Agoura Hills Movie-Goers Getting the Red Carpet Treatment

Going to the movies in Agoura Hills just got a little more Hollywood.

Or a little more Westside, some would say.

Patrons of the Mann Theaters near Kanan Road now can have their cars parked by red-coated, bow-tied valets.

The valets do not point up any dramatic sociological changes on the fringe of the metropolis, but instead are a city-imposed solution to a crowded parking lot, where finding a space on weekends is akin to hunting down the lost Ark of the Covenant.

But it’s still the first valet parking service in the semi-rural community, which--its residents are proud to say--is a long way from the Westside, partner. It’s the kind of place where an annual neighborhood picnic features a contest in which a cow is turned loose in a corral marked off into squares and participants bet on which square the animal will decorate with a common synonym for falsehood and hyperbole.

So far, only a few movie-goers have taken the offer. During the Easter weekend, for instance, just one patron used the service, said Chuck Cohen, who owns the plaza where the theater is situated. More recently, the three or four valets parked 50 to 60 cars in one night, but the valet lot can hold 100 cars at a time.

“People just are not accustomed to it,” City Manager David N. Carmany said. “It’s unusual in the suburbs.”

The service, now in its fourth week, was begun by Cohen and his partners as a condition of City Council approval to lease a Johnny Rockets restaurant in the mall. City officials feared that the hip hamburger joint would further aggravate parking at the theater, which is the busiest in the Mann chain, attracting movie-goers from as far away as Malibu.

City Planning Director David Anderson said the plaza has 467 parking spaces, 15 more than required by city codes. But huge weekend crowds overwhelm the lot. Since last year, Cohen and his partners have rented 100 spaces from a neighboring mall to accommodate weekend movie traffic.

So the city required the mall owners to hire parking valets, who can squeeze more cars into less space because they can block in vehicles, bumper to bumper, and are not restricted by the spaces marked on the blacktop.