Suburban Renewal : Housing: Thousand Oaks makes moves to win development deals. And as a result, a neighborhood is being revitalized.

David Sapienza looked up and down the block, taking in the ramshackle bungalows and rotted fences that bumped uncomfortably against the spanking-new apartment complex.

“This,” he asked incredulously, “is a model neighborhood?”

With its jarring mix of rundown single-family homes and modular townhouses, this corner of Thousand Oaks didn’t look like much to emulate, said Sapienza, a 40-year-old Moorpark resident who had wandered by to check out a house for rent.

But city officials think otherwise.

They proudly point to the neighborhood--a two-block slice of Thousand Oaks bounded by Sunset Drive, Wilbur Road, Thousand Oaks Boulevard and the Ventura Freeway--as a model of how public-private cooperation can rejuvenate depressed areas.

Although it may look a little rough around the edges now, they say, the neighborhood used to be a whole lot worse.

By offering developers a range of incentives, and by pledging to repave roads and build a soundproofing wall along the freeway, Thousand Oaks planners attracted a major condominium complex and a handful of smaller projects to one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods.

Once the recession lifts, they expect construction to pick up still further, with more and more property owners replacing tired 50-year-old homes with two- and three-bedroom rental units priced at $850 to $950 a month.

The sound of jackhammers and bulldozers delights Councilman Frank Schillo, who has been promoting the model neighborhood program for six years.

“If you want affordable housing in a city . . . you have to work with developers,” Schillo explained. “You have to say, ‘What little things can we do to help you build this project?’ ”

Those “little things,” implemented in 1987 and refined over the past few years, include permission to pave over oak tree roots and to install two-car garages with tandem, rather than side-by-side, parking.

The most important spur to development was rezoning the neighborhood to allow up to 15 residential units per acre, on lots originally designated for single-family homes.

Taken together, the incentives convinced Percy Vaz, president of Amcal Diversified Corp. in Westlake Village, to build a 91-unit condominium complex behind the freeway. The city stepped in with financing deals for first-time home buyers; so far, Vaz has sold 23 of the 31 townhouses under construction in the first phase of development, scheduled to be completed in early March.

Most builders “are kind of frightened of Thousand Oaks” because of the city’s strict design guidelines and complex permitting process, Vaz said. “But in this neighborhood, they really fast-tracked the process. Otherwise, it would have taken twice as long.”

In addition to cutting about 10 months out of the approval process, Vaz said he saved almost $3,000 per unit because the city reduced the fees that developers must pay to municipal agencies such as the Police Department. And instead of demanding water, sewer and other capital improvement fees up front, the city let Amcal pay in increments.

All developers who invest in the model neighborhood receive similar deals, said Olav Hassel, the city’s housing services manager.

To sweeten the pot even more, Thousand Oaks relaxed its notoriously rigid design codes, which regulate everything from roof tiles to paint color.

For example, developers in the model neighborhood can build smack up to the property line, instead of leaving space for a front yard. They can also shrink parking lots, thanks to a reduction in the number of visitor spaces required.

Backing off from the guidelines, Schillo said, was a “trade-off so we were able to get units for sale at (an affordable) price.”

The result is a smattering of “cute little projects,” Hassel said as he pointed out a new beige duplex on Sunset Drive.

“Before, there were three shacks here--and when I say shacks, I mean shacks. It was like the Third World,” he added. “This was the poorest part of Thousand Oaks. The zoning (for single-family homes) was giving property owners no incentive whatsoever to redevelop their land.”

When developers started to invest in the neighborhood a few years ago, the city allocated $900,000 in redevelopment funds to repave streets, install new curbs and gutters and hide power lines underground. The improvements, which finally started early this year, should be completed within a month.

Construction is also under way on the $700,000 soundproofing wall, which will rise 17 feet above the freeway and block traffic noise from the edge of the Auto Mall to Wilbur Road, Hassel said.

The city’s efforts have won praise from most developers. But a few vocal critics contend that Thousand Oaks has not gone far enough to turn the neighborhood into a desirable residential community.

Like ripped-up blue jeans paired with an ultra-formal tuxedo, the mix of sagging bungalows and trim duplexes looks awkward and unfinished, they said.

Furthermore, they complain that many of the older homes are overcrowded. Lacking adequate sleeping and bathroom facilities, tenants in these cramped one-story dwellings often hold parties in the street and urinate in the yards, neighbors charged.

Developer Arlen Wood of Westlake Village, who has already built small apartment complexes on four of the five lots he owns in the neighborhood, said overcrowding was “ruining the area.”

As he loaded his white pickup truck in front of a brick house on Los Robles Road--the one parcel he has not converted to apartments--Wood grudgingly praised the city for reducing development fees by $50,000 on his four projects to date. Yet even with lower costs, he said, the long-term financial outlook is still uncertain.

“I was going to build an 11-unit complex on this lot,” Wood said, “but I’m not building no more until I see the slum landlords get cleaned up. For me to get a good tenant with what you see across the street is very difficult.”

Thousand Oaks code enforcement supervisor Don LaVoie acknowledged receiving several complaints about overcrowding on Los Robles Road and Royal Oaks Drive, which run through the model neighborhood. A city ordinance requires landlords to obtain a permit if they rent a home to more than three adults; no property owner in the neighborhood has such a permit, he said.

“We are doing real well on some of the cases, but some take time,” LaVoie said. “You would hope landlords would want to take care of the problem, but that’s not always the case. Sometimes you have to resort to court action to force them to comply.”

The next neighborhood Thousand Oaks reformers plan to tackle also has a reputation for overcrowding--the Las Casitas complex on Hillcrest Drive, between Ventu Park Road and Rancho Conejo Boulevard in Newbury Park.

The model neighborhood plan for Las Casitas will probably tighten, rather than relax, design guidelines and will emphasize code enforcement and security, housing services manager Hassel said.

Meanwhile, many residents of the original model neighborhood welcome each new renovation on their ever-changing blocks.

“This was run down and now it’s built up pretty nice,” Edna Godchaux, 72, said, gesturing to a cluster of townhouses next to the tidy brown home where she has lived for 20 years. “The city is doing a good job.”

“You’d better believe it’s going to be a nice street,” said another resident, Jesse Veygas, who has lived on Royal Oaks Drive for more than 15 years.

Yet for all the kudos residents hand the city, a few naysayers still have doubts. Specifically, they worry about increased pollution, traffic and crime.

Plots that used to house just one family are now subdivided into four, six or even 10 apartments. And that’s not counting Amcal’s 91 condominiums, now under construction in a formerly vacant lot next to the Auto Mall.

“All these people will be crammed up in that area together, and there’s nowhere for them to go,” said Gabriel Ramirez, 53, who lives half a block away from the condominium complex in a small bungalow with a faded American flag out front and a chestnut-colored horse out back.

Dressed for the weekend in cowboy hat, black jeans and knee-high work boots, Ramirez, a senior street maintenance worker in Thousand Oaks, said he fears the once-rural block where he exercises his horse is becoming too urbanized.

“If I were from New York, I would say that (new condominium complex) is fine because it’s only two stories high,” he said. “But I’ve been here since 1943, when all there was out here was Jungleland, and I can never get used to seeing all these people around.”