Planners Approve the Building of 2 Long-Awaited High School Theaters

After decades of planning, a proposal to build new, 400-seat theaters at two Conejo Valley high schools finally has both the money to move forward and the city’s blessings.

Early Tuesday, the Thousand Oaks Planning Commission voted unanimously to approve plans for the theaters at Newbury Park and Thousand Oaks high schools.

“It’s been a long time coming,” Commissioner Marilyn Carpenter said. “At these two high schools, they desperately needed those theaters to make use of the talents of the students.”

The district has wanted to build the theaters for about 30 years, according to Supt. Jerry Gross. But progress was delayed by a lack of funding for the theaters, which will cost about $2.3 million each.

Then in January, the City Council agreed to spend $3.3 million to pay for both the Thousand Oaks High School theater and a sports stadium at Westlake High School. The school district will pay for the theater at Newbury Park High School.

Now that commissioners have approved the project, district officials hope to break ground on both theaters this summer and open them for school plays and concerts by September, 1997.

“Now the process is really underway,” Gross said. “We can get construction started fairly soon, and people will finally be able to see something many people thought they’d never see.”

By state law, the theaters are considered minor additions to the schools and, as such, did not require Planning Commission approval. But officials with the Conejo Valley Unified School District--following a tradition of seeking city advice on building projects--asked for and won the commission’s approval.

Both theaters follow a similar design: A glass-front lobby leads into an auditorium. A tower above the stage provides room to raise and hide scenery backdrops during plays.

The proposed towers, about 50 feet tall, are taller than Thousand Oaks’ building standards normally allow. City planners, however, recommended that commissioners approve the building plans, saying the towers were set back from nearby streets and would not loom over adjacent neighborhoods.

City planners expressed concerns about a possible shortage of parking at Newbury Park High School, where the theater would be built on what is now a parking lot. Construction of the theater, near the intersection of Reino Road and Lesser Drive, would eliminate 48 parking spaces in a lot that planners said is already too small.

School district officials, however, said their surveys of the lot found between 87 and 141 empty spaces at any given time. And the roadside curbs surrounding the campus, they said, provide room for several hundred cars.

The theaters, Gross said, would provide an enormous boost to drama programs at both schools, which until now have used classrooms and a converted wood-work shop for rehearsals.

“The kids are going to see this and want to get up on that stage,” he said.