Mall Coalition Seeks Funds to Fight Petition : Development: The unusual alliance defends the shopping center’s expansion plans. But a businessman calls the financing deal ‘horrendous.’

VENTURA — Standing in the center of the Buenaventura Mall, a collection of local political activists and residents on Thursday announced the formation of a group dedicated to protecting the mall’s $50-million expansion and renovation project.

The unusual alliance of pro-business, pro-environment and public safety organizations--called Venturans United for Economic Security--hopes to raise tens of thousands of dollars to fight an anti-expansion petition drive.

Ventura businessman Lary Reid is trying to qualify a measure for the March ballot that would prohibit the city from engaging in any tax-sharing plans with developers, such as the arrangement that the City Council has struck with Buenaventura Mall.

“We are not trying to kill the expansion of the mall,” Reid said Thursday in a press release. “We are trying to stop the horrendous financing deal that the City Council has negotiated.”

The new coalition sees Reid’s efforts as a serious threat, not just to the mall expansion, but to future development in the city.

“We think the interests behind this are wrong,” said John Walters, president-elect of the Chamber of Commerce and a leader of the new group. “The mall redevelopment project is not going to be giving away money to developers . . . What the mall redevelopment is going to do is generate money.”

Walters told a crowd of more than two dozen business owners and local residents that the mall expansion is a community investment, a statement echoed by residents who live near the shopping center.

“We feel strongly that the renovation will improve our neighborhoods,” said Eileen Riddle, who lives on nearby Dunning Street. “We are very united in our desire to see this project move forward.”

Sales tax revenue from the mall pumps about $1 million into city coffers each year. Supporters of the mall expansion contend that if the shopping center is not improved, it will become unsightly and unvisited.

The threat of losing that tax base has spurred the city’s police and firefighters associations to join the coalition, rounding off the unlikely posse of politicos and residents fighting the initiative.

“Without a good tax base, we are going to lose police and firefighters on the street,” said David Hilty, president of the Ventura City Firefighters Assn.

The coalition will file paperwork with the city clerk next week to allow members to solicit and spend money, Walters said.

The group already has garnered support from prominent business owners and developers, many of whom attended Thursday’s press conference. It also is being backed by mall owners.

“We are going to be a member,” said David A. Jones, vice president of Chicago-based La Salle Partners and developer of the project. “We will be a major funding source to their activities.”