Port District Submits Debt Plan to Court

The Ventura Port District has submitted a debt-adjustment plan to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Santa Barbara, but its creditors are unlikely to find the terms satisfactory, according to Irving Sulmeyer, an attorney for the district.

“My understanding is that the plan is not acceptable to Ventura Group Ventures,” said Sulmeyer of the Los Angeles law firm Sulmeyer, Kupetz, Baumann and Rothman.

Sulmeyer said the debt proposal included the business plan discussed at a joint port district-City Council meeting Jan. 15 with some slight modifications.

That plan recommends that the port district restructure a loan, increase rents at Harbor Village and develop two vacant parcels to provide additional lease income.

More controversial is a recommendation that the district use $2 million from a $3-million dredging fund to provide the cash necessary to make an initial payment to Ventura Group Ventures, its main creditor.

John R. Johnson of Heily and Blase, which represents Ventura Group Ventures, said he had no comment.

But in a Jan. 16 letter to Sulmeyer, Dewitt F. Blase said the business plan was completely unsatisfactory, in part because the firm says the $2-million initial payment is too small.

The district, which filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy Aug. 20, 1993, owes $4 million to the California Department of Boating and Waterways and $18 million to other creditors.

Its single largest creditor, Ventura Group Ventures, won a $15.7-million court judgment in 1991 for a breach-of-contract case that it won because the district pulled out of a development project.

The district has not paid any of its loans since.

Sulmeyer said the court will probably set a date at the end of March to consider the plan.