EL TORO : Decision on Video Dispenser Delayed

You’ve heard of automatic bank teller machines that spit out $20 bills, and mini-post offices where a credit card or the right change will get you stamps without any dealings with a human.

Now comes Videomatic.

If approved by the county Planning Commission, a Videomatic kiosk at a shopping center in El Toro will issue videotapes for rent with just a credit card and a touch of a few buttons.

The idea is such a relatively new one--another Videomatic kiosk is scheduled to open in June in Orange--that county planning commissioners Monday didn’t know if zoning regulations even allow such a contraption. So they put off any decision on an application to build an 18-by-27-foot automatic videotape dispenser until April 8.

Residents near the shopping center at El Toro Road and Rockfield Boulevard complained to the commission that the Videomatic, which would be located in the middle of the shopping center parking lot, would compound traffic problems at what they say is already one of the most congested intersections in the county.

The Ontario-based Video Kiosk Corp. already has eight such dispensers throughout the country, including one in Diamond Bar and one in El Cajon, said project manager Rudy Figueroa. A Costa Mesa location recently closed down.

At the one proposed for El Toro, customers would choose from 1,300 tapes, though some of them would be duplicates, Figueroa said.

The county’s planning staff recommended approval of the company’s application, telling commissioners that more such automatic businesses are on the way. A flower company has already notified the county that it intends to seek a permit for an automatic flower-dispensing machine, officials said.

Planning Commissioner Roger Slates likened the videotape dispenser to the self-serve gas station, which was a new concept when he served on the Huntington Beach Planning Commission years ago.

“I voted against them,” Slates said. “ ‘Why, good Lord,’ we said, ‘people will drive off with their pumps still attached to their cars. Women won’t know how to operate them.’ But you change your ways. This is also new.”