City Solicits Ideas on How to Build a Better Boulevard : Thousand Oaks: In officials’ vision, thoroughfare will complement Civic Arts Plaza. Residents’ advice ranges from leaving it as is to widening sidewalks and promoting ‘storefront’ architecture.

Two years ago, Joe Elliott moved his family from crowded, smoggy Echo Park to suburban Thousand Oaks.

The construction worker and first-time home buyer has only one regret: His adopted hometown has no downtown.

Like hundreds of others on Sunday, Elliott offered his ideas during a workshop designed to gather input on the future of Thousand Oaks Boulevard, a meandering road that planners and architects want to make more pedestrian-friendly to complement the city’s shiny, new performing arts center.

“The boulevard does need to be improved,” Elliott said, surveying displays of what the haphazard road could become in the future.

“We’re lacking a downtown and a central area, so this is the right approach,” he said. “That’s really the only negative about this place--there’s no community focus.”

Under a canopy in the Civic Arts Plaza parking lot, a steering committee that included residents hosted the workshop, trying to figure out what improvements should be made to the winding boulevard.

The recommendations will become part of the debate when the City Council votes on the issue later this year, Mayor Jaime Zukowski said.

Some say the five-mile stretch of road should remain as it is, a mishmash of squat 1940s buildings interspersed around the city’s cultural centerpiece: the sprawling Civic Arts Plaza, which opened last year.

Others say city officials should rezone land uses along the boulevard core to attract upscale restaurants and boutiques to the area.

“There’s already change under way,” said Thousand Oaks architect Francisco Behr, who chairs the steering committee studying the roadway. “The Civic Arts Plaza brings all sorts of market demands” to the neighborhood.

The workshop “is just meant to collect information,” Behr said. “There may be no need to do anything.”

But dozens of residents saw it differently Sunday, scratching handwritten ideas for making the area more attractive. Some suggested restaurants across the street from the arts plaza, a slower speed limit on the roadway, and planters and landscaping throughout the area.

City planners should widen sidewalks to allow for patio dining, plant more trees and trim existing ones, paint the plaza’s parking structure and promote “storefront” architecture along the thoroughfare to encourage foot traffic, others suggested.

“This area here lends itself to pedestrian traffic,” said Thousand Oaks resident Cathy Schutz, referring to the vicinity nearest the Civic Arts Plaza.

“But a lot of the businesses along Thousand Oaks Boulevard are service oriented, and those businesses are not interested in pedestrian traffic,” she said. “They should limit it to this area.”

Zukowski said she supports any long-term proposal designed to spur investment in the boulevard’s vacant parcels. But she is concerned about imposing new standards on existing merchants.

“When the city starts improving on private property--where there’s already been private investment--that can affect a very successful area,” she said. “So the information gleaned today should be used for the public rights-of-way and amenities such as parking and open spaces.”

Jeff Alexander, who owns a livestock and pet-food supply store on Thousand Oaks Boulevard, agrees that any new land-use rules should be imposed only on vacant lots.

“We’ve been here for a long time, paying the way for a long time,” said the owner of the T. O. Corral. “You don’t ignore that section of town when you redesign it.

“There’s a need to look at what the future will be, but you have to include the people who are paying the rent. That hasn’t been done.”

John Pittello, whose hardware store and lumberyard closed after Home Depot moved to town, said he was looking forward to turning a negative into a positive. His 2.67 acres across from the Civic Arts Plaza are up for sale.

“They’re doing me a favor,” he said Sunday of the city’s plan to upgrade the neighborhood. “Progress put me out of business, so I’m going to take the money and run.”