Thousand Oaks Hopes to Save One of Area’s Last Equestrian Centers : Recreation: Officials want developer to pay to move Two Winds stables to Broome Ranch, out of residential area.

Aiming to preserve one of Thousand Oaks’ few remaining equestrian centers, City Council members will hold an unusual joint session with Conejo Recreation and Park District officials next week.

The Monday afternoon session will focus on relocating the Two Winds stables from its Newbury Park site--smack in the middle of property designated for residential development--across Potrero Road to Broome Ranch, designated open space.

The move appears deceptively easy. On one side of the street, development is encroaching on the Two Winds ranch, a 60-acre sprawl of stables and corrals. On the other side, a stretch of open, wind-swept land ideally suited to horses lies empty and inviting.

But despite the seemingly perfect match, there are complications--many of them.

Among all the groups involved--developers, horse lovers, park district officials and city leaders--there are dozens of different perceptions on how the move should be made.

Some city officials expect the developers to pay for the move. The developers say they can’t afford to foot the entire bill. Some officials worry a golf course at Broome Ranch could interfere with plans to move horses there. The park district says it has no firm plans for what to do with the site.

The fate of the private riding facility concerns the city, because Thousand Oaks has already lost many of its horse centers to development.

Mayor Jaime Zukowski called for the joint session, asking that all involved parties sit down together to discuss solutions.

“There have been numerous discussions between the developer and the equestrians and the park district,” Zukowski said. “I have got updates, but there is an extraordinary amount of information out there. This kind of meeting should have taken place a long time ago.”

Zukowski said the meeting is likely to include discussion of building a golf course on Broome Ranch, a move she questions.

“I have never seen the advantage of having horses near errant golf balls,” Zukowski said.

But she said the golf course would be a potential revenue source for the city, while the equestrian center is not.

Park Director Mike Berger said the district is still undecided about what to do with the land.

“It’s wide open,” Berger said. “We’re trying to get a sense of what the people want to see in there. We want to put in what our constituents want.”

At the heart of Monday’s discussion over the horse facility will be a decade-old agreement with Operating Engineers, the Pasadena-based builders of the Dos Vientos development.

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In exchange for permission to build 2,350 homes on the 4,500 acres of Newbury Park fields and hillsides, the developer agreed to pay the city $12 million, include 1,000 acres of open space within the development, and make numerous public improvements.

One of those improvements included setting aside a 7.3-acre parcel of land for the equestrian center, which now sprawls over 60 acres. That, says Zukowski, is the “weakness” in the development agreement.

The equestrian community began pushing last year for an alternative, suggesting instead that the center be relocated across the street at Broome Ranch, which is co-owned by the city, the park district and the National Park Service.

Two weeks ago the Thousand Oaks Planning Commission agreed to allow Dos Vientos developers to build four homes on the Two Winds site, on the condition that the builder help relocate the stables across the street.

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Eric Taylor, a consultant working with Dos Vientos developers, said the company agrees that Broome Ranch is a far better location for the horses than the parcel sandwiched among residential properties.

“We think Broome Ranch is the right answer,” Taylor said. “We are willing to cooperate with the city to try to facilitate a permanent equestrian facility there.”

But there is a catch.

“We can’t build it for them,” Taylor said. “We can’t afford to bring all the utilities out there for them.

“They are asking us to build a 30-acre site 2,000 feet away from where it was originally planned,” he said. “That is a significant added cost to us, probably a couple hundred thousand extra dollars.”

That’s not the impression that some city officials and staffers came away from the Planning Commission meeting with--they believed Operating Engineers were prepared to build the new facility.