By DeWitt Smith
Ventana Magazine

The bold "W" is displayed prominently throughout Watermark, along with a wealth of exquisite details that put the restaurant in a class of its own. Photos by Michael Robinson Chavez.

If the old adage is true, good things are coming to Ventura County diners this month. In fact, they’re coming to anyone who gets off the freeway and visits Downtown Ventura looking for a restaurant with character and style. After cooking for three long years, Watermark—Mark Hartley’s labor of love at the corner of Main and Chestnut—is finally opening. And if it lives up to expectations, the place looks to put Ventura on the map in a big way.

Hartley and his partner Jim Rice have put this show together with the vigor of a couple of Broadway producers. After going through the planning, permitting, building, and interior design process—enough to test anybody’s stamina—there was the question of food. Which turned to be one of the easier aspects in the development of Watermark. Considering Ventura County’s agricultural bounty and seaside location, the answer was clear: local, local, local.

A labor of love that's taken owner Mark Hartley years to complete, Watermark is a poetic fusion of old and new. The original bank vault behind Hartley will now protect top-shelf wines and spirits.

This month, opening night is finally at hand, and Hartley and Rice will lift the curtains to reveal a culinary cast, a fabulous set design, lights of every style and wattage—and, of course, a mouth-watering seasonal menu and superb wine list. They have outdone themselves to elevate the sensory wow factor, from smell and taste to sight, sound, and feel. If sensual is what you like, Watermark is your kind of place. But this is elevated—cool and refined sensual, dare we say, “tasteful.”

Even before entering, the outside of the historic Groene Building that houses Watermark will catch your eye. Built in 1928 as the Ventura Guaranty and Loan bank, the Spanish Colonial Revival and Art Deco structure has an external façade of glazed tiles and decorative brickwork. Inside, one gets a sense of the grandeur of the original architecture. Starting with large squares of copper-colored tiles on the floor, your eye follows the lines of the African mahogany used for the bar and paneling that meld up into the ornate wrought-iron balcony ringing the mezzanine. Above that is the intricate hand-painted molding of the ceiling, from which hangs a large wrought-iron chandelier. Back down at eye level are frescoes by the well-known California muralist Norman Kennedy depicting early life at the Ventura Mission.

“I call this a fusion of Old World and contemporary,” says Hartley, who bought the building four years ago. As he toured me around the third floor, a cadre of carpenters worked like an ant colony, finishing up the custom woodwork of the bar, the tables, and the moldings. Fine wood dust and activity, everywhere, it was like being backstage watching the stage hands getting ready for opening night.

“We’ve had months and months of retrofitting,” says Hartley, who at 57 is a cool looking guy with an equally cool demeanor. He points out all the elements that tie the marine theme together on this floor, which was built atop the existing two-story bank building. While the first two floors are spacious with wood and rich dark hues, up here is spacious with light. Starting with the terrace with a retractable awning, the expanse of the room goes westward over the rooftops, to views of the grand Pacific. In the middle of the room is an oval bar, which has cobalt blue panels of glass illuminated from behind. There’s a water wall, a fireplace… even a hanging aquarium with jellyfish. Throughout the building are fabulous tiles, from the façade to the bathrooms to the third floor. There are tiles with mother-of-pearl centers and tiles with splashes of aquatic and copper tones and mirrored blue tiles and gray tiles with abalone mother-of-pearl.

The partner in this venture is Jim Rice, a restaurant man who, a couple years ago, was looking for a site in Ventura. Hartley owned the building he liked, and that was, as they say, the beginning of a beautiful friendship. If Watermark is a metaphor for their partnership, it’s clear that each man brings a lot to the table in terms of experience, instinct, and what seems to be an even mix of brain and brawn.

“We met as a prospective landlord-tenant,” says Rice, 52, who gave me the grand tour of the first two floors. Originally a contractor, Rice is the jeans-wearing guy, the teddy bear with the white goatee who’s been busy overseeing the construction of it all.

“The architect is Mark Whitman out of Ojai, the general contractor is Peter Livingston out of Ventura, and the designer is Kathleen Coady from Tower Design in Ojai and San Francisco,” Rice explains while showing me the glass elevator and larger-than-life photos of Ventura that will line the elevator shaft.

The food, he tells me, will also have a local theme. “We have some of the greatest farming country around,” he says, “and we’ve contacted some of the well-known farmers to get fresh vegetables and fruit every day, for every season. Same with the fish. And we will also be the best steakhouse in the area. What’s exciting is to create signature dishes that make people talk.”

Rice excuses himself while he takes a call on his cell phone, and his daughter, Shanon, 32, who’s been walking along with us, is busy taking notes and managing a myriad details. Shanon, who has 15 years in the restaurant business, is the general manager of Watermark, and the pressure is on to get everything finished for the grand opening.

Rice reappears in a minute and picks up where he left off: “We interviewed several hundred people for wait staff and managers. We had 400 applicants, and it was all word of mouth.”

He points out where the wine will be stored, which is pretty much everywhere; the first floor is almost entirely lined with wine cabinets. “We’ll have all the big, high-end wines, but the list will not be complete without a supply of 30 to 90 dollar bottles of California wines,” he explains. In a touch of poetry and wedding the past and present, the old bank vault is where the rare wines and spirits will be stored. There’s good reason to keep them safe; some are worth their weight in gold. “If you’re ordering something from the vault, it should probably be for your birthday,” says Rice laughingly.

The major player in the restaurant’s setting is Kathleen McMullen-Coady, the owner of Tower Design in Ojai. “I’ve been working on this project for a year and a half; I came in when it was studded,” says Coady, who moved to Ojai from San Francisco two years ago. “One of my degrees is in art history, and I’ve worked on historic buildings before. We took the existing woodwork, ceiling design, the railing, and we used that as inspiration for the structure for the design of the downstairs. We really wanted to give a feel of 1929, when people took influences from both Deco and Spanish Revival architecture. It was a fusion.”

The third floor, on the other hand, is thoroughly modern, accessed by a slick elevator that takes guests through the years into a different world. “We wanted to have wave forms that people could experience,” she says. “The tile around the fireplace is called fire and ice. It’s made by Ann Saks, a high-end tile designer. The colors of the fabrics will be blue, everything from medium blue to gray blue to cobalt blue to slate blue. When you look at the ocean, you see a range of blue. When you look at the sky, there’s a whole other range of blue. Essentially, we tried to bring the fresh air and the sea together upstairs.”

After working on Watermark for three years, Hartley is understandably enthusiastic. The end is finally in sight.

“The wow factor,” he says, “is in the detail. We’ve preserved the historic integrity of the building and handled the detail from art work to tiles to African mahogany…We’ve spent an enormous amount of energy to create an amazingly detailed restaurant.”

On July 26, Watermark will be the site of a benefit party before the red-carpet premiere of Kevin Costner’s new film, Swing Vote. A major movie premiere—not in Hollywood or New York, but right here in Downtown Ventura. Yes, Hollywood is coming to Ventura, and the local dining scene is poised to take its biggest leap yet.

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