Recovery seen to be returning to Ventura County.

Business leaders in Ventura County are looking for the light at the end of the tunnel. Sales are down, employment is down and, as of mid-1991, Ventura County is yet to begin recovering from the recession, according to a survey of business leaders in the county.

Ventura County posted an unemployment rate of 7.6 percent in August, higher than the state's rate of 7.2 percent, but lower than Los Angeles County's 8.5 percent.

But there is good news in that the City of Oxnard may get a stronger retail base as plans for a new regional mall snake through city hall and the California State University trustees last month chose a site for the first four-year university to be built in Ventura County.

But with large employers like Northrop Corp. leaving the county, local city governments cutting staff and agriculture business suffering from the freeze and the drought, business leaders have reason to be pessimistic in the short term.

Ventura County National Bank has surveyed local business owners for the last four years on economic trends and the latest survey, released last month, was the bleakest in the survey's history, said Richard L. Ball, the bank's senior vice president.

Of the 535 business owners who responded to the survey, 61.8 percent said Ventura County was still in the grips of the recession, 11 percent said the county economy had bottomed out and 18.1 percent said the recovery had begun.

Ball said bank officials were surprised at the number of business owners who felt Ventura County was still in a recession.

"I think we were looking for something that said we were turning the corner, and we didn't see that," Ball said. "Everything we hear from the professional economists is that the recovery is under way, but we didn't see that from the survey."

About half of the businesses reported sales decreased in the first six months of 1991 compared to a year earlier, according to the survey. A quarter of all businesses reported that employment had decreased.

On the other hand, Ventura County business leaders showed optimism about the future, with 58 percent predicting that sales would increase in the last six months of 1991. A quarter of business leaders predicted that employment needs would also increase in the second half.

Ball said that sectors of real estate, energy and agriculture were especially hard hit by the recession.

According to statistics provided by the state Economic Development Department, Ventura lost 700 government jobs, 400 retail jobs, 1,200 service sector jobs and 3,300 agriculture jobs between August 1990 and August 1991.

Packing houses didn't employ as many workers this year because of the freeze and the drought, said Rex Laird, executive director of the Ventura County Farm Bureau. Lemon trees and avocado trees, the county's No. 1 and No. 6 crops, respectively, were hit hard by the freeze last December, he said.

Farmers have also been suffering because of an expensive and unreliable water supply, Laird said. Farm workers are not the only ones in Ventura with problems. Large employers and government agencies have cut jobs, too.

In July, Patagonia, Inc., a Ventura-based outdoor clothing company, laid off about 100 of its 600 employees. The layoffs were due to a shortfall in projected revenues for the $120 million company, according to company officials.

The company had projected a 51 percent sales growth in the fourth quarter of 1990 and the first quarter of 1991, but only experienced a 31 percent increase. Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard said: "It's clear to us that we hit the ceiling in our industry. To try and grow beyond the industry would change the nature of our business."

Patagonia spokesman Kevin Sweeney said although the company has no plans to leave Ventura, officials are considering building a warehouse in Missoula, Mont. "That would move part of the company," he said.

At Northrop's Newbury Park plant, only 134 of the plants' former workforce of 1,800 remain since the aerospace giant announced last year that it would be closing the plant, said Michael Greywitt, company spokesman. The 28-year-old facility, which produced missiles and unmanned vehicles, will be completely vacated and closed by the end of this year, he noted.

Since last year, 1,000 employees have been transferred to Northrop facilities in Hawthorne and Pico Rivera, he said. About 394 employees have been laid off, 100 have left the company and 250 have applied and won jobs in other divisions, Greywitt said.

Northrop is currently assessing groundwater contamination under the Newbury Park site, Greywitt added. Some contamination may have been caused by manufacturing on-site and some from off-site sources, he said.

The cities of Ventura and Oxnard and the County of Ventura have all suffered from lower-than-projected sales tax revenue this year and have all eliminated positions, city and county officials said. Property tax revenues were also down, government officials reported.

Assessed values of land in the county increased only 7 percent last year, after land values increased by 11 to 12 percent the year before, said Bert Bigler, budget manager for the county. He blamed the slowed growth on both lower home prices and fewer home sales.

The number of business travelers and tourists traveling through Oxnard Airport was down this year from last year, the first decline after years of booming growth at the airport, said Austin Clien, administrative officer for the Ventura County Department of Airports. The airport had a direct and indirect economic impact of $20.8 million in 1990.

Boardings for January through July were at 24,504, down from 26,909 a year earlier, Clien said. Until this year, the airport experienced tremendous growth, with 46,000 passengers in 1990, up from 27,000 in 1989 and 15,000 passengers in 1988, Clien said.

Clien attributed this year's decline to one of the airport's two commercial passenger carriers, United Express, cutting back service to California cities.

The Oxnard Airport suffers from having too short a runway and is often shut by fog, since it is near the ocean, Clien said. However, talk of building another airport in Ventura County, a hot topic in years past, is dormant at the moment, he said. Although the airport issue is dead for now, the topic of a much-needed four-year university is not, as the California State University Board of Trustees finally picked a site for a college after years of study and controversy. The trustees voted last month to begin negotiations with the owners of a 320-acre site in the unincorporated area of the county between the cities of Oxnard and Camarillo.

The first phase of the project is scheduled to open in the late 1990s to serve an estimated 2,000 college juniors and seniors, expected to transfer from the county's already established two-year colleges, said Colleen Bentley-Adler, Cal State University spokeswoman. The final phase is expected to be completed between the years 2010 and 2020 and serve 15,000 students, she added.