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Business Profile: Embarc is first cannabis dispensary to open in Ventura

Ventura Mayor Joe Schroeder and Mike Marostica, local embarc owner.

After a lengthy, multi-year review process, embarc was the first of the selected operators to open their doors and begin serving the Ventura community, ushering in a new era of access to local cannabis dispensaries in the city.

Embarc is a well-respected dispensary operator, with Ventura marking its ninth store opening in a little more than three years in the Golden State. Embarc is known for its friendly staff, affordable price points, and wide variety of products to meet diverse needs.

Embarc’s Ventura operations will generate 6% of gross receipts as a local cannabis tax to the City for municipal priorities. In addition, embarc has allocated 1% of gross receipts for the lifetime of the business to local non-profit and community priorities such as youth education to ensure the business remains a community partner and good neighbor.

“Our team spent years engaged in a listening tour to understand the perspectives and priorities of community members from throughout the region,” explains Lauren Carpenter, embarc’s Chief Executive Officer. “I am so proud of our team for all of their dedication which has culminated in a retail store that I know the community can be proud of, too.”

Embarc hosted a grand opening which was met with excitement from neighbors throughout midtown and from residents living in Ventura and beyond. As midtown continues to see significant investment in small, local businesses including hair salons, bookstores, coffee shops, yoga studios and more, embarc is a welcome addition to this corridor.

The Ventura location is embarc’s first Southern California store and will serve as the jumping off point and flagship for the company’s Southern California expansion. The space has been designed to reflect the free spirit and energy of Ventura, with beautiful exposed brick, bright light and vintage surfboards from local shops.

1890 East Main Street

Daily 9am-9pm

Ventura Art and Street Painting Festival

Photos by Patricia Schallert

On September 9 &10, the Ventura Harbor became alive with chalk as 20 chalk artists applied their skills to the concrete walkway. All as part of the Ventura Art and Street Painting Festival. Besides the chalk art there were booths that offered pottery and other works of art. Proceeds from the annual event go to Food Share.

 

 

CAPS/ECTV Crew produces safety video for schools

CAPS is holding an open house.

Meet the new CAPS/ECTV Crew – the talented high school students at El Camino in the media education program at CAPS. Recently the ECTV team worked with Ventura Police school resource officers (SROs) to produce a new school preparedness instructional video for teachers and students in the Ventura Unified School District.

The ECTV program was created by CAPS in partnership with the VUSD. The career education program provides high school students with hands-on training in all aspects of media production including writing, directing, producing, recording, and editing their own award-winning programs.

KPPQ’s DJ of the month is Kathleen Good, host of “In the Women’s Room”. She has been a member of CAPS for fifteen years which constitutes nearly her entire retirement. For eight years she produced environmental videos for CAPS-TV.

When CAPS Media invested in a local community radio station—it was a no-brainer for Kathleen to propose a show. The format came together almost instantly because she had been working with women’s issues as well as environmental issues, and had honed skills such as preparation, timing, sequencing, interviewing skills, as well as storytelling.

Kathleen says” “In the Women’s Room” is your place for enlightening discussions with experts about our history, health, psychology, politics, workplace, art, child-rearing, literature, social and economic issues, environment, and much, much more. Every woman knows what the issues are—we live them every day!” Tune in Monday and Wednesday at 8a, Tuesday and Thursday at 2pm and Saturday at 1pm on KPPQ at 104.1fm or streaming on myTuner.

Join us for a special CAPS Open House on Thursday, October 5th from 4-p.m. to 8pm at the CAPS Media Center. Everyone is invited to drop by, meet the CAPS crew, tour the facility, and enjoy brief, hands-on, informative demonstrations on all aspects of media production including videography, studio, radio and podcast production, scripting and storytelling, live streaming, video editing and much more.

CAPS is Ventura’s public access media center, managing Channel 6 (public) and Channel 15 (government and education), plus KPPQ radio at 104.1fm and video streaming. CAPS crew members provide expertise and service to the City of Ventura by covering City Council and other meetings at City Hall, as well as producing informational public service videos and more.

At the CAPS Media Center, the team offers one-on-one training to the public in all aspects of media production helping CAPS Members to produce their own projects. In addition, CAPS has all the tools Members need to produce their stories including cameras, tripods, sound gear, editing computers and more.

