Officials Plan to Ease Jams in Civic Arts Plaza Parking Lot : Traffic: Garage gridlock after well-attended events prompts Thousand Oaks to revamp the exit system.

Dismayed by parking-garage gridlock, Thousand Oaks officials on Monday drafted a plan for improving traffic flow at the Civic Arts Plaza by moving cars to Thousand Oaks Boulevard more quickly.

Ticket-holders have complained of waiting up to 40 minutes to exit the parking structure after sellout shows.

But by this weekend, cars should be able to exit the five-story parking garage more smoothly, and the aggravating bottleneck should ease, theater director Tom Mitze said.

The city plans to create two exit lanes from the parking garage, so cars can wind through the structure more rapidly, Mitze said. Engineers also plan to reprogram the traffic signal at the entrance of the Civic Arts Plaza to allow more cars to turn onto Thousand Oaks Boulevard in a single green-light cycle.

“That should hopefully cut the (wait) time in half by this weekend,” Mitze said.

The traffic jams inside the parking garage have occurred mainly after packed shows, ranging from the children’s drama “Beauty and the Beast” to rhythm and blues artist Ray Charles.

After a recent performance by Hal Holbrook in “Mark Twain Tonight,” patron Betsy Chess said it seemed as though all 1,800 ticket-holders simultaneously swarmed up the stairs of the parking garage.

“We got in our car, got in line--and didn’t move for at least 20 minutes,” said Chess, the interim executive director of the Ventura County Symphony. “I was glad I didn’t have claustrophobia.”

To make sure such delays do not deter people from attending her symphony’s shows, Chess has chartered five buses to shuttle subscribers from various parts of the county. “We wanted to make it as easy as possible,” she said.

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Thousand Oaks officials, too, want to make it as easy as possible--even for people who choose to drive their own cars and pay a $4 parking fee.

“I think it will be fine-tuned over the next several months, and we’ll see major improvements,” City Manager Grant Brimhall said.

As part of their anti-gridlock plan, Thousand Oaks officials will open up an outdoor lot behind the Probst Auditorium, near the loading dock. When finished, the lot will hold up to 60 cars, Mitze estimated.

Offering yet another option, a private developer may build a 200-space commercial lot across the street from the Civic Arts Plaza, Mitze said.

A more serious parking crunch could occur in the future if the 11-acre site next to the performing arts center is developed, as planned, into a hotel, movie theater, shopping plaza or museum. Now vacant, that site is being used to handle overflow parking for performers’ cars.

“It might get a little hairy if you put a movie theater in next-door--a big old 20-plex with a couple of sold-out shows might create a problem,” said Larry Janss, a member of the theater’s Board of Governors.

But Mitze said he believes the garage will have enough spaces to accommodate the musicians, dancers and actors as well as the ticket-holders. The garage’s roof, for example, holds dozens of spots that so far have never been used.

As the parking staff works out the kinks and learns to move traffic smoothly, Janss asked his fellow theatergoers to be patient.

“Relative to Thousand Oaks jams, it’s hellacious,” he said, “but relative to the rest of the world, it’s just a minor slow-up.”