By ERIK DERR Contributing Reporter The first commercial office condominium park in Palmdale is planned as the Venture Commerce Center, a 69,000-square-foot development in the heart of the city’s business sector the Trade & Commerce Center area is under construction. When completed in early 2007, the project will offer 35 stand-alone office units, divided between five separate building structures. Each unit will come with private front and back entrances and a private parking area, as well as private kitchen and rest room areas and optional warehouse-style doors. Units will range in size between 1,102 and 32,000 square feet. Additional mixed-use and flex office options will be available. Prices for the Palmdale offices are expected to start at $319,000. “People want to control their own destinies,” explained Robert Eves, founder and president of Marin County-based Venture Corporation, developer of the Commerce Center. “A lot of business owners want to own their own property and say bye-bye to their landlords.” The Palmdale property, located on Commerce Avenue between Trade Center Drive and 5th Street West, officially marked the start of construction Oct. 18 with a catered “wall-raising” party where those in attendance had the chance to see giant cranes hoist the first of the complex’s giant concrete-slab walls. Eves sees a universe of new prospects in market statistics from the Small Business Administration, which indicate small businesses with 20 employees or less account for a whopping 79.3 percent of all American companies. “When you compare the costs of ownership to the costs of renting property .at today’s interest rates, it’s cheaper to own,” said Eves. That logic, he continued, is fueling the growing national demand for smaller commercial spaces like those offered by Venture. Venture Corporation was established in 1976 and is perhaps best known for developing Morgan Hill Ranch, the largest business park in Northern California’s Silicon Valley. Eves and Venture have since established scores of Venture Commercial Centers throughout Northern and Southern California, Nevada and Washington state. The company currently has about 30 such parks in development, with an estimated value of over $300 million. Dennis Marciniak, vice-president of GVA DAUM, which brokered Venture’s $1.7 million purchase of the 5.4-acre Palmdale site and will also handle the sale of individual units there, is equally enthusiastic In Lancaster, where Venture Corporation is starting development of another commercial center site, GVA DAUM brokered a $17 million deal for a 61,000-square-foot mixed-use commercial complex developed by McGarrey Development Company. Opened in June, the business park has already sold half of its 21 industrial condos. Eves has tried to sweeten the purchase of the Palmdale condos more by offering 100 percent financing, including a deferred down-payment paid off in thirds after the first, second and third years of ownership. “It just makes intrinsic sense you benefit, not your landlord,” said Eves. “The day will come when we will overhaul the office property market,”