King of the Hill : Fate of Old City Hall at Stake as New Zoning Is Considered

The view is worth far more than a million bucks.

From Martin McKinney’s window, the streets and buildings of Newbury Park march in miniature toward the southwestern edge of the Conejo Valley and the huge yellow cranes at Amgen, miles away, perch on a hill like toys.

McKinney, a grizzled, bearded Korean War veteran, is the caretaker of the original Thousand Oaks City Hall at 401 W. Hillcrest Drive, abandoned in 1988 only 14 years after it was built.

Living atop the building in a motor home with his three cats, McKinney was hired by the city in April to safeguard the two gleaming white trapezoids from the ravages of vandals and squatters.

“Everything here is mine. I own all this,” McKinney said, motioning toward his two battered cars in the overgrown parking lot on the building’s roof, and the propane barbecue and avocado-green refrigerator outside his door.

But the fate of the building beneath his feet and the 62 acres of land around it rests on far more than McKinney’s stewardship.

City officials, unable for years to sell the surplus property, want to rezone the site for hotels, restaurants, apartments and maybe even a golf course.

Preservationists want to protect the old city hall, which they consider a significant example of the environmentally conscious architecture of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

On Tuesday, at the new City Hall, the council will hold a public hearing to decide whether to change the land use designation of the site from “undevelopable,” “commercial” and “institutional” to “mixed residential/commercial” with “parks, golf courses and open space,” as recommended by the Planning Commission.

Mayor Judy Lazar said the city is seeking companies and individuals interested in buying or leasing the old civic center, including ongoing negotiations with the federal government to lease space for the National Park Service.

But she added that the building’s unique design has made it a hard sell.

“It has been a difficult building in a glutted real estate market,” she said. “We’ll keep trying to market it. We’re going to keep trying to move someone in there by lease or by sale.”

At the same meeting Tuesday, the council will consider whether to take responsibility for designating historically significant landmarks--a move that preservationists say could kill any chance for saving the old civic center.

The city’s efforts to develop the property have angered some residents, worried that the highly visible site on Fireworks Hill will eventually become crowded with more anonymous stucco buildings.

William Maple, who has led a two-year fight to save the building, said he is frustrated by what he perceives as a city government bent on subdividing the lot to pay off the substantial debt still owed on the new Civic Arts Plaza.

“They’re dividing it up like a side of beef and portioning out the entire hill so they can develop it to maximum density,” Maple said.

Maple suggested that city officials have allowed the civic center to rot on the hillside to help justify its eventual demolition. “It was purposefully done. It’s easier to destroy it if it’s trashed.”

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Over the years, vandals have broken many of the building’s smoked-glass windows and transients have set up house in the council chambers and the former offices of city officials.

Neglect and almost a decade of quibbling over what to do about the building transformed the “eyebrows on the hillside” into what many residents now consider a shameful, potentially dangerous eyesore littered with beer cans, shattered glass, broken furniture and used condoms.

Before McKinney was hired as caretaker, the vacant building was a haven for youths looking for a safe place to guzzle beer and fool around.

“It took us two months to clean that crap up and we still don’t have it completely cleaned up,” McKinney said with a measure of frustration.

His boss, Joe Schlesinger, who oversees the city’s general services division, said the gruff old man has kept most of the vandals and loiterers at bay. “It helps to have a presence up there,” he said.

Nestled into a slope sheltered by oaks and native plants, the civic center is still considered a milestone by many designers because of its understated but unmistakable presence on Fireworks Hill and its unity with the surrounding landscape.

Its architect, Robert Mason Houvener, won a $10,000 prize from the city in 1969 for his design in a nationwide competition.

The building also has its share of critics. After its completion, some residents likened it to a pair of giant bunkers overlooking the city.

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But it was asbestos, not the architecture, that prompted the city government to move out of the building in the late 1980s.

While the city conducted its business at interim city halls, plans for the Civic Arts Plaza--a combination city hall and performing arts center--were developing for the Jungleland site next to the Ventura Freeway.

In 1990, a citizens committee recommended moving City Hall to the Jungleland site and selling or leasing the old civic center to offset the costs of its construction. “It was deemed that was a more reasonable way to proceed, but unfortunately a year later the [real estate] market took a dive,” Lazar said.

She said the Hillcrest Drive center would not pass muster as a historical or architectural landmark. “You have to balance the fact that it’s a relatively new building,” she said. “It’s not like the [San Buenaventura] mission, which is at least 200 years old.”

But Maple said the civic center is one of the few buildings that set Thousand Oaks apart. Without it, the city would be another featureless Southern California suburb.

“If you tear it down, you wouldn’t be able to tell us apart from Camarillo,” he said. “There’s pride in 401 Hillcrest. That’s where the community started.”

But Maple acknowledges that he may be waging a losing campaign against city officials.

“It’s really been a battle of attrition,” he said. “They’ve got all the cards, and people are going to get burnt out.”

The deck may be further stacked against Maple and other preservationists if the City Council agrees Tuesday to serve as the arbiter for what buildings are designated landmarks.

The Ventura County Cultural Heritage Board originally decided which sites in the city became local landmarks, but in 1988 council members gave the job to the Thousand Oaks Arts Commission to bring control closer to home.

In May, the Arts Commission shifted the responsibility of acting as the Thousand Oaks Cultural Heritage Board back to the City Council after years of what some commission members have characterized as constant meddling and obfuscation by the city manager’s office. The council will consider officially taking on the job Tuesday night.

In a letter to council members, Maple argues that the council should hold a public hearing and assess the historical merit of the site before moving ahead with a specific plan for developing it. Right now, the specific plan is on Tuesday’s agenda as well.

Until the building’s future is decided, the city will continue to pay McKinney a stipend each month to live on the property seven days a week. His job is to keep anyone from bicycling, skateboarding or roller-blading on the civic center’s considerable expanse of flat asphalt and to run off vandals and other miscreants.

He said he tolerates the handful of walkers who venture up to the property and the occasional training exercises put on by the Ventura County Fire Department.

Among the trespassers McKinney has encountered while living at the site was an architect trying to get a closer look at the building.

“This building is in a book of architecture about fascinating designs,” McKinney said proudly. “It’s the only one of its kind.”