Reviews Are Mixed for Brand-New City Hall : Thousand Oaks: Part of Civic Arts Plaza, facility’s stark design gives some people the chills. Others appreciate the airy allotment of space.

Every time David Zeman looks up from the planning department counter, his gaze smacks into a concrete wall.

A blotchy concrete wall, studded with exposed steel pegs and laced with hairline cracks. A bleak wall that pretty much reflects Zeman’s opinion of Thousand Oaks’ new City Hall at the Civic Arts Plaza.

“It’s stupid,” said Zeman, a planning technician. “We spend $64 million on the building, and we have to look at this. This building wasn’t designed for employees.”

Yet just upstairs, City Clerk Nancy Dillon looked ready to dance a jig as she gleefully showed off her spacious new office, with a view of feathery oak trees. Across the hall, she waltzed through a room designated just for microfilm research--a room so spacious, Dillon said, that “we don’t know how to act in it.”

Dressed in jeans and a T-shirt--a wardrobe she resorted to after ripping three sets of nylon stockings while moving boxes--Dillon rejoiced in the user-friendly design of Thousand Oaks’ fourth city hall in a decade.

“We’re home,” she said.

Conflicting views about the Civic Arts Plaza echoed through the freshly painted halls on Monday. As employees dashed about unpacking boxes and answering questions, citizens wandered past the whining buzz saw at the front entrance to gawk at the government’s new digs.

A huge purple banner and clusters of purple, turquoise and white balloons welcomed visitors. So did a card-table “reception desk,” which City Manager Grant Brimhall established. Employees will take turns staffing the table, answering questions and meeting the citizen-customers they’re supposed to serve.

Above the din of ongoing construction work, senior management analyst Carol Williams explained the Civic Arts Plaza’s layout, referring often to her laminated maps. She also happily accepted compliments on the foyer’s soaring ceilings, gleaming walls and festive air.

“It’s so completely different that people are very much wowed when they walk in,” she said.

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Samuel Rosen, a 20-year resident, was so wowed, in fact, that he declared the towering building looked like a modern-day version of an Egyptian pyramid. “What they need is a statue of Ramses on top,” he proposed, grinning.

The stark architecture didn’t inspire much joking from Violet Mann, a Thousand Oaks resident since 1960. “It’s ugly,” she said bluntly.

And even Councilwoman Judy Lazar, long an enthusiastic cheerleader for the Civic Arts Plaza, expressed some doubt about the exposed concrete walls.

Architect Antoine Predock deliberately left the first-floor walls bare, with the steel support rods poking through, to reinforce his trademark geometric style. But Lazar, calling the look “not terribly attractive,” said she plans to investigate alternatives, hoping to “finish it off in some way.”

Thousand Oaks’ electronic bulletin board should be up and running this week, allowing residents with personal computers easy access to a disk-full of information.

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By dialing the city through a modem, citizens can scroll through council agendas, theater schedules, phone directories and other information. They can download data onto their personal computers to print out for reference. And they can leave electronic messages for employees or council members.

John Augustyn, information services manager, has not yet been able to set up the computer to take appointment requests or log ticket reservations. So for most City Hall business, residents will still have to trek to the Civic Arts Plaza at 2100 Thousand Oaks Blvd. In the funky new building, they will find at least one familiar feature.

Said architect Daniel Witting as he waited to review blueprints with a planner: “The line isn’t any shorter than it was in the other place.”