Approval Urged for Huge Self-Storage Center : Development: A company may drop plans to move offices to Thousand Oaks if the complex is allowed.

In a move that may bring the city one new business but drive away another, city planners have recommended approval of a large self-storage center just off the Ventura Freeway.

Plans for Westoaks Self Storage call for a six-building, 52,000-square-foot complex on Townsgate Road. The catch: a Woodland Hills-based engineering firm interested in relocating its headquarters to the property next door says it will seek another location, possibly outside Thousand Oaks, if the storage center is approved.

Ronan Engineering already has dropped out of an escrow agreement to purchase the land, said Douglas A. Hewitson, the firm’s chief financial officer. If planning commissioners reject the storage project, his company may still be interested in the site, between Hampshire Road and Westlake Boulevard.

But Ronan wants its main office located near other corporate headquarters, not a storage facility, Hewitson said.

“You want to have like-minded businesses together,” he said.

The city Planning Commission will discuss Westoaks on Monday, culminating an approval process that has lasted more than a year. The project’s developers first spoke with city officials last summer, said Dennis L. Geiler, co-owner of the storage center.

The center that Geiler and his partners envision would include six buildings containing a total of about 600 storage units for commercial and private customers. Designed to look like office buildings, the storage center’s one- and two-story buildings will feature Mediterranean-style architecture and landscaping to block many of the views from nearby roads.

“We’ve worked real hard to be cooperative with the city and get the kind of look they like,” Geiler said.

Meanwhile, Ronan had announced plans to put its two-story, 100,000-square-foot headquarters with about 250 employees on the adjacent site. But company directors did not learn until March of the Westoaks project, and soon after, they took their concerns to the city.

The storage project had been scheduled to appear before the Planning Commission in June.

But several weeks before the hearing, the City Council slapped a temporary moratorium on new storage facilities within the freeway corridor, concerned that the appearance of such businesses would be inappropriate on such highly visible land.

One month later, the council renewed the moratorium but exempted Westoaks, saying it would be unfair to punish a business that had already been negotiating with the city in good faith.

Mayor Pro Tem Andrew Fox said that while the city needs to recruit businesses that can bring jobs to the community, it must also follow its own rules for evaluating projects.

“Jobs are important,” he said, “but we’re not going to compromise our city standards to create jobs.”

Time and money prompted Ronan to withdraw from its escrow agreement, Hewitson said. Had the company stayed in the agreement waiting for a Planning Commission decision on Westoaks, it would have had to pay the landowner an additional $300,000, Hewitson said.

Ronan will watch Monday’s discussion closely, he said. Although the company is considering other sites, including some in Simi Valley and Moorpark, it is still interested in locating on Townsgate.

“We would strongly consider making an offer for the property if the storage unit was rejected because we had a significant amount of money invested in the architectural design for the site,” Hewitson said.