There’s no native landscaping in T.O.
2010-12-30 / Letters
This is to comment on the letter by Jeffrey Wissot about the proposed auto mall sign in the Dec. 9 issue. He says he wants to protect the native landscape and commends the attempt of certain candidates in the last election to “wrest the government from developers and return it to residents.”
These comments show he has little understanding of his town in spite of his evident appreciation.
First of all, there is virtually no native landscaping. Prior to 1963, Thousand Oaks consisted of denuded cattle-grazed valleys and foothills and a sparse sprinkling of oak trees. And the town he admires was conceptual and without any reality in the beginning.
The plan and idea of the greedy developers was to make Westlake Village a special and admired place and, by making it beautiful, increase its value.
Many contributed; their names should be remembered: D.K. Ludwig, Bechtel, John Notter, Gail Frampton, Robert Musgrove, Louis Pagano, Joseph Bowman, George Galanis, Luis Manzano, Bill Peterson, George Moore, James Dean, Jody La Chance, William Rudolf, Vito Lasala, Michael O’Sullivan and many others, including this author.
They all had larger or smaller parts in the team of developers and consultants that created Westlake, so developers are not the enemy. Ugliness is.
I believe Mr. Wissot should not focus his energy on preservation so much as supporting the right thing for a young, evolving town by promoting its beauty and increasing the value of what has been created by those developers.
The department in the city charged with making aesthetic judgments is the planning department. We should be able to rely on them for an independent, objective and authoritative answer, shouldn’t we?
The bottom line is this: No one claims that the proposed auto mall sign is beautiful or contributes to a more beautiful vista or increases the overall beauty and value of the town, and if such claims were made, we would all laugh. Stuart Kline Thousand Oaks
Auto mall actions smell of corruption
2010-12-30 / Letters
I’m beginning to think that T.O. City Council members Andy Fox, Jacqui Irwin, Tom Glancy and Dennis Gillette are trying to enter Thousand Oaks in a competition with Bell for the title of the “Most Corrupt City Council in the Country.”
These four all received campaign contributions from the auto mall dealers and their management, and now they are making decisions about spending $2 million at the auto mall and allowing the eyesore and traffic hazard of a monstrous blinking sign along the 101 as a payback to the auto mall?
And this is after spending around $400,000 for just 10 additional parking spaces at The Lakes? Are you kidding me?
These four should all have a modicum of moral courage to recuse themselves from any decision regarding the auto mall and most particularly, any plan for a sign which includes a huge TV screen to trash up our lovely city.Rosemary Swenson Newbury Park
GOP sent economy into a tailspin
2010-12-30 / Letters
I have this to say regarding Mr. Gabrielson’s letter “Progressives got it all mixed up.”
He’s at it again, writing with an incoherent flair that only Mr. Gabrielson can muster.
It should at once be noted that everyone is entitled to their opinion but not their facts.
Contrary to what you may have read on your cereal box, Barry, it was not the progressives that brought you the deficit or the beginning of the unemployment rate. Fully two-thirds of the entire national deficit, 67 percent, was the work of three presidents: Reagan, H.W. Bush and G.W. Bush.
George was busy with 27 percent of the budget deficit just by himself. As for unemployment, in 2000 it was 4 percent; in ’01, 4.7 percent; ’02, 5.8 percent; ’03, 6 percent . . .’08, 5.8 percent; and the beginning of ’09, 9.3 percent.
Isn’t it funny that these numbers correspond to the years of the Bush administration?
Another overlooked fact is that these tax reductions that the Republicans wanted so desperately to keep in place for those whose adjusted gross incomes were in excess of $250,000 annually have been in force for the last eight years, as were corporate tax incentives; so where are all the jobs?
Instead, corporations are sitting on the largest cash hoard in memory and/or handing out huge bonuses on Wall Street.
I’ll never understand those that come to the defense of the large corporation or vote against their self-interest in favor of the interests of that corporation.
Could it be some form of the Stockholm Syndrome? Or could it be this one man who must resort to ad hominem attacks to make sense of a world where common sense is in short supply.
