Planners to Consider Health Club Permit

The Thousand Oaks Planning Commission will consider Monday a permit for an 11,000-square-foot women’s health club in a space that was previously occupied by a drugstore in the Westlake Plaza Shopping Center.

At issue is whether the neighborhood mall has enough parking spaces to accommodate the Total Woman health club. Based on city requirements, the health club will require 75 spaces while a commercial retail facility of that size would require only 45.

But city planning codes say the commission could allow so-called shared use of parking spaces in cases where different tenants have peak hours of parking demand that do not overlap.

In a traffic study prepared by an independent consultant, the mall’s owner shows that the health club’s peak usage will be between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. while the current peak parking usage at Westlake Plaza is about 1 p.m.

The loophole allowing shared parking usage was invoked to allow fewer than required parking spaces at the new Promenade at Westlake where lack of sufficient parking has been a constant problem since its Nov. 7 opening.

The public hearing will be held at the Civic Arts Plaza on Monday at 7 p.m.