Park Service to Lease Half of Old City Hall

After sitting fallow for nine years, half of the striking but neglected old City Hall on West Hillcrest Drive has a new occupant: the administrators and rangers of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.

Under terms of a five-year lease brokered between the Thousand Oaks city attorney and the federal government, the southern “eyebrow on the hill” will be leased for $411,840 annually.

The National Park Service, one of three agencies that oversee the 150,000-acre recreation area, has an option to renew the lease for another three years, according to a memorandum prepared by City Atty. Mark G. Sellers.

“I think this is the best news and the best use for the site possible,” City Councilwoman Elois Zeanah said Thursday. “The buildings are so environmentally built and tucked into the hills. Once you’re in there, you have this 360-degree, panoramic view of the city--just a priceless view--and you can see the Santa Monica Mountains. It’s just so fitting.”

The lease brings needed revenue for the city, which had banked on selling or renting the site years ago. And it improves the chances that the unique structure, recently named a cultural landmark by the City Council, will be preserved and restored.

City officials estimate that it will take $1.2 million to renovate the south building before the park service can move in. Council members are expected to ratify the lease at their next meeting.

“I like the idea that the building will be preserved longer,” Councilwoman Linda Parks said. “Now that the city is putting money into making tenant improvements, we’ll have more of an interest in preserving both buildings. I don’t think we’d keep one and demolish another.”

The lease has been in the works for months, with the General Services Administration--the landlord for federal government agencies--looking at a handful of sites. GSA officials in Los Angeles and San Francisco did not return calls for comment Thursday.

The smaller of the two trapezoidal buildings at 401 W. Hillcrest Drive, the southern building will afford the park service 20,000 square feet of office space and 115 parking spaces for employees and visitors.

The existing Agoura Hills headquarters is a cramped for the service’s 72 administrators, biologists and rangers, said Arthur Eck, superintendent of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, which stretches from the Hollywood Bowl to Point Mugu. Because of the outdoor nature of their work, only about 30 to 40 park employees work at the headquarters on an average day, he added.

“The one thing that was a problem for us was parking for visitors,” he said.

“What we’re looking forward to is having this thing behind us. We’ve been living in a state of uncertainty for more than a year, as far as whether we would stay or whether we would move. I know everyone wants to get back to work.”

Park service employees could move into the building within six or seven months, said Ed Johnduff, the city’s special projects manager.

From the city’s standpoint, council members said, the lease is a coup on several fronts: finances, community relations and preservation.

Once valued at about $13 million if sold, the two white structures have been the city’s white elephants in recent years: empty havens for vandals, beer-swilling squatters and furtive teen lovebirds.

Built in 1974, the buildings had fallen into disrepair--repelling neighbors and potential lessors. The buildings--rife with asbestos--were vacated in 1988.

Before the park service occupies the new digs, the city will have to make a number of tenant improvements--replacing shattered windows, installing carpet and fixing the ceiling. Rehabilitating the building will cost about $1.2 million, Johnduff said. A portion of the annual rent will be used to reimburse the city for the cost of fixing the building.

But some income beats none, Mayor Judy Lazar said.

“It’s certainly not [the amount of] the sale of the property, but it is still a substantial amount of money,” she said.

And improving the site can only make the northern building--with about 30,000 square feet of office space--more attractive to potential tenants, she added.

Spiffing up the site will also please neighbors, who have complained that the buildings once worthy of architectural acclaim had degenerated to eyesores, Councilman Andy Fox said.

Given the City Council’s recent decision to rezone the 62-acre landmark site for convalescent homes and assisted-living communities, the lease tickled preservationists too. Slow-growth advocates feared that the environmentally friendly buildings would be leveled to make way for condos.

William Maple, the museum exhibit designer who worked for two years to get the old Civic Center site recognized as a local landmark, was ecstatic about the National Park Service moving in.

“It’s fantastic,” he said. “There’s no better group I can think of that represents the community’s values better than the National Park Service.”

Maple said the park service’s activist stance on open space conservation and preservation of historical landmarks makes the situation ideal from his perspective, but he remains cautious.

“I’ll be really happy when they get the glass [windows] back in,” he said. “I also hope they start refurbishing the north building.”

Kate Folmar is a Times staff writer and Jason Terada is a correspondent.