While I would like to address your other points, it is impossible to decipher just what they are. Paul S. Kessler Thousand Oaks
Good thing auto mall vote was split
2010-12-30 / Letters
Regarding your Dec. 16 editorial, “Why auto mall sign didn’t fly,” and story, “Auto dealers pull sign proposal,” it is my understanding that the Ad Hoc Auto Mall Advisory Committee, led by an ex-council member and another committee member, recommended the 35-foot three-story sign and digital billboard, not the citizens of Thousand Oaks.
Thankfully, Al Adam wisely proposed to his fellow planning commission members that they split the landscaping and parking plan off from the mega-sign proposal.
It’s fortunate that despite Al’s 14/100ths of a percent vote shortfall in November’s election, he is still able to have a positive impact on the future of our city.
Planning Commissioner Adam, along with Tina Grumney, voted no on the sign, and even Barry Fisher expressed doubts about it.
When the auto mall returns with a new proposal for their sign in a few weeks, let’s hope that they listened to the concerns that many people voiced.
There is no reason that our beloved city needs to resemble the San Fernando Valley, Monrovia or Inglewood with their unsightly and distracting digital billboard blight. Brian Finegold Thousand Oaks
Dinner invite for progressive basher
2010-12-30 / Letters
In the Dec. 23 T.O. Acorn, Barry Gabrielson of Newbury Park wrote that he believes all progressives are “just plain stupid, ignorant, arrogant, evil and/or just plain don’t care about doing the right thing for America.”
What a lovely holiday gift for my son to discover, via a letter to the editor, that his parents are stupid, evil and unpatriotic, among other things.
Barry, I can see you’re angry, and I admire your passion for our country. But it’s easy to attack people you’ve never met.
I would probably think progressives were all of those horrible things, too, if I got all my information from Fox News talking points and Rush Limbaugh.
Fortunately, they’re wrong, and the truth is a bit more complex.
If you want to continue to believe the worst about a group without bothering to engage in civil discourse with them, that is your right. However, most people reading your letter will come to the conclusion that you are trying to pick a fight rather than engage in the difficult work of coming together to solve the nation’s problems.
You’re lowering the dialogue, and respectable conservatives, to schoolyard taunts.
As a progressive interested in what’s best for America, I’d like to invite you to my home for dinner and pleasant conversation about how to fix the country we love (yes, the United States) with my hardworking family, including my progressive wife, mother and dog—that is, if you can stomach our evil macaroni and cheese.
Contact me at whyioughtto@gmail.com. Let’s see if you can call us all those things to our faces instead of hiding behind a newspaper.
I think you’ll find that we’re not any of the things you accuse us of being; we just disagree.
On the other hand, if you choose to remain a name-calling, misinformed, fight-picking gadfly (look it up), that’s your right, too. But either way, please stop insulting my mother. Stu Ackerman Thousand Oaks
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Front Page
Redevelopment will be focus of T.O. construction in 2011
2010-12-30 / Front Page
With little vacant land left, city looks to improve existing lots
NEW DINING—Restaurateurs Mark and Leticia Hansen opened Sabor Cocina Mexicana in The Lakes shopping center four months ago. RICHARD GILLARD/Acorn NewspapersThe heady days of monumental construction projects such as The Lakes shopping center and Dos Vientos housing development are likely in the city’s past, according to Gary Wartik, Thousand Oaks’ economic development director.Wartik said the only large construction project planned for next year is a Lowe’s home improvement store.
The 20-acre shopping center on Wendy Drive near Grande Vista Drive in Newbury Park that will include a 153,000-squarefoot Lowe’s received the goahead from the planning commission on Dec. 16. The City Council is expected to review the plan for approval in February.
“We’re not likely to see very much more of that because there’s probably not the land available and there’s (less) need,” Wartik said in an interview last week focused on economic development in the coming year.
IT’S ALL ON SALE—Borders Books in Thousand Oaks will close soon so that a county medical clinic can take over the building. Borders management was unable to negotiate a new lease. IRIS SMOOT/Acorn NewspapersFew large, undeveloped lots exist in the Conejo Valley. Rather, several small plots pepper the city, the largest of which is six vacant acres on Thousand Oaks Boulevard at Hodencamp Road.Because the city has reached what Wartik called “build-out,” the focus next year will be on redevelopment of property with outdated structures.
