Renovation of 2nd Old City Hall Building OKd

After years of lying abandoned and prone to graffiti taggers, vagrants and vandals, the northern half of the “Eyebrows on the Hill”--this town’s landmark former City Hall--will soon receive a major face-lift.

Hoping to take advantage of a resurgent real estate market, Councilman Andy Fox suggested that Thousand Oaks spruce up and market the larger of two City Hall buildings off Hillcrest Drive--something that Councilwoman Linda Parks had proposed unsuccessfully earlier this year.

“There’s been a lot of finger-pointing on what has happened with 401 Hillcrest,” Fox said. “I think the responsible thing to do is to put [the buildings] in a condition where we can rent them or lease them.”

“I supported this motion when council member Parks made it during the budget hearings months ago,” Councilwoman Elois Zeanah said. “I’m glad to see the council coming around.”

City Manager Grant Brimhall went a step further, suggesting that Thousand Oaks solicit bids for an architectural consultant to oversee work on the second building, or simply contract the firm already overseeing the upcoming work on the south building for its new tenant, the National Park Service.

Earlier this year, the City Council voted to spruce up the south building for the federal agency, which will use it as headquarters for the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. The improvement plans are complete and the project is awaiting bids from contractors.

Council members voted unanimously late Tuesday to approve the Fox and Brimhall suggestions, and Thousand Oaks will now send out requests for proposals to bring the decaying, 33,000-square-foot structure up to modern standards. The City Hall complex, which totals more than 50,000 square feet, was built in the early 1970s.

Considered one of the city’s top assets, the buildings have been unused since Thousand Oaks moved out in 1988 to have asbestos in the building removed. Six years later, City Hall moved again, this time to the $64-million Civic Arts Plaza.

The potential income lost over the years by not selling or leasing the site has been a hot topic among the city’s warring political camps.

Over the years, the buildings have also been scarred by graffiti taggers, windows have been smashed and the structures have served as a hangout for teenagers as well as an unauthorized shelter for the homeless, angering many residents.

Once the north building is renewed and a long-term tenant is secured, Brimhall said, Thousand Oaks stands to receive annual rent of between $1 million and $1.2 million from the site.

The cost to spruce up the north building is unknown. But by contrast, it is expected to cost about $1.86 million to renovate the smaller, 18,000-square-foot south building. That work includes such improvements as installing electrical wiring, lighting, heating and air-conditioning as well as putting in new carpeting, adding an elevator, replacing shattered windows, fixing the ceiling and adding 2,000 additional square feet of space.

When council members were discussing the construction budget for the south building in March, Parks proposed fixing both buildings at once, saying that both would eventually need to be repaired anyway and that it would be cheaper than doing one now and another later.

But the council majority of Mayor Judy Lazar, Councilman Mike Markey and Fox disagreed. They argued at the time that while the $411,000 in annual rent from the National Park Service’s five-year lease was going to be used to repay the city’s reserves for the improvements on the south building, there was no such mechanism in place to pay for improvements to the rest of the complex.

On Tuesday, however, Fox said an improving market for office space in Ventura County indicated to him that it would make sense for Thousand Oaks to fix the north building with its own money because a tenant would likely be found quickly. Brimhall also said there have been inquiries into the availability of the building, leading him to conclude that the city would not be acting rashly by taking action.

Lazar said she had no problem going forward with improvements to the north building, but expressed reservations about just handing the contract to Baker Hogan Houx, the city’s architectural consultant for the other half of the complex.

“I think the advantage of getting competitive bids would be useful,” she said.

Council members agreed, voting to solicit bids for the work.