drug store perhaps on the ground floor and new housing above.

As buildings along the Boulevard are intensified, the surface parking lots between the corner lots can be converted to parking structures, designed with high quality architecture or liners of habitable space facing the Boulevard.

Gateway signage and landmark elements can further enhance these important Downtown entry points, but are no substitute for fine buildings, businesses and residents, and an active pedestrian environment.