Wartik said he couldn’t comment on plans beyond 2011.
Thousand Oaks is arguably best known as the home of The Oaks shopping center and the auto mall. But food retailers—restaurants, wineries, bakeries—are generally the most popular type of business to open in Thousand Oaks these days, Wartik said.
Although the retail vacancy rate throughout the city’s 56 square miles is about 8 percent, excluding The Oaks and Janss malls, it’s a different story for food purveyors, Wartik said.
No sooner has one Thousand Oaks restaurant closed than another is looking to open its doors in the city.
The Napa Grill, for example, is expected to open early next month in a building at Thousand Oaks and Westlake boulevards formerly occupied by the Italian restaurant Piatti, which closed about a year ago.
New eateries have replaced Suki 7, Marie Callender’s, Applebee’s and P6 Restaurant and Lounge, which have closed in the past few years.
In August, Mark and Leticia Hansen opened Sabor Cocina Mexicana in The Lakes next to city hall.
The Hansens heard from customers of their Valencia restaurant that Thousand Oaks was the place to open a second restaurant.
“Once I saw it, it was a musthave,” Mark Hansen said of the vacant space that had housed a jewelry store.
Hansen said business at his restaurants has been good, so much so that he’s looking to open a third eatery next year somewhere between Santa Barbara and Los Angeles.
“We’ve been very lucky,” Hansen said
Sabor Cocina, which employs about 100 people, enjoys an “outstanding” number of repeat customers, he said.
Bustling retail sales are important to the city’s economy and contribute to the nation’s economic recovery, said Wartik. Businesses provide direct and indirect jobs and sales tax revenue to the city. But if residents don’t patronize them, the local businesses go away.
“Everybody is affected by the local economy by one form or another,” Wartik said. “That’s why understanding what’s going on in the community is important.”
The economy—whether local, state or national—operates on the basis of consumer confidence, said Wartik, who holds a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s in public administration. Consumers confident they’ll hang on to their jobs are more likely to purchase items— such as vehicles—beyond basic necessities.
Evidently, consumer confidence is growing. National vehicles sales were up about 10 percent September through November compared to the same three months last year, according to the National Automobile Dealers Association, a trade group.
Sales at the Thousand Oaks Auto Mall have also increased over last year, as high as 15 percent some months, Wartik said.
“That speaks well of the confidence many people in this community have about the future of this local economy,” he said.
Still, Wartik said the city has a long road to recovery.
In 2007, the city’s income from sales tax amounted to $29 million. For 2010, the city projects $23 million from sales tax, a loss of some $6 million. The auto mall is the largest source of sales tax revenue for Thousand Oaks, Wartik said.
Restaurants may be gobbling up vacant buildings in Thousand Oaks, but a couple of major retailers in town have shut down or will do so soon.
Borders on Thousand Oaks Boulevard plans to close its doors next month. The bookstore is being replaced by a county health clinic with an urgent care center.
Wartik said too much square footage rather than poor sales is the reason the popular bookstore is closing. Store management was unable to renegotiate the lease for half of the 40,000- square- foot building, Wartik said. Instead, the county signed a 15-year lease.
Loehmann’s clothing store on Hillcrest Road in Newbury Park closed its doors after the national chain filed for bankruptcy in November.
Wartik said the city is working with the property owner to find a tenant for the building and improve vehicle access to the shopping center.
Although large vacant lots are disappearing from the Thousand Oaks landscape, the city would gladly set out the welcome mat for large companies such as biotechnology firms, Wartik said.
Snagging a biotech company is a coup for a municipality because such companies hire a welleducated work force that earns higher-than-average wages and can afford to spend money freely and often.
The last large biotech firm to move to Thousand Oaks was Baxter BioScience about 10 years ago. The international pharmaceutical company employs about 1,100 people at its Thousand Oaks building and Newbury Park manufacturing plant.
