Simi Council to Weigh Renovation Funding for Shopping Center : Tapo Plaza: Proposal would provide $150,000 for landscaping, lighting and parking lot repaving.

Cars entering Tapo Plaza pass an island of dust. An unraveled cassette tape tangles around the few weeds that survive. And brown grass pokes through the wrinkled, parking lot asphalt that dates back to the late 1960s, before the city was incorporated.

The parking lot, which covers much of the 14.5-acre strip mall site, is so sprawling that people loiter there amid the abandoned cars. As a result, the police were called to the lot 217 times a year on average from 1990 to 1994.

On Monday, the Simi Valley City Council will consider a plan to give the owner of the shopping plaza $150,000 to help pay for ongoing renovation of the site, including landscaping, new light fixtures and new pavement for the parking lot.

The plaza’s owner, Westwood Financial Corp., says the renovation, which has already included fixing up the building facades and adding a Blockbuster video store and a Taco Bell, will mean 221 new jobs for the city and an additional $136,282 a year in sales-tax revenue. City staff say the numbers sound realistic.

Fixing up the plaza will also encourage neighbors to improve their buildings, Westwoodsays.

“With the rehabilitation of Tapo Plaza, the surrounding corridor will be stimulated to rehabilitate and spur investment in property,” Westwood says in its written request for the funds.

The area, which was already decaying before it was hit hard by the Northridge earthquake, clearly could use a boost. The City Council this week approved more than $600,000 worth of quake repairs to Tapo Street.

And even before the quake, the Simi Valley Community Development Agency included the area in a project designed to “revitalize an aging commercial district and . . . encourage rehabilitation of existing structures,” City Manager Mike Sedell has said in a report to the council. In the report, Sedell recommended spending the money--$100,000 in federal Community Development Block Grant funds and $50,000 in tax credits.

Assistant City Manager Don Penman attributed Tapo Street’s decline to traffic being diverted onto Tapo Canyon Road, which the city built in the 1980s, and to earthquake damage. It would be hard to argue that by approving renovation funds, the city would be rewarding the plaza’s owners for allowing their property to decay, he noted.

“There have been factors external to the things that they’ve done,” he said.

The $150,000 from the city would pay for only a small portion of the $4.1-million renovation to the mall. City officials said that, for financial reasons, the company would have difficulty raising the money from private sources.

Although the $150,000 is less than the $200,000 requested by Westwood, it sure would make Steve Kopple happy.

“I think it’s a great idea,” said Kopple, who has owned a barber shop in the plaza for 21 years. “Anything they could do to this parking lot, to this whole center, would help the city of Simi Valley.”