Planners Approve Towne Center Project

The Planning Commission’s unanimous approval Monday night of a new shopping center on the city’s eastern edge now sends the popular project to the City Council for consideration.

After several hours of discussion, the commission authorized the Thousand Oaks Towne Center project, the final step before the shopping center plan is discussed by the council Jan. 23.

For about 45 minutes before the vote, residents applauded the project--which would create a 209,780-square-foot shopping plaza at the intersection of Thousand Oaks and Westlake boulevards--and thanked developer Rick Caruso for taking seriously their comments while designing the $35-million center.

“He came to the community early on and made every effort to include our ideas throughout the process,” said Cathy Schutz, president of the Westlake Joint Board, a coalition of homeowners associations. Caruso met several times with board members last year while the project was still taking shape.

Kirsten Larsen, president of the Westlake Hills Property Owners Assn., told commissioners she liked the center’s proposed tenants, including a Barnes & Noble bookstore and an eight-screen Mann movie theater. She dismissed the suggestion that a new movie theater was not needed, because of the number of theaters already open nearby.

“We would love to go down to that corner instead of Agoura [Hills]” she said. “This is our neighborhood.”

The comments were not lost on the many of whom had already said they were pleased with the shopping center plan. “I’d like to compliment Mr. Caruso on the fine PR job he’s done here tonight,” joked Commissioner Ronald Polanski. “I think the deck’s well-stacked.”

The only complaint came from the owners of an existing office building that would be sandwiched between the new development and the Ventura Freeway. Nasser Moradian, a partner in Shato Holdings, the building owner, said the development would cut off his building’s driveway onto Westlake Boulevard.

“We love the project, we wish it well, but we just don’t want our new neighbor to cut off our driveway,” he told the commissioners.

Caruso told the commission that people would have access to the office building through the shopping center. The driveway, he said, would stay open until development had progressed far enough to allow people to reach the office building through the center.

Moradian said Tuesday that he was not satisfied with that answer and would press the city for a better solution. “We don’t want to have access through some other person’s property,” he said. “We don’t want to be landlocked. This really degrades our property.”

Commissioners raised few objections to the project Monday night. After some debate, they voted to remove from the plans a movie theater sign that would face the freeway, but made few other changes.

After the vote, Caruso said he was thrilled with the meeting’s results and grateful for the residents’ support of his project.

“The community was very excited by it,” he said. “They helped design it and tailor it to their needs. . . . The homeowners were great.”

If approved by the council on Jan. 23, the center could open for business in November, Caruso said.