City Expands With Few Growing Pains Thanks to Master Plan

THOUSAND OAKS — From Day 1, the desire has been the same: Shape a city to save this oak-studded valley from earthmovers and the monotony of suburban sprawl.

And today, although Thousand Oaks has grown six times larger in the last 33 years, citizens and city leaders generally agree that they did what they set out to do.

They braked a building boom long enough to mold an uncommon city mostly hidden from freeway passersby beneath thousands of trees and behind dozens of hills--a community of 112,000 that still feels small.

By following a visionary master plan--and saving oak trees, hillsides and ridgelines--they fashioned a city with far fewer people than first imagined, and with much more open space. It stands today as Ventura County’s richest and best-educated city, second in size to Oxnard. In 1995, it was the safest large city in America.

“A combination of things has helped us create a city that is excellent,” said veteran City Manager Grant Brimhall. “Some of it is dumb luck, but a lot of it was planning too. Planning has been a key aspect of our mantra.”

But as Thousand Oaks leaves behind its youthful period of well-managed growth, critics say laxity could still turn a good plan bad, resulting in too much traffic and noise as builders chew at the city’s edges and pack too many people into too little space at its core.

“We have a wonderful city, but the standards that were so strict for so long are being relaxed,” says Councilwoman Elois Zeanah, elected on an environmental platform in 1990.

“This is the most important time to hold the line,” adds Councilwoman Linda Parks, who placed first in November’s council election and who also believes that city government is willing to bend too much to the forces of growth.

How great are the threats of growth to this leafy, white-collar community of low crime, good schools and expansive parks? How large are the cracks in the veneer of the city’s vaunted General Plan?

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Some questions already can be answered:

* Although a 1970 Thousand Oaks master plan for development envisioned an ultimate population of 185,000 people, the city will probably end up with about 134,000, thanks largely to market trends favoring single-family homes over condominiums and apartments.

* Most growth decisions that will shape Thousand Oaks for decades have already been made. About 40,000 of the 47,600 dwellings planned have been built. About 13,000 of the 14,400 acres planned for open space have been dedicated, as have nearly 800 of the 840 acres of city parkland.

* New restrictions on development of parkland and open space make it unlikely that the city’s signature attribute, a “semirural atmosphere” spoken of in almost rapturous terms, will be lost.

“We have been very faithful to the General Plan,” said former Mayor Alex Fiore, a councilman for 30 years before retiring in 1994 as an unofficial mayor emeritus. “Now I think we can relax a little.”

It is also clear, however, that past decisions will still bring significant change, and that resolution of new issues could change the city even more.

Among the more important topics left to fight about are:

* Whether to widen roads to accommodate traffic, which is getting worse by the year, especially at intersections near subdivisions still under construction. The junction of the Ventura Freeway and Wendy Drive in Newbury Park, for example, had 33,000 daily trips in 1994, and 51,000 are projected by 2010.

* Whether to keep the city’s pledge to remain separate from neighboring Simi Valley--unlike the indistinguishable blur of communities throughout Southern California. The proposed 306-house Woodridge project to be debated this year would virtually link the two communities, placing dwellings on grazing land that is now outside city limits.

* Whether to allow more large stores and shopping centers, which critics say only degrade the city’s bucolic ambience while killing long-established mom-and-pop shops. This issue was highlighted in 1995 when the City Council amended the General Plan to approve the Seventh-day Adventist commercial project in Newbury Park.

* Whether to allow construction of thousands of new single-family houses on postage-stamp lots originally approved for condominiums that have not been built because the condo market nearly disappeared.

* Whether to allow larger, taller and more urban structures along historic thoroughfares such as Thousand Oaks Boulevard. Critics say the city set a destructive precedent by steering away from its low-profile, single-story past when building the towering Civic Arts Plaza.

* Whether to relax strict guidelines that have dictated everything from the color of roofs to the size of store signs. In 1994 the City Council approved a larger auto mall sign and has since received a flood of requests from other businesses wanting bigger signs.

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As these issues are debated by the city’s increasingly bitter pro-business and slow-growth factions, the energy of each side is a given. Indeed, Thousand Oaks has always been defined by tensions between residents intent on preserving the best of their communities and developers who see change as a virtue.

“It’s been a 30-year tug of war between the City Council, the developers and the people who live in the community,” said former Mayor Frances Prince, one of a series of council members elected after fighting a project as a homeowner. “And the issues we talked about have always been the same--arguments about zoning and density.”

