Car Dealers May Seek New Location for Sign : Thousand Oaks: Group is sent back to the drawing board, but won’t ‘spend a ton of money if you can’t see the thing.’

Thousand Oaks car dealers hope to have a newly designed auto mall sign--shorter and less flashy than the one originally proposed--before the City Council for final approval within two weeks, officials said Friday.

The council earlier this week voted 3 to 2 to approve a new, less imposing sign than the 28-foot-high electronic message board the auto dealers had proposed.

Specifically, the council set conditions that would prohibit the sign from being more than 20 feet high and that would only allow the time and temperature to be displayed electronically. The sign would be erected alongside the Ventura Freeway adjacent to the auto mall.

Chuck Cohen, an attorney representing the mall’s 11 auto dealerships, said the dealers met for 1 1/2 hours Thursday to discuss a new design. Though generally supportive of the changes, he said some dealers had expressed concerns about the height limit.

“They don’t know if they want to spend the kind of money involved” if people can’t see it at a distance from both sides of the freeway, Cohen said. The view of northbound drivers would be obstructed by a nearby freeway overpass.

The auto dealers, who spent more than a year and $100,000 developing the original sign proposal, might ask that the new sign be moved from its designated location to improve its visibility.

If they cannot find a suitable location, it’s possible that the dealers may decide to stick with the auto mall’s existing wooden sign, said Susan Mejia, executive vice president of Silver Start Automotive Group, a partnership of four auto dealers.

“We’re not going to spend a ton of money if you can’t see the thing,” she said. “It’s going to depend on what makes sense.”

Mejia said the new sign will probably cost more than $150,000 to build. She said the dealers plan to spend a few days next week trying to find an alternate location for the sign.

But even if a new location is found, Mejia said she expects the dealers to push forward with a revised sign.

Mejia said she was disappointed that the sign will have to scaled down. She said the original plan was to build a 65-foot-high sign, but “we’ve been cutting back ever since.”

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Because of the design conditions imposed on the new sign, officials said that a public hearing will not be necessary when the new sign proposal is brought back to the council.

Cohen, however, said the auto dealers will probably meet with Thousand Oaks residents to get their suggestions about the sign’s new design before presenting it to the City Council. He said the dealers hope to have the new sign before the council at its Dec. 21 meeting.

If approved by the council, Mejia said construction on the new sign would probably start by early January. “We just want to get on with it,” she said.