Anyone who lives, works, or attends school in Ventura is welcome to become a CAPS Member and take advantage of the training and resources CAPS has to offer. Currently CAPS Members include teenagers, young and mid-career professionals, educators, storytellers, retirees, and everyone in between. In addition, CAPS Members also include local community councils, and nonprofit, faith-based and other community service organizations throughout Ventura.

The CAPS Media Center is located a 65 Day Road, between Loma Vista and Telegraph, on the east side of Ventura College directly across from Foothill High School.

Join us for the CAPS Open House on Thursday, October 5th. Discover a world of limitless creative possibilities at CAPS. We know you’ll be surprised and enjoy the people you’ll meet and what you’ll find inside the CAPS Media Center.

River Haven Program closure

Turning Point Foundation has managed this unique transitional housing program for 17+ years.

The City of Ventura and Turning Point Foundation have decided to sunset the River Haven Transitional Housing Program on Oct 1, 2023 due to challenging weather conditions (recent high winds/heavy rains) and increasing safety/security issues with nearby encampments. This decision, while not an easy one, was made in the best interest of our residents’ wellbeing.

Turning Point Foundation is grateful to have managed this unique transitional housing program for 17+ years bridging the gap between unsheltered and permanent housing for hundreds of residents experiencing homelessness. While unfortunate circumstances

(mentioned above) have become the root cause of River Haven’s closure, Turning Point is unwavering in its commitment to providing quality housing, mental health, and wellness services to this vulnerable population in the City of Ventura and countywide through our variety of other program locations.

Turning Point Case Managers will continue to support and work one-on one with current members during the sunset of this location. Our priority is to transition current residents in finding optimal permanent or alternative sheltered housing programs within Turning Point’s internal and external networks.

For questions or concerns, we welcome you to contact us at [email protected]. To learn more about the programs and services we offer please visit turningpointfoundation.org.

Sincerely,
Turning Point Foundation

 

 

 

Love VC, Inc. Presents Love Ventura – A City Wide Day or Service

Love VC, Inc. and Title Sponsor Greg Abrams of American Pacific Mortgage proudly presents the second annual “Love Ventura – Day of Service”.

The Love VC, Inc 501c3 kicked off this annual day of service in

October of 2022 and found that it was a great success, as measured by their goals. With the goal of 10 projects serving a variety of non-profits and organizations spread across the city of Ventura, and aiming for 100 volunteers, the non-profit was pleased to host 188 volunteers, ranging in ages from 1 to 80 years old.

The 2023 day of service kicks off October 7th and has grown since last year’s inaugural event, currently hosting 16 projects and the goal of 300 volunteers. The event starts off with a morning rally at Plaza Park, in downtown Ventura. DJ Jon D, of Nautical Thrust, will be energizing the crowd with music, while volunteers get checked in or signed up, collect their free Love Ventura t-shirt, grab some breakfast, and enjoy vendors and a few activities to get excited and motivated for their day. We encourage all participants to join the rally. This is an exciting way to see the magnitude of volunteerism provided to show our city some love; all in one day!

The day is focused on connecting, giving and serving with collaboration at the core. The city of Ventura has a wide array of non-profits, individuals and organizations that provide services to the community, that it only makes sense to highlight, promote and partner with them! Volunteers can find all opportunities at www.loveventura.org where they can see descriptions and details for each project and register their spot for the day.

Love VC, Inc. is proud to bring Love Ventura to the city as an annual day of service, providing projects that range in both difficulty and function, making it possible for all ages, abilities and desires to participate – from manual labor and beautification projects, to painting and cleaning, and encouragement projects that work directly with people.

Additional details include:

Love Ventura is held on October 7, 2023
Morning Rally at Plaza Park (Thompson Blvd/Fir St) from 8:00-9:45am
Service Projects begin at 10am and end at 1pm
Volunteers are asked to pre-register for their desired project at www.loveventura.org
To learn more about event host Love VC, Inc. – visit www.lovevc.net
Love VC, Inc. has the sole focus of inspiring our community to love each other through connecting, giving and serving.

 

Vol. 16, No. 26 – Sept 20 – Oct 3, 2023 – Mailbox

Greetings, Sheldon:

I received the issue of the Ventura Breeze, including the piece on San Buenaventura State Beach today! I was so excited that you included two copies! Thank you so much for including this in your local paper and sending the copies to me. This truly made my day….week…..month!