The conceptual framework of future debate shapes up this way:

The pro-business side, led by a City Council majority, argues that Thousand Oaks is almost fully formed and decisions now only fine-tune a municipal machine already working on all cylinders.

“We know what’s going to happen here. The restrictions we have placed here--including some in the past year--have left our future virtually locked up,” said Mayor Judy Lazar. “We are going to continue to be an enviable community for years to come, and nothing will change that now.”

The slow-growth side, which includes a vocal City Council minority, believes the city has abandoned its tough stance against excessive development.

Critics point specifically to the City Council’s approval of three Newbury Park projects over the last nine years: Nathan Shapell’s Rancho Conejo development and the Dos Vientos Ranch subdivision, both in 1988, and the Seventh-day Adventist business park in 1995.

“Those were the turning points where we changed from good planning to changing the rules for developers,” Zeanah said.

Critics say that Shapell was allowed to break city rules when grading hillsides and filling in canyons to build 1,450 houses and apartments and a 100-acre business park; that the 2,350-home Dos Vientos Ranch represents road-clogging sprawl; and that the 750,000-square-foot Adventist retail and industrial park is outside the city’s shopping core and will require extensive grading.

Many officials say, however, that the projects are good for the community to some extent.

“I’m not thrilled about Shapell or Dos Vientos, but there were significant open space dedications out of those,” said Rorie Skei, longtime chairwoman of the local open space conservation agency.

About 800 of Shapell’s 1,862 acres are now public open space, and 1,202 acres of the 2,312-acre Dos Vientos Ranch will be left undeveloped as well. Officials also note that both projects are much smaller than first proposed.

“There are people who say, ‘I don’t want to see a thing at Dos Vientos.’ And as someone who lives back there, I don’t,” former Councilman Bob Lewis said. “But the bottom line is that property owners have rights. You have to find a middle ground.”

The Adventist decision was equally controversial, partly because trade-offs to the community were less substantial. Although the deal included 650 acres of open space, the project violated two key tenets of Thousand Oaks planning, scraping away a hillside and placing a shopping center on the outskirts of town.

But Councilman Mike Markey is among those who argue that the Adventist approval demonstrates that a city master plan is only a general blueprint to be altered when it makes sense.

“I live in Newbury Park,” he said, “and let me tell you we need a shopping center over here. There is no way anyone can tell me that Newbury Park did not need that shopping center.”

Symbolic of the debate about whether the city has begun to bend too much to the will of business interests is the current argument about whether the city should relax historic standards and allow stores of all sizes to advertise with larger signs on the street.

Last year, at the suggestion of business leaders, then-Mayor Andy Fox proposed doubling the size of stand-alone signs and allowing more colorful strip mall directories. The motion was tabled but is expected to come back.

Exceptions have already been made for the auto mall and the newly renovated Janss Marketplace. “The second you let one shopping center have a bigger sign, you open the floodgates,” Parks said.

Also affecting the overall look and feel of the city will be council decisions about how to revitalize the shops that have lined Thousand Oaks Boulevard for decades.

Now anchored by the 10-story Civic Arts Plaza, the funky old boulevard could soon be awash with imposing structures of glass and steel much like the San Fernando Valley’s harried Ventura Boulevard, critics say.

As early as this week, in fact, the City Council will begin to review plans for a privately owned adjunct to the arts plaza. The plans would allow for the proposed movie theater, restaurant and office complex to reach a height of four stories. That would further block a clear view across the Conejo Valley, a remarkable “viewshed” long cited as a distinguishing trait of the city.

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Even boulevard property owners are split about what the thoroughfare should look like in years to come. Some favor creation of an “old town” walking mall that would attract tourists with quaint shops and a slow pace. Others say the city should preserve the boulevard as it is--a collection of gas stations, furniture stores and family restaurants.

Another seminal issue that could change the face of Thousand Oaks is the shape of new construction on lots once planned for condos.

The City Council’s 3-2 decision last year to allow single-family homes on lots smaller than the city’s 5,000-square-foot minimum has sparked keen interest by developers who want to build more salable detached houses.

Similar houses are already being sold on a flattened hill in Lang Ranch under a court-approved settlement.

Inside iron security gates, narrow homes in the Verdigris subdivision resemble row houses in Baltimore. They are spaced so closely that one can stand with arms outstretched and nearly touch two houses at a time.

