Exemplary Redevelopment

Congratulations to the Thousand Oaks City Council for approving exactly the sort of low-density, family-oriented town center development its residents have dreamed of for years.

The complicated deal that makes this possible is an example of how cities can use the state’s redevelopment law to support projects that simply wouldn’t be built with private money alone. By teaming up with Rick J. Caruso, well-regarded developer of the successful Promenade at Westlake and Village at Moorpark shopping centers, the city is likely to get far more for its redevelopment dollars than it would get alone. And it will end up with a vastly more desirable asset than the sort of big-box megastores that simple economics would dictate for that site.

The city purchased the 11-acre parcel just east of its Civic Arts Plaza in 1990, in part to head off a plan to build a Target store there. It has taken a decade of hard work and patience to craft just the right combination of public and private development to make the most of this prime location.

We believe the current plan was worth waiting for. When completed it will include a 110,000-square-foot Discovery Center science museum with an IMAX giant-screen theater, a commercial collection of stores, restaurants and a 10- to 12-screen stadium-seating movie complex, a three-story office building and a 1.1-acre pond--part of which can be frozen in winter for ice skating.

The commercial development’s parking garage will also serve the nonprofit Discovery Center and the new Gardens of the World on the opposite side of Thousand Oaks Boulevard. Combined with the various performance spaces at the Civic Arts Plaza, the complex should make an attractive destination for people of all ages.

The city’s familiar chorus of naysayers had to work hard to find fault with this plan but a number of them made the effort. The use of public money for what is largely a private enterprise set off the alarms of those unclear on the concept of redevelopment financing. Often controversial, redevelopment law allows cities to revitalize specific areas by investing those areas’ anticipated extra tax income in improvements likely to create that increase in the tax take.

Although this vacant 11 acres hasn’t produced a dime of sales tax income during the decade the city has kept it vacant, once the new complex opens it should provide a steady stream. The crowds it attracts should benefit other merchants along this commercial corridor as well.

Thousand Oaks has become an enviable city because its leaders have often had the courage to envision great things and the savvy to hold out for the right way to achieve them. In league with the Civic Arts Plaza and Gardens of the World, we expect this complex to become the centerpiece of this outstanding city.