Empty Lot at Arts Plaza Sprouts Big Ideas : Entertainment: Developers with visions of fountains, theaters vie for site meant to complement city complex.

As vacant lots go, the one next to the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza is well kept.

But by 1997, city officials hope a fountain-filled entertainment center--complete with an enormous movie theater, bookstore and chichi cafes--will rise from the dry, dusty field.

Three developers are vying for the site and, by the end of summer, the City Council expects to pick one of them to turn the 11-acre parcel into the private sector’s complement to the city’s new performing arts complex.

Each developer has some tasty morsel to offer--a letter of agreement with celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck for a cafe, a 20-screen movie theater, hundreds of new jobs for Thousand Oaks residents. How to choose?

“In my view, this is one of the bigger issues the council is going to decide,” said Councilman Andy Fox, a member of the finance committee, which will make a recommendation to the council on which developer to go with. “This will be the entertainment site within the community. It’s going to be absolutely first class.”

Fox spent last Friday on a driving tour of similar projects around Southern California with Councilwoman Judy Lazar, City Manager Grant Brimhall and City Atty. Mark Sellers.

They whisked from Fashion Island in Newport Beach to the Tustin Marketplace. They dropped in at an AMC theater complex in Long Beach, then on their way home stopped at a site in Calabasas now being developed by Kilroy Industries.

Plans for the Civic Arts Plaza have always included private development of the adjacent property, known in the city as the “private side.” Last fall, Brimhall said the city-owned property is worth about $9 million. But now that he is embroiled in discussions with developers, he is no longer willing to put a price on the parcel.

Brimhall said no decision has been made about whether to sell or lease the land to the developer. Whatever money it does bring in will be used to offset the costs of building the $64-million Civic Arts Plaza.

About three years ago, a citizens committee recommended that the site be turned into a pedestrian-friendly complex with plenty of restaurants, movie theaters and parking. Three developers have bid to do just that: El Segundo-based Kilroy Industries, Sterling Development of La Jolla and Newport Beach-based Hopkins Real Estate.

Hugh Greenup, senior vice president of development and marketing for Kilroy Industries, said his company has letters of interest from several theater operators and restaurants, including the Wolfgang Puck Cafe.

What Kilroy is proposing is similar in scope to its still-unbuilt Calabasas Park Center, Greenup said. And he said the company’s priority is to make the Thousand Oaks complex blend in with the Civic Arts Plaza.

“The most important thing about the center is that it complement the Civic Arts Plaza next door in terms of land-use,” Greenup said.

Sterling Development President Jeffrey Rasak has his heart set on a 20-screen multiplex that would serve as an anchor to bookstores and some specialty stores in what his company has christened the “Civic Arts Promenade.”

In Sterling’s proposal, a restaurant would straddle the space between the Civic Arts Plaza and the Promenade, sort of a Tavern on the Green. The movie screens would take up about half of the approximately 160,000-square-foot complex, which would be designed on a similar scale to the Civic Arts Plaza.

“We’re not talking cinder blocks here,” Rasak said.

Bob Manarino, a senior vice president with Hopkins Real Estate, which serves as the West Coast agent for Cousins Properties and Edwards Theaters, has offered a third proposal for a 100,000-square-foot entertainment center.

Manarino said his plans are still conceptual, but a complex would probably include a 10- to 12-screen movie theater and be similar in design to The Island at Fashion Island in Newport Beach.

The Island has “the most beautiful water treatment you’ll ever see,” Manarino said. He envisions a fountain shooting water into the sky between the Civic Arts Plaza and the new entertainment center.

With all the proposals in front of her, Lazar said it won’t be easy choosing one. But she has been asking one question of every developer: What are the chances of getting a micro-brewery / restaurant tenant?

“I only proposed it because I think it would provide the kind of entertainment that a lot of young adults are interested in,” Lazar said. “We need to provide variety.”

“I don’t even drink beer normally,” Lazar said with a laugh. “But I do at micro-breweries because the beer is so good.”