But they are selling. More than half have closed escrow since April 1995--the smallest at 1,440 square feet costs $223,000, and the largest at 1,789 square feet is $242,000.

Swedish immigrants Anahid and Edik Zohrabi shopped Southern California for three years before buying at Lang Ranch. “I’d heard about Thousand Oaks,” Anahid said, “about the schools and that it is the safest city in California.”

Indeed, while there is disagreement about challenges of the future, residents are unambiguous when they rate their city as a place to live. In a survey two years ago, 96 out of every 100 said they were satisfied and more than half said they were very satisfied.

There is plenty to like.

Located in a high valley at the nexus of three mountain ranges, Thousand Oaks still has so much wild terrain that coyotes and mountain lions sometimes drop in to backyards. The Conejo is also known for its unspoiled hills--Rattlesnake, Tarantula, Labisco, Glider, Fireworks and Pork Chop among them.

More than half of the city’s 55 square miles remains open space or vacant land. Houses cover just a quarter of the three communities within its borders--swanky Westlake on the east, rebellious Newbury Park on the west and old Thousand Oaks in the middle.

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In the shadow of the bustling Ventura Freeway, equestrians still ride on community bridle paths, and hikers and mountain bikers traverse a 100-mile ring of trails.

Like many others, Fiore judges the city’s success by what he sees when he scans the horizon. “You can still stand at Thousand Oaks High School and look 180 degrees west without seeing anything on the ridgelines,” he said.

Prince points to city parks, a fine municipal library and a teen center as examples of the city’s commitment to children, and also hails the new Civic Arts Plaza for involving kids in the arts.

More than 100,000 students have disgorged from more than 1,000 school buses to see plays and ballets since the arts center’s 1994 opening. And while critics still insist the center was not worth draining other city funds to build, it is undeniably a hit with youngsters.

On a recent Monday morning, more than 1,200 students and their teachers piled into the Civic Arts Plaza for a performance of “Sleeping Beauty.”

“It’s a wonderful community asset,” said teacher Annette Sedey, keeping her class of Conejo Elementary School students in line like a mother duckling. “We can do so much more now.”

A number of factors--from good climate to large early landowners who planned responsibly--conspired to make Thousand Oaks the upscale haven it is today.

But shaping the community more than anything was the vigor with which residents have always fought to save the tree-lined roads and open vistas that attracted them here in the first place--and that continue to draw professionals, executives and movie stars.

“This has always been a rock-and-roll place in terms of fights,” veteran city Planning Director Phil Gatch said. “There were fights all the time.”

In 1969, they fought about whether the city should eventually have 86,000 residents or 186,000--and as the community approaches the end of its growth, the actual figure appears to be about halfway in between.

In 1974, they fought about whether the city should have a regional shopping mall--and today a tax-rich center at The Oaks has caused fewer traffic snarls than predicted, although some still complain about its design.

In 1980, they fought about whether the city was growing too fast--and voters opted to slow construction to 500 houses a year with the landmark Measure A.

In 1986, they fought about whether the city could slash the number of houses approved at the sprawling Lang Ranch, and a federal judge sided with the developer, allowing narrow houses on tiny lots and declaring he would be the city’s “zoning czar” if local officials didn’t shape up.

In 1990, they fought about whether to pour $64 million into a new City Hall and Civic Arts Plaza.

And last year, City Council factions fought about whether an initiative protecting open space and parkland from development was necessary. After thousands of voters endorsed the measure, the pro-business City Council majority grudgingly approved it.

From the start, citizens were intimately involved in planning.

Just a few years after residents voted overwhelmingly to incorporate in 1964, the City Council appointed a committee of 100 citizens to help draft a city master plan. An extensive attitude survey--repeated every five years since, as a kind of city report card--also gave direction.

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In response, the City Council made preservation of natural habitat a principal hallmark of a plan to build a community balanced by housing, jobs, education, shopping and culture.

Over the next decade, the council approved regulations that scaled back development and protected oak trees. In 1966, Boy Scouts actually counted the remaining oaks to make sure there were still enough to justify the city’s name. There were 3,298.

Today, landowners cannot cut a mature oak tree without a permit. When one is cut, it must be replaced by three smaller ones. Offenders have been jailed and fined as much as $20,000. The estimate of oak trees is now between 10,000 and 20,000.

The city reemphasized its commitment to open space in 1977 by joining the parks district to create California’s first local agency to buy and maintain open space.

