Traffic Fears Fail to Block a Blockbuster

Petitions, pleas from community members and a videotape of a congested parking lot failed to convince the City Council on Tuesday to stop Blockbuster Video from moving into the corner of Westlake Plaza that once housed Erika’s Bake Shop.

The plaza’s owner, Trust Company of the West, had already received permission from city planners to allow Blockbuster to remodel and occupy the now-empty space. But Ernest Martel, owner of a nearby video shop, appealed the decision, saying Blockbuster’s proposed location along Agoura Road would snarl traffic coming into the parking lot that the two stores would share.

He asked first the Planning Commission, then the City Council, to move the video giant to another storefront farther from his store.

“Obviously, I don’t want them in the center,” Martel said before the council meeting. However, “if they want to go somewhere else in the center, I have no problem with that.”

But the city attorney’s office said the council had no power to require Blockbuster to move.

City planners had said that council members could have rejected the Blockbuster project entirely, but instead, they voted 3-2 Tuesday to let it proceed as planned.

Council members Elois Zeanah and Jaime Zukowski voted in favor of the appeal. By combining several vacant storefronts into one large high-volume store, they said, the project would dramatically increase traffic and safety problems in the center.

“We have already lost Erika’s because of Blockbuster at this corner,” Zeanah said. “Do we also need to lose a life?”

Council member Judy Lazar said the shopping center’s owners had a right to put Blockbuster in that location.

“We have a permitted use in a shopping center,” she said. “We have a shopping center that has chosen to combine some units. And that’s entirely within their purview.”

Blockbuster officials could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

The Blockbuster project had run afoul of some community residents even before Martel filed his appeal. One of the storefronts the video store will occupy formerly contained a popular, family-run bakery.

Erika’s Bake Shop closed last year when its lease expired. The owner, DieterichHeinzelmann, said he could not afford to move his shop to another site within the plaza.

Martel said he had no trouble convincing more than 2,000 area residents, most of them customers, to sign a petition against Blockbuster’s move to the shopping plaza’s southeast corner.

And although the issue affects the future health of Martel’s business, he said most of those signing the petition were more concerned about the project’s effect on traffic and parking. The lot that will separate the two stores also provides parking for Vons, Starbucks and several other stores.

“It’s not having a big guy coming in,” he said. “Consumers love multiple choices. They would love to have another choice if I don’t have something. But that hasn’t been the issue all along. The issue has been the parking. It’s been, ‘How am I going to get into Vons?’ ”

Janis Leung said she worked for years in the American Airlines ticket office near the disputed driveway until her office moved out of the center last fall.

“In my eight years I’d been there, I’ve called 911,” she said. “We’ve had to call paramedics . . . We hear the screeching of wheels. It’s quite nerve-racking to work there. Having a Blockbuster there will create major congestion.”

Martel also brought to the meeting a videotape showing traffic congestion at a driveway directly adjacent to Blockbuster’s future space. In January, concern about congestion led Thousand Oaks planning commissioners to change the store’s layout, requiring that the main entrance face south, toward Agoura Road, instead of east, as the company had proposed.