Split of Old City Hall Site Proposed : Thousand Oaks: A mixed-use development of the property would raise the most funds for Civic Arts Plaza, panel says.

Thousand Oaks’ former City Hall will not fetch close to the $12.2 million that officials are counting on to finance the Civic Arts Plaza, unless the city carves up the property and allows mixed-use development, some members of a citizens task force said Tuesday.

After analyzing a range of development options--from a world-class tennis club to a convention center--the 22 citizens serving on the 401 Hillcrest Committee have come up with preliminary recommendations on how to market the site.

“The valuation is substantially less than what the city had expected to get,” said Jack Dwyer, a commercial real estate salesman in Thousand Oaks. “At this juncture, it does not look very bright.”

To reap a decent price, committee members said, the city will have to allow development at least four times larger than the current building, a Southwest-style structure set into a grassy, oak-dotted slope. Even then, the city would come up roughly $4 million short, although a residential complex on the parcel might help make up that gap.

The grim financial analysis revealed another hole in the carefully crafted plan for financing the $64-million Civic Arts Plaza.

Unless the 401 Hillcrest property is sold soon, Thousand Oaks will have to go into debt by issuing municipal bonds to pay for the final year of construction, City Manager Grant Brimhall said.

The city is already scrambling to make up for a $2-million gap in funding that emerged when the Conejo Recreation and Park District backed out of plans to lease space in Civic Arts Plaza. Mayor Judy Lazar recently invited cultural and educational groups to consider leasing the available space.

The news on 401 Hillcrest came as no surprise to most city officials, who have long recognized that the pinched economy and glutted commercial real estate market would make selling the old City Hall difficult.

But while expected, the committee’s evaluation sparked a swift and biting retort from Councilwoman Elois Zeanah, one of the project’s outspoken opponents.

“I’m so frustrated with the faulty and botched planning,” Zeanah said. “Everything on this project has gone wrong from the very beginning.”

Zeanah railed against Civic Arts Plaza promoters: “They said we had enough cash in the bank to finance this project. They said we would not start construction until both city halls were sold. The people who made those bold promises at the beginning should be held accountable now.”

Budget projections for the Civic Arts Plaza have always counted on the sale of two former city halls to generate at least one-third of the $64-million price tag.

The interim city hall, at 2150 W. Hillcrest Drive, was recently sold to Amgen for $9.2 million. But the original city headquarters at 401 Hillcrest Drive has languished on the market for years.

Dimming the prospects for a quick sale, Exxon has announced plans to sell its corporate offices, located on a rolling lawn around the corner from 401 Hillcrest Drive. The sleek Exxon building, in a campus-like setting with plenty of parking, will offer formidable competition to the old City Hall, committee members said.

A deep-pocketed developer intending to build 225,000 square feet of office space plus a 5,000-square-foot restaurant on the old City Hall property would probably pay only $8 million to $9 million, real estate salesman Dwyer said.

And to reap even that sum, the city would have to grant the buyer permission to tear down the existing structure, grade the slope extensively, move several old oak trees and construct a three-story building, he said.

Another possibility, architect Gary Heathcoate suggested, would be for the city to refurbish the building and turn it into a convention center, taking advantage of its prominent location and easy access from the Ventura Freeway.

Those promoting a large commercial building on the site emphasized that any development would have to be designed to blend well with the hill and preserve as many oak trees and as much open space as possible.

But committee member Ekbal Kidwai was more pessimistic: “We can’t get that kind of money ($12 million) unless we deviate drastically from city standards of appropriate density and height.”