“We had to be proactive,” said Tex Ward, general manager of the Conejo Recreation and Park District. In Thousand Oaks, that meant twisting developers’ arms, then cutting deals with them.

As the young city shaped its boundaries in broad strokes, however, its middle expanded. Population more than doubled during the 1970s to 77,072.

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Again, residents rose up.

Homeowner activists, including Bob Lewis and Lee Laxdal, authored Measure A on behalf of a valleywide coalition.

“Most of us here tend to be conservative, and we respect property rights,” said Lewis, later a councilman. “But we felt that the growth being proposed was more than the city could handle.”

As the City Council responded to its homeowner constituents, its list of enemies grew.

Indeed, many developers complain that Thousand Oaks has been the schoolyard bully of Southern California cities, taunting builders as part of an overzealous crusade to limit growth.

While the city has won most challenges to its authority, elected officials lost two big cases by taking the wishes of their constituents too far.

In addition to the Lang Ranch loss, Thousand Oaks agreed last year to settle its decade-long battle with the Cohan family, allowing construction of a shopping center and housing tract on 47 acres in Newbury Park.

A state appeals court chastised the city for violating the family’s rights and succumbing to “the roar of the crowd” in rejecting the development in 1992--a decision that left owner Nedjatollah Cohan sobbing at City Hall.

But despite the trauma of a long fight, Cohan’s son, Albert, said his family still hopes to move to Thousand Oaks.

“My family wasn’t treated well, but it wasn’t personal,” said the son, a San Fernando Valley resident. “We’ve always said that one of us would like to live out here.”

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GROWTH IN THOUSAND OAKS

By following a visionary master plan--and saving oak trees, hillsides and ridgelines--community leaders have fashioned a city with far fewer people than first imagined, and with much more open space. Thirty-three years after disgruntled voters approved incorporation, Thousand Oaks is six times more populous. But, responding to angry citizens, officials braked a building boom long enough to shape construction to the standards of a community intent on preserving its semirural atmosphere.

RESIDENT SNAPSHOT

Place of employment (head of household)

Conejo Valley

1969: 24.4%

1984: 39.3%

1994: 40.4%

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Previous residence

San Fernando Valley:

1969: 36.0%

1984: 25.6%

1994: 28.3%

Another state:

1969: 16.1%

1984: 23.9%

1994: 18.7%

Conejo Valley:

1969: 4.7%

1984: 13.5%

1994: 11.0%

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Type of residence

Single family home:

1969: 93.9%

1984: 77.7%

1994: 74.5%

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Average Age

1970: 26

1994: 35

1990 RESIDENT SNAPSHOT, A COMPARISON

Racial makeup (white):

City: 84%

County: 66%

State: 57%

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Median household income:

City: $56,856

County: $45,612

State: $35,798

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Managers and professionals:

City: 38.5%

County: 29.2%

State: 28.6%

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Percentage of college graduates:

City: 35%

County: 23%

State: 23%

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Owner-occupied homes:

City: 73.7%

County: 65.5%

State: 57.6%

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Crime rate (per 1,000 residents, 1995):

City: 24.6

County: 35.1

State: 58.0

THOUSAND OAKS FACT SHEET

Square Miles:

Incorp. 1964: 14.3

1970: 37

1996: 55

Projected at Build-out: 60

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Acres:

Incorp. 1964: 9,144

1970: 23,600

1996: 35,100

Projected at Build-out: 38,500

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Population:

Incorp. 1964: 19,000

1970: 35,873

1996: 112,000

Projected at Build-out: 134,000

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Parkland (acres):

Incorp. 1964: 0

1970: 14

1996: 790

Projected at Build-out: 840

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Open Space (acres):

Incorp. 1964: 0

1970: 1,800

1996: 13,000

Projected at Build-out: 14,000

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Dwellings (units):

Incorp. 1964: 5,588

1970: 10,524

1996: 40,200

Projected at Build-out: 47,600

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LAND USE

1969:

Industrial: 1.0%

Commercial: 1.0%

Open space: 2.0%

Govt.: 2.0%

Streets: 6.0%

Residential: 10.0%

Vacant land: 78.0%

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1996:

Industrial: 1.5%

Commercial: 2.5%

Open space: 36.0%

Govt.: 4.0%

Streets: 8.0%

Residential: 26.0%

Vacant land: 22.0%