Developer Moves to Garner Support for Thousand Oaks Shopping Center : Growth: Rick Caruso brings his proposal to a meeting of 50 community residents. They ask him many questions but do not voice objections.

Hoping to avoid the neighborhood opposition that doomed an earlier mall project on the city’s eastern edge, developer Rick Caruso took his plans for a new mall to a meeting of Westlake community leaders Thursday night.

The meeting drew more than 50 residents to the North Ranch Community Center, many armed with questions about what the 200,000-square-foot Thousand Oaks Town Center would do to traffic in the community.

Although Caruso, president of Brentwood-based Caruso Affiliated Holdings, had already discussed his plans with several members of the Westlake Joint Board, this was his first appearance before the board’s rank and file.

The project is still in its early stages. Caruso filed his plans with the city just last week, and a date for a public hearing before the Planning Commission has not yet been set. But Caruso said before the meeting that he wanted community input, and support, now.

“You don’t want to waste a lot of time going to the city if the homeowners object,” he said.

Caruso did not face objections at Thursday’s meeting, but he did field many questions. Residents asked which stores Caruso would bring, and what effect the open-air shopping center, planned for the intersection of Westlake and Thousand Oaks boulevards in Thousand Oaks, would have on traffic.

Bernie Kirschner of Thousand Oaks said he was concerned that the traffic might back up onto the nearby Ventura Freeway.

“At the end of the day when you get people coming home off the freeway, it gets pretty tight up there,” he said.

Thousand Oaks resident Diana Deed questioned the idea of bringing another multiscreen theater to the city, when neighborhood residents can already drive to several located nearby.

“I think a lot of concern is about the theater. Why do we need another theater?” she asked.

Many in the audience and several members of the joint board, a group representing about 40 homeowner associations in the Westlake area, liked Caruso’s plans.

“He’s got fabulous tenants--we’re very excited about the people he’s going to bring,” said Cathy Schutz, president of the joint board. The proposed mall, with its bookstore and multiscreen theater, would add to the community, Schutz said. “It’s going to offer some things we don’t have,” she said.

Caruso said the mall could hold between 20 and 30 tenants, including a Barnes & Noble bookstore, an eight-screen Mann movie theater, and a Bristol Farms grocery. The $35-million project could open in October, 1996, he said.

An earlier mall project, planned for another site at the same intersection by a different developer, died four years ago after area residents complained it was too tall and too dense for the area. Schutz said Caruso’s proposed mall didn’t have the same problems.

Caruso was wise to seek residents input early, she said.

“I think before he put pen to paper, he wanted to hear what we had to say, because we’re the people who are going to be using it,” she said.