$7-Million Face Lift : But Some Merchants at The Oaks Say the Renovation Has Hurt Sales

With one toddler in a stroller and two other small children in tow, Cindy Lompart has become an expert on getting to the second floor of The Oaks mall in Thousand Oaks without relying on the shopping center’s narrow escalators.

“I know what stores have the better elevators right now and which ones take the longest,” Lompart said.

But getting to the department store elevators means that she and her children often have to make some lengthy detours as they travel along the 1,100-foot-long mall looking for some way to go up or down.

So Lompart, who works as a Ventura County probation officer but manages to get to the mall with her family “all the time,” is one of many shoppers who said she’s delighted that a new, large glass elevator is being installed at the center of the mall as part of a major renovation.

Shoppers are not the only ones anticipating completion of a $7-million face lift at The Oaks, which will include a new outside entrance, indoor staircases, restyled dome ceilings and a host of new stores.

Although workers are doing most of the construction at night, the barricades and 40-foot-high scaffolding remain during the day as glaring reminders of the changes under way.

And some merchants complain that the construction project, begun two months ago, has driven customers away.

“We know that our business has dropped,” said Kathleen Garcia, manager of Bella, a boutique of Victorian-motif gifts and home decorations.

Estimating that her shop’s sales have plunged by one-third, Garcia said she blames the wood barriers erected just outside the store that force shoppers to walk out of their way to cross from one side of the mall to the other.

Across the aisle from Bella’s at Mrs. Fields Cookies, store manager Luis Quijano said sales there have dropped 10% to 15% since the construction project began.

And he said he is concerned that the renovation work will keep school-age children away from the mall during the summer months.

“Everybody gets a lot of business from kids,” he said. “They don’t care about money.”

Mall manager Barbara Teuscher admitted that the construction has kept shoppers away, with the average number of visitors dropping 2% from 25,500 per day to about 25,000.

But, she said, The Oaks has fared better than other malls that have lost 10% of their shoppers during renovation.

And once construction is complete Sept. 1, Teuscher said she expects sales to gradually climb to 5% above the previous average of $220 million annually.

“The driving force behind this renovation was to improve the overall look of the mall and to make it the dominant mall in Ventura County,” she said.

Not only will The Oaks be sharper looking, it will have 15 new stores, such as the Disney Store and Eddie Bauer, to replace shops whose leases were not renewed, Teuscher said.

While many customers and employees at the mall said they are looking forward to the new stores, the glass elevator and other improvements, a Bullocks saleswoman said she is particularly happy about another upcoming change: the remodeled and expanded public restrooms.

As it is, most shoppers at The Oaks use the bathrooms in the five department stores, said the cosmetics saleswoman, who asked not to be identified.

And because her sales counter is near the mall entrance to Bullocks, she said she is besieged with shoppers coming into the store to find a bathroom.

“People ask where the restrooms are about 30 times a day, 50 on weekends,” she said.

Occasionally, shoppers appear to have been hunting for a bathroom for a long time, the saleswoman said.

“By the time they find a restroom, their eyes are already watering,” she said. “You just give the directions faster.”