Best to you,

Amannda DeBoef Office of Experiential Learning
UMKC School of Pharmacy

Breeze:

We are appalled by the proposed high-density housing on Johnson Drive from Northbank to Capri.  The GPAC’s to change the zoning along the Johnson corridor from “Commercial” to “Mixed Use 3 and 4 Stories” would allow additional apartments to be built above businesses all along Johnson.  Developers may also ask for an increased height variance by applying for the state’s “Developer Density Bonus” for building out “underutilized” commercial space. 

Johnson Drive is highly sensitive to this density change because it is one of the main arteries to the 101 freeway, government center and the existing communities on the east end. There does not seem to be any plan to proactively develop the infrastructure to support the future impact to traffic on Johnson Drive and the neighboring streets. Beyond Bristol Road, Johnson Drive is only a 2 lane road that does not have the capacity to be expanded to support the amount of traffic the proposed housing will create as there are houses on both sides of the street. 

The new 302 unit Northbank apartments going in across from Motel 6 will have no additional infrastructure improvements to handle the expected 2,700 extra daily trips beyond a new traffic light on Johnson at Motel 6. It is naive to think all these residents will ride a bike or take the bus. There is no apparent prioritization among the city legislators to relieve the congestion all this higher density will bring. The existing residents will have to bear the burden of short-sighted planning on the impact to traffic on Johnson and the neighboring streets.  We will sit in traffic more and we will be expected to conserve our water and other resources even more than we do now.  We are destroying Ventura’s quality of life for all residents.

Chris and Terrie Longo

Breeze:

Cannabis Business Permits

The store I visited last week was very clean and employed a good level of security to include personal governmental identification to pass through a locked wall and door barrier; and including security guards outdoors at the entrance. I hope they do very well because that will fill the cities coffers very quickly.

The above leads directly to my next observation. City street maintenance. I have to agree with Diana White and her comments about our street disrepair. Didn’t Ventura receive a large chunk of funding for our streets a year ago?

Where did all the money go?
Down the storm drains for storm water recovery?

Diana mentioned Spinnaker, the road to our “jewel”, The Ventura Harbor, but this is not the only road in Ventura that is an embarrassment to drive on, try Ralston and many of the roads around Montalvo housing area.

Maybe with all the pot shops opening in Ventura the cities coffers can afford to contract with a road construction company like Granite Construction to repair or replace our crumbling roads.

I realize it is hard for a city to manage its roads and highways when every other month some utility must destroy a once good road to upgrade a wire or pipeline. Could not the city manage this type of work with an announcement to all the utilities and services that use the city rights of ways to bury their products an advance notice of pending construction on specific roads and highways? Then maybe they all could upgrade at the same time.

Michael Gordon

She does not understand the concept of Roman numerals.
She thought we just fought World War Eleven.
~ Joan Rivers

Wedding held at Olivas Adobe

On September 12, Megan Senate was united in matrimony with Webster Nygard at the beautiful Olivas Adobe. Maid of Honor was Jasmyn Christenson and best man was Veck Nygard. Parents of the bride and groom were in attendance at the garden wedding and reception at the historic landmark where the ceremony was held.  

Vol. 16, No. 26 – Sept 20 – Oct 3, 2023 – Forever Homes Wanted

Hi: I’m Louie, a very playful 8 month old Terrier X rescued from a shelter when my time was almost up. I was adopted but proved to be too much for the family who adopted me.

I’m good with other dogs and cats too. I’m full of puppy energy and would benefit from another dog in the home to play with and an active family that is going to be able to give me the attention I need.

I’m friendly, love going for walks and playing fetch. I need work on my chewing and digging, but I probably do that out of boredom when I’m left alone for way too long. I was too much for the smaller children in the home, so I’d do best in a home with older bigger children.

If you’re ready and able to give me a lifetime of love and wonderful memories, please fill out an application to meet me. Canine Adoption and Rescue League C.A.R.L. https://carldogs.org/
CARL Adoption Center-call 644-7387 for more information.

Hi: I’m Rambo a 2 Years, 2 Months Neutered Male German Shepherd Dog Mix. I would make a great companion for you.

City Found: Port Hueneme
Shelter: VCAS Camarillo Animal Shelter
Kennel: 107
Animal ID: A829057