CALABASAS : City Works on Park Centre Compromise

With a Calabasas City Council vote next week, city negotiators are working this week to finalize a compromise with the developer of Park Centre Calabasas to reduce the size of the proposed project.

Councilman Marvin Lopata, who is representing the city, said he met for a final time with representatives for the developer, Kilroy Industries.

Lopata declined to discuss what was said at the Tuesday morning meeting, which was also attended by City Councilman Dennis Washburn, another city negotiator.

“The problem is the proposal from the (city) is not finished yet,” said Lopata. “To tell you what we’ve worked on is not going to help the process.”

He would only say “some new ideas surfaced and Kilroy was looking into the new ideas.”

Lopata said the details will be kept secret until Friday afternoon, within the 72-hour public notice required by law before the City Council’s vote Wednesday.

Officials from Kilroy Industries could not be reached for comment.

Kilroy Industries received county approval for a 1.5-million-square-foot office and retail center at the corner of Calabasas Road and Parkway Calabasas before Calabasas became a city in 1989. The project includes a 50,000-square-foot retail center, with the rest as office space.

The developer wants to increase the retail center to 200,000 square feet, because there is little demand for office space in this economic climate. The developer must get city approval for any change in the project plans.

Kilroy Industries has agreed to reduce the overall size of the project by 300,000 square feet for a total of almost 1.2 million square feet, Lopata said in a recent interview. The developer has also offered to allow residents to help draw up a master plan for the project.

Council members were scheduled to vote on the project at a meeting in August, but postponed the matter after all five members told the developer they would reject the project unless it was scaled down. The council formed a committee, made up of Lopata, Washburn and representatives from Kilroy Industries, to work out a compromise.

Kilroy Industries also wants to build a 2,000- to 2,400-seat movie theater as part of the project and it remains to be seen how the council as a whole will react to that proposal. Many Calabasas residents are opposed to a theater of that size and are urging council members to reject it.

Calabasas Mayor Karyn Foley said Tuesday that she is “hoping for something that is more congruent with the scale of the surrounding neighborhood.”