Home Depot Bid to Open Early Is Weighed : Thousand Oaks: City Council weighs residents’ complaints about noise against store’s need to serve customers and receive shipments.

Trying to balance the needs of business owners and residents, Thousand Oaks City Council members worked late into the night Tuesday debating whether to allow Home Depot to open its Newbury Park store an hour earlier.

Residents have complained for years that they are awakened at the crack of dawn by activity at the Newbury Park building supply store. But store owners say they need to open earlier to satisfy customers and that they have taken measures to keep noise down.

The council was considering whether to uphold a November decision by the Planning Commission denying Home Depot’s request to open at 6 a.m. rather than 7 a.m.

Late Tuesday, the panel was leaning toward overturning the Planning Commission decision, but only if the store managers agreed to certain conditions.

Chuck Cohen, the attorney representing Home Depot, said the store was seeking the 6 a.m. opening to satisfy the needs of contractors who want to pick up supplies before heading out to jobs with 7 a.m. start times.

Among the conditions being considered were requiring the management to block off all but one entrance to the store before 7 a.m. and forcing the company to build a wall to cut down on noise.

Until last September, Home Depot employees had ignored the city policy, opening their doors to contractors at 6 a.m. But faced with unhappy residents and subsequent city code enforcement citations, the store began complying with the 7 a.m. opening allowed by the city Monday through Saturday.

In any case, residents have long complained that trucks arrive much earlier than 7 a.m. to begin unloading cargo.

They say they regularly wake to the beep - beep - beep sound of trucks backing up to the loading dock. Not only that, they said, they hear loud noises from the store after the 9 p.m. weekday closing, including the roar of the trash compactor and the crash of metal frames being thrown on the ground.

And in the otherwise quiet night, even conversation among employees can be disruptive. “I’ve woken up in the middle of the night and heard two people talking on the loading dock at Home Depot,” said resident Bob Ameche. “I thought they were in my bedroom.”

Ameche and other Newbury Park residents who live near the building supply store came to the council meeting armed with several years’ worth of complaints against Home Depot.

Residents were dubious about whether Home Depot will ever fully comply with city codes to keep down noise. They agreed that a wall--preferably a 10-foot-high barrier--would probably help. They also liked the idea of putting in gates to limit access to the parking lot, but said there are potential pitfalls.

“Barricades might work if you have reasonable truck drivers coming in,” said resident Michael Peterson.

Peterson said he recently watched as a big rig that arrived before 7 a.m. chose to park on his street and wait for the store opening. “The smell of the diesel and the noise was unbelievable,” he said.

He asked the trucker to leave and was rudely rebuffed, he said.