Planners Approve 600-Unit Storage Center Near Freeway : Development: Decision may cause Ronan Engineering to cancel plans to build new headquarters on adjacent property.

A proposal to build a self-storage center near the Ventura Freeway won the Planning Commission’s approval Monday night.

Plans for Westoaks Self-Storage call for a 78,000-square-foot facility, including a series of buildings designed to look like one- and two-story office buildings. Landscaping will hide much of the complex from the nearby freeway.

The project, however, may have already caused a company that was planning to move to Thousand Oaks to reconsider and possibly move elsewhere.

Ronan Engineering, which had planned to build a new headquarters on Townsgate Road between Hampshire Road and Westlake Boulevard, warned the city this summer that it would back out if the commission approved plans for the 600-unit Westoaks storage facility to be built on an adjacent lot.

Douglas A. Hewitson, Ronan’s chief financial officer, had said earlier that his company would not build next to the storage center if it were approved.

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Planning commissioners, however, said the self-storage project blended in perfectly with the neighborhood.

“What a brilliant solution to problems that really could have raised some hackles,” said commission Chairwoman Marilyn Carpenter. “I think it’s an outstanding project.”

Dennis L. Geiler, a co-owner of Westoaks, said his partners had worked hard to design a project that would satisfy the city’s stringent design standards and fit into the neighborhood.

“It took a long time and a lot of trial, a lot of coming back to the city with solutions . . . but it’s going to be great to be part of this community,” he said.

The project has taken a long and bumpy road to approval. Plans for Westoaks hit a potentially fatal snag in May when the City Council, concerned that a storage center so close to the freeway might detract from the city’s appearance and might not be the best use for such prime land, imposed a temporary moratorium on new storage facilities along the freeway corridor.

The moratorium was prompted by complaints from Ronan, which had been planning a 100,000-square-foot building for about 250 employees on the adjacent lot. Ronan learned about Westoaks in March, several months after it had entered an escrow agreement to purchase the land.

Hewitson said that while his company had nothing against self-storage companies, the firm wants its neighbors to be other corporations.

In June, however, the council exempted Westoaks from the moratorium. Because the project’s developers had dealt with the city in good faith, council members said, subjecting them to the moratorium would be unfair.

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About one month after the City Council exempted Westoaks, Ronan dropped out of its escrow agreement on the adjacent property, Hewitson said. Although the company was still interested in the Townsgate location, particularly after investing in architects’ plans for the site, it also began to consider relocating to other cities, including Simi Valley and Moorpark.

Hewitson said recently that he did not know where the company would move to or when it might select another location.