3 Cities Will Join Bidding for Museum : Culture: Southwest officials are considering Camarillo, Oxnard, Ventura or Thousand Oaks for their new home.

Seeking to capitalize on the region’s heritage, at least three Ventura County cities plan to issue invitations to the renowned Southwest Museum, which is seeking a new home for its world-class collection of Indian artifacts.

Camarillo, Oxnard and Thousand Oaks officials said Wednesday they would like to offer the museum the opportunity to build a new facility or restore an existing building within their cities.

“It sounds like a first-class organization, and it would be an asset to Oxnard that we’d certainly be interested in going after,” said Steve Kinney, the city’s director of economic development.

But for now, Thousand Oaks appears to have pushed ahead in the battle for the museum, as officials there are bent on turning their city into a premiere cultural center.

And museum officials indicated on Wednesday that Thousand Oaks could be a worthy choice to replace Southwest’s cramped Highland Park headquarters--especially if a plot next to the $64-million Civic Arts Plaza were available.

“My initial reaction is certainly to encourage a site such as that,” said Michael Heumann, vice president of the museum’s board of trustees. “It has a couple of things that fit what we’re looking for,” including visibility from a major freeway and proximity to other tourist attractions.

The museum has solicited bids from 140 cities in Southern California, including Thousand Oaks, Camarillo, Oxnard and Ventura, chosen because of their easy access off the well-traveled Ventura Freeway, Heumann said.

Although the museum’s directors have not unequivocally decided to move, they feel the institution has long since outgrown its home in a historic, Spanish-style landmark overlooking the Pasadena Freeway.

The Southwest Museum has been based in Highland Park since 1914, but curators say they need more space to take proper care of the collection and fulfill the museum’s educational, outreach and conservation goals.

Because of the museum’s prestige--not to mention its steady stream of visitors--hundreds of local officials are likely to promote their cities as possible homes for a new facility, which would occupy about 100,000 square feet on 7.5 acres of land.

Heumann expects scores of responses by Aug. 16, the deadline for cities to submit a brief description of possible sites.

Indeed, the museum has already received unsolicited invitations from a half-dozen cities eager to play host--including some generous offers from municipalities willing to donate land and infrastructure.

In Ventura County, with its strong Indian heritage, officials are especially excited.

“The museum would have a nice draw here, because we do have an Indian culture here, we have burial grounds here, and the Chumash are very prominent in our community,” Thousand Oaks Councilman Frank Schillo said.

The museum will be invited to inspect two parcels in Thousand Oaks: the 11.5 acres of city-owned land next to the Civic Arts Plaza and the former City Hall at 401 W. Hillcrest.

In Camarillo, Planning Director Matthew Boden said he feared his city could not match the draw of Thousand Oaks’ performing arts center. Furthermore, he said, his rival across the Conejo Grade might be able to offer the Southwest Museum a better financial package.

But Mayor Judy Lazar insisted she would not lavish freebies on the museum to lure it to Thousand Oaks.

“Off the top of my head, I’m very excited about having a museum there, but it needs to be something that won’t be a burden to the city,” Lazar said. “We really need to evaluate what the desires of the community are.”

With its renowned collection of native crafts, old manuscripts and historical photographs, the Southwest Museum attracts 300,000 visitors a year and has earned a reputation as one of the nation’s foremost repositories of American Indian art and archeology.

But it has been the focus of controversy. Earlier this year, a former director of the museum, Patrick Houlihan, was convicted on five counts of embezzlement and two counts of grand theft for stealing about 20 items from the collection and secretly trading or selling them. One piece, a 19th-Century Navajo poncho, brought Houlihan $70,000 in personal gain.

Houlihan, who headed the museum from 1981 to 1987, was the most prominent U.S. museum official ever convicted of stealing from his own institution.

With the trial over--and Houlihan sentenced to a short jail term, a hefty fine and 1,000 hours of community service--the museum has begun focusing on another crisis, the lack of space in its overcrowded facility.

After initial responses from cities interested in hosting the Southwest Museum are in, the board of directors will cull the best prospects and request more detailed proposals this fall.

Both local leaders and Southwest officials see the museum as a possible match for Thousand Oaks’ Civic Arts Plaza, now under construction at the site of the former Jungleland wild animal park.

“We want it to be a people place, a center of the city, a place people are drawn to,” said Thomas Mitze, executive director of the cultural center, which includes an 1,800-seat auditorium and 400-seat theater.

Ambitious programming goals call for the state-of-the-art facility to draw patrons from throughout Ventura County and the San Fernando Valley with a mix of classical and modern entertainment.

Together with a museum, the performance hall could transform Thousand Oaks from a bedroom community to a regional cultural center.

“There is a synergistic effect between groups of attractions located near each other, even though they may be very different in nature,” the museum’s Heumann said. “People get used to thinking of those places as destinations, and they may go one time to a museum, another to a zoo and another to an entertainment.”