City Hall May Be Relocated to Keep Away Strangers : Hidden Hills: The new facility would be built just outside the gated community in an effort to preserve tranquillity and control crime.

Hidden Hills residents pride themselves on keeping their hills hidden.

Gates surround the exclusive west San Fernando Valley community in an effort to keep all but residents and invited guests out.

But the gates must yield to anyone who says he has business at City Hall deep within the community’s sealed borders, a fact that has bothered some residents for years.

Once inside, they complain, these intruders sometimes stop off to play a game of tennis on the city’s courts, meander aimlessly and gawk at the pastoral splendor of opulent homes or, worst of all, burglarize homes.

So plans are afoot to move the city offices to a new building outside the town gates, forever closing Hidden Hills to uninvited outsiders.

“This way you don’t have people continually coming within the city, people who I don’t believe need to come within the city,” former City Councilman Warren McCament said. “Anybody can get into Hidden Hills. It can be anybody who wants to do anything legal or illegal in the city.”

Those with matters to take care of at the new city hall “can do all their business without interfering with the tranquillity and security of the city,” said Basil Behrman, the architect who designed the two-story Colonial-style building proposed for the western end of Burbank Boulevard.

But contractors and developers, among the most frequent visitors to City Hall, presumably still would be welcomed inside the gates because all building plans must be approved by the Hidden Hills Community Assn., which is housed in the current City Hall and will continue to occupy it after city staff moves out, City Administrator Lyall Thompson said.

City officials say the new city hall is needed to provide more space for city records and personnel, and to give the association more room for community activities.

But some residents say they do not believe that explanation, calling the fear of intruders “sort of a bogyman” to homeowners, many of whom moved to the city to escape the urban ills on the other side of the fence.

In any case, city coffers do not have enough money for the project, even with considerable financial help from the community association, which maintains the city’s gates, roads and equestrian trails.

“I think it will be a while until something happens, unless someone comes into a big windfall,” Councilman Howard Klein said.

City officials declined to discuss how much the project is expected to cost.

Behrman’s plans call for a 2,322-square-foot building to be added onto an existing storage shed. The building, which would include a meeting room, offices and storage space, would be decorated with cupolas and blend in with the city’s countrified atmosphere.