Agoura Hills Bans ‘Big Boxes’

With some absentee ballots still to be counted, Agoura Hills voters appeared to have narrowly approved an initiative that prohibits construction of any retail building larger than 60,000 square feet.

Measure H won by 120 votes out of about 4,600 counted Tuesday. City Clerk Carol Tubelis said election workers today will begin tallying an unknown number of absentee ballots dropped off at the polls.

“I don’t know if it will affect results,” Tubelis said Wednesday. She estimated that Los Angeles County officials will have a final count by Monday.

The measure arose from opposition to plans to build a Home Depot store on Agoura Road, near the city’s most prominent point, Ladyface Mountain. Passage of the initiative effectively kills that project.

All five City Council members opposed the measure, saying it was too restrictive and bad for the local economy.

“We’re handcuffed,” Mayor Denis Weber said Wednesday. “Who is going to want to take the risk to build?”

Measure H supporters said the election results proved that big-box stores did not belong in Agoura Hills.

“It just doesn’t fit with our city,” said Michael Gallop, a member of Citizens for Responsible Growth, which promoted Measure H. Businesses that would have competed with the Home Depot also backed the initiative.

Plans for the 11.4-acre Home Depot project call for a 115,000-square-foot anchor store and 24,000-square-foot garden center. The development would generate an estimated $500,000 in sales tax revenue in the first year of operation and more in later years, Weber said.

“Our budget is pretty bare-bones,” said Weber, suggesting that the council might have to enact some city taxes. “Measure H is going to hurt us.”

The developer of the Home Depot project, Dan Selleck of Selleck Development Group in Westlake Village, declined to comment Wednesday.

“We will wait until we have the final results,” he said.

“I’m disappointed,” said Thom Bancroft, co-chair of Taxpayers Opposing Special Treatment, a group that fought Measure H. He said voters were misled to believe the initiative only applied to the Home Depot proposal.

“We were never able to free ourselves from the misconception,” he said.