Rejection Urged for Plan Tied to Road Extension : Growth: The deal would bring Thousand Oaks Blvd. to a park’s border.

Los Angeles County planners are recommending rejection of a controversial development proposal linked to the extension of Thousand Oaks Boulevard to the edge of a national park.

The county’s Regional Planning Commission is scheduled today to hold its first public hearing on the proposal, known as Malibu Terrace.

The project, which would be built on 494 vacant acres west of Las Virgenes Road in Calabasas, would include 1,700 apartments, 116 houses and 60,000 square feet of commercial space. County land-use plans now allow for only 112 homes on the land, which the county has deemed an ecologically significant area.

As a condition of the project’s approval, the county Department of Public Works has suggested that the developer be required to build a one-mile extension of Thousand Oaks Boulevard to the eastern edge of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. Area environmentalists have opposed the proposal.

The recommendation released Tuesday by the Regional Planning Department was contained in one word: “denial.”

The staff report did not elaborate. But, planner Don Culbertson said, the request for a housing density 16 times above the county plan appeared to be unjustified.

Public works officials have maintained that the extension of Thousand Oaks Boulevard is needed and should be required if the project is approved.

A public works spokeswoman said Tuesday that the department simply wants the road built and has expressed no preference about how many dwelling units should be allowed in Malibu Terrace.

But an environmental impact report commissioned by the developer, Las Virgenes Properties of Sunnyvale, linked the number of units in the proposal to the cost of building the extension called for by the Public Works Department.

Culbertson noted that one reason he does not favor the project is that it alone would generate about half the traffic capacity of the proposed road extension.

Project opponents Mary Lou Thornton, president of the Las Virgenes Homeowners Federation, and Fran Pavley, an Agoura Hills councilwoman, said they were pleased with Culbertson’s recommendation. But, they said, they expect the controversy to continue until the final decision is made by the county supervisors.