“We always have room for another company of that size and that quality,” Wartik said. “(A strong economy) is really all about jobs.”
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County retailers finish off year with a bang
2010-12-30 / Front Page
Retailers in Ventura County are reporting that shoppers made their way back into stores this December and brought much-needed holiday cheer to shop owners who’ve battled the soft economy for the past two seasons.
The upward trend has been felt nationwide, according to a recently updated report from the Washington, D.C.-based National Retail Federation, which predicted holiday spending would be up 3.3 percent over last year.
The retail group’s initial forecast put the number at 2.3 percent but reported that stock market gains, income growth and personal savings built up during the recession have helped boost consumer confidence and led to more sales.
“The good news this year is that sales are trending up from last year,” said Julia Ladd, senior property manager at The Oaks mall. “2008 and 2009 were unprecedented, so we’re all gaining strength from that economic downturn.”
Promotional targeting
Shop owners in Ventura County have chosen to celebrate small successes by seeing this year’s holiday sales as an improvement instead of trying to reach pre-recession numbers that peaked in 2004, Ladd said.
Consumers aren’t spending their money at a particular type of store but are looking for the best value and discounted price, she said.
“The stores that have really driven their promotional targeting have been very successful,” Ladd said. “It trends more based on what the offers are rather than what the product is.”
Connie Halpen, owner of Mrs. Figs’ Bookworm, has taken the idea of promotional marketing to heart.
She bought the 38-year-old bookstore last fall and moved the shop to Las Posas Plaza in Camarillo right before the holidays.
Not many residents knew of the new location, so she didn’t have many customers last Christmas, she said. But this year both regulars and newcomers are shopping at the bookstore. She hosts frequent book signings and author visits, offers free gift wrapping and discounts on Christmas books, and opens the shop for longer hours during the holidays.
California Grill, a Camarillo restaurant, has also followed suit with promotions, offering dinner and drink specials throughout the holidays. Bartender David Multz said business is slow and sales are down 22 percent from last December.
“I felt the economy the most this year,” Multz said.
‘Traffic seems to be up’
Despite the rain last week, residents still shopped at outdoor malls, said Keith Geiger, general manager of the Simi Valley Town Center, and Brian Sikoff, assistant general manager of the Camarillo Premium Outlet Mall.
Sikoff said that, although he doesn’t have exact numbers, more shoppers flocked to Camarillo’s 160- store outlet center this year than last.
“Traffic has been very strong and the sales are great. . . .” Sikoff said.
The same was true for the Simi Valley shopping center.
“Holiday traffic seems to be up,” Geiger said. “We’re a little different being outdoor, and for that reason the weather affects our shopping, but on the good weather days, we seem to be up quite a bit.”
Geiger estimates that sales are up 10 percent over last year and people are purchasing more expensive presents, especially high-tech items such as cellphones and iPads.
Tom Van Gundy, owner of two jewelry stores in Camarillo and Ventura, said he has seen a jump in expensive purchases as well.
Overall sales have dropped from years past, Van Gundy said, but buyers are spending more on individual purchases, which has meant sales at his two stores have kept pace with last year’s numbers.
Van Gundy said he is “getting back to basics” by analyzing what customers want. He reduced inventory but also tries to carry only best-selling brands.
“The history of the company is well-known, so we don’t do a lot of advertising,” Van Gundy said.
Social marketing
Advertising for many of the large malls and shopping centers remains a priority. This year more stores are using social media to connect with shoppers.
The Oaks mall used its Facebook page to inform shoppers about the latest fashions and sales. The Thousand Oaks mall has 3,000 followers on Facebook.
The Oaks also added advertisements for radio commercials, e-mail blasts and printed coupons.
Major retailers such as Gap, Express, Victoria’s Secret, Pottery Barn and department stores offered percentage-off sales, which are profitable because items are priced accordingly and their inventory is well-stocked.
“The retailers are savvy about knowing their margins,” Ladd said.
Overall, the extra promotions have increased foot traffic and produced a more successful holiday season for retailers, said Leticia Wilson, director of marketing and specialty leasing at the Simi Valley Town Center.
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