Plan Outlines Thousand Oaks Design Standards

The vision of Thousand Oaks’ future lies in a slim, 74-page volume: office buildings surrounded by landscaping and separated by courtyards and open spaces. Parking lots screened from public view. Flat, featureless exterior walls replaced with columns, window canopies or pedestrian arcades.

For the first time in a quarter of a century, city planners have laid down architectural guidelines for commercial buildings. The document, developed with the help of architects and residents, describes how new commercial buildings in Thousand Oaks should look--from the building materials to the landscaping.

What they came up with, in fact, looks much like the current Thousand Oaks.

“The truth is, you’re not going to see a major change in the T.O. style,” said Neal Scribner, a local architect would helped develop the standards.

Roofs may be tile, slate, glass or a natural metal such as copper--not wood or corrugated metal. Signs must not revolve or flash lights except to give time and temperature. Muted earth tones are good for exterior walls. Bright, primary colors are bad.

“We’re giving applicants options to design projects, and they can pick and choose,” said S. Haider Alawami, assistant planner for the city. “It’s like a menu.”

This menu has the support of the City Council, which approved the guidelines last week. Future development projects must meet the new standards or risk rejection by the Planning Commission.

The guidelines don’t dictate the use of a particular architectural style--preferring Mediterranean, say, to modern. Instead, they set conditions intended to foster creative design that will blend into and enhance current Thousand Oaks architecture.

“We wanted to be creating, at least from my point of view, the historic buildings of the future,” said Marilyn Carpenter, chairwoman of the Planning Commission.

The last time the city adopted formal guidelines for commercial properties, Thousand Oaks was less than one-third its current size. The previous standards, written in 1969 and revised in 1980, gave builders few specific directions: Landscaping should strengthen the design of the building. Free-standing walls should avoid a monotonous appearance.

Over the years, another, informal set of standards took shape, the result of hundreds of Planning Commission debates and decisions. Since these weren’t part of the formal rules, the approval process for business development plans held an element of guesswork, Scribner said. “In the past, the guidelines have been indefinite,” said Jack Dwyer, executive vice president of Capital Commercial Real Estate of Westlake Village and a director of the Conejo Valley Chamber of Commerce. “We in the commercial community want to know what we can build. It’s better to know what to expect.”

So in 1993, the City Council’s planning issues committee formed a group to revise the guidelines. The group included Carpenter, Councilwoman Judy Lazar, six representatives--many of them architects--from the Conejo Valley Chamber of Commerce, and six community residents without architectural backgrounds.

In more than 40 meetings during two years, planning professionals and novices debated the visual style of the future Thousand Oaks.

“Some of the things we citizens would like to do you find out from an architect are really, really hard to do,” group member Cathy Schutz said. “Being from the neighborhoods, we like to see lots of trees, flowers and green. . . . And you find out it’s not always possible to have big oak trees in front of the business because it hides the signs.”

Oak trees still have a place in the document the group produced. The new guidelines instruct developers to preserve as many of a site’s distinctive landscape features as possible, especially oak trees, which the document says give Thousand Oaks both its look and identity.

Even if the new standards don’t drastically alter the city’s appearance, they may save building permit applicants money by speeding up the approval process, Dwyer said. “If we know what to expect, we can build those expectations into our development projects right from the beginning and save time,” he said. “And time is money.”

Although the guidelines specify the use of some building materials that might be more expensive than others, Scribner doubted this would add to the cost of construction in Thousand Oaks. Builders already must meet most of those requirements, he said.

Now that the new commercial guidelines are complete, the city plans to revise its standards for industrial and residential buildings. Lazar said she hopes both can be finished by the end of the year, without another 40 meetings. “We’ve gotten the basic concepts down already,” she said.