Photo by Joe Lumaya, Special to the Star

Children from the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Oxnard and Port Hueneme look at one of the new interactive displays at Channel Islands Boating Center in Oxnard. The long-delayed boating center opened its doors to the public Wednesday.

The doors of Channel Islands Boating Center opened to the public for the first time Wednesday about 10 years later than originally planned.

The county of Ventura built the 15,000-square-foot, $7 million center at the county-owned Channel Islands Harbor in Oxnard, using a mix of state, federal, county and private funding. Wednesdays ceremony marked both a public unveiling and the turning over of control from the county to CSU Channel Islands, which will operate the center on a $1-a-year lease from the county.

Though the center is finished, and the doors were open Wednesday, it wont actually be open for business until May. It will be home to the universitys sailing team and will also host marine studies classes for students and the community, activities like kayaking and paddle boarding, and sailing lessons for children from the area.

A group of children from the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Oxnard and Port Hueneme were the first people through the doors. The clubs will work with CSUCI to provide free classes to kids from low-income families.

Photo by Joe Lumaya, Special to the Star

Maribel Tejeda (right) and Nehemiah Chatman (far right) watch Chumash ceremonial elder Mati Waiya bless the new Channel Islands Boating Center in Oxnard on Wednesday.

You are engaging a community of youth with the ocean, not by telling them they need to care about the ocean, but by giving them the experience of going out on the ocean, said Dan Basta, the director of the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries. Thats how I learned about the sea myself: Not from a textbook, but because I wanted to go fishing.

Bastas office is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations National Ocean Service, which helped pay for the boating center. The state of California picked up a little more than half of the $7 million tab. The county ended up spending about $1 million, Harbor Director Lyn Krieger said, and private donors and the federal government paid the rest.

See the original post here:

Much-delayed Channel Islands Boating Center opens in Oxnard