Newbury Park Group Battles Revised Project : Thousand Oaks: The City Council will review a developer’s scaled-down proposal for homes and a shopping center. The Planning Commission has approved it.

A group of Newbury Park residents has gathered more than 700 signatures in opposition to a housing and shopping center complex it says will create unwanted traffic and air pollution.

The Thousand Oaks City Council, at the request of the neighbors, has agreed to review Sherman Oaks developer Ned Cohan’s plan to build 26 houses, 144 townhomes and a 117,600-square-foot shopping center on 47 acres at Reino Road and Kimber Drive.

The plan was approved only last month by the Planning Commission, but opponents are expected to jam City Hall Tuesday when the council considers Cohan’s project.

“I’m not going to stand by and watch the community that I lived in turn into the San Fernando Valley,” said Richard Heitmann, one of several residents who oppose the project.

The project has been scaled down considerably since last year, when the City Council and the Planning Commission rejected Cohan’s initial plan to build 197 houses and a much larger shopping center.

Al Cohan, project manager for Cohan Investments, said he has met several times with homeowners and city planners to come up with a project that will pass muster.

City Planner Greg Smith agreed that Cohan has met all of the city’s conditions for approval.

“It was a long, hard battle, but we got there,” Smith said.

Among the changes Cohan made were to eliminate 26 houses, an underground parking garage and 40,000 square feet of commercial space; make a two-story shopping center a one-story mall, and convert an apartment complex into townhouses.

Cohan has also agreed to build, at his cost, a storm basin that would protect about 300 homes downstream from the site from flooding.

“We’ve been haggling over this project for the past 12 years. We have met all the conditions, and we’ve done a lot more,” Cohan said.

Despite Cohan’s efforts to placate neighbors, some residents say they do not need and will oppose the construction of a new supermarket.

Three existing markets and shopping centers lie within four miles of the proposed Cohan site, including an Albertson’s supermarket on Reino Road, a Lucky supermarket on Borchard Road and a Hughes market on Ventu Park Road, said homeowner Tom McGrath.

Douglas Bisacchi, president of the South Knollwood Homeowners Assn., said that in addition to gathering petitions, residents are distributing flyers in an attempt to galvanize opposition to the project.

“It’s still just too big, and too intense and too much traffic for this area,” he said.