Core Problem: Agoura Hills Creating a Downtown By SHELLY GARCIA Senior Reporter While many cities grapple with the problem of how to revitalize their downtowns, Agoura Hills officials are wrestling with a very different question how to create a downtown district in the city for the very first time. After years of discussions and study groups, a plan to build a mixed-use downtown district on about 30 acres of mostly vacant land south of the Ventura (101) Freeway along Agoura Road, east of Cornell Road is finally getting underway. Officials have put to paper the broad strokes of a neighborhood design that will include apartments built over retail shops, restaurants and perhaps, down the road, a community center. The streets and walkways will be designed to encourage pedestrian foot traffic and include places to congregate, socialize and even stroll along the several creeks that run through the site. But if the heap of drawings, site plans and guidebooks as thick as dictionaries are a sign that much progress has been made, they do not begin to illustrate the work still to be done. Numerous, separate public-private partnerships will be involved, financing for infrastructure will have to be addressed; commercial tenants will have to be approved. And all of it will have to be done with an eye toward building into the district the kind of staying power difficult to achieve in the modern world. “It is difficult,” said Larry Kosmont, president and chief executive of Kosmont Cos., a real estate consulting firm that has assisted a number of cities in downtown redevelopment. “Building a downtown isn’t exactly like using props you can move back and forth. But on the other hand, it is important to try to design it with some flexibility. Things change and quickly so to try and build in flexibility is important, but it is complicated.” Searching for a core Agoura’s efforts reflect a sentiment creeping over all of suburbia. The flight to the suburbs has come full circle and the search for open spaces has left these cities without the kind of central core that defines a community. “Everybody’s after town centers,” said Dave Wilcox, a principal with Economics Research Associates, a consulting firm that works in areas such as real estate and economic development. “Either new building or knitting together existing or historic properties which have good customer allegiance.” Some town centers, such as The Commons at Calabasas have been built in suburbia before, but they usually involve a single developer with primarily commercial interests. Others have been built around pre-existing historic centers. But Agoura Hills officials are not beginning with a pre-existing foundation, and they do not want the kinds of gussied-up big box centers with paseos and fountains that developers build. They are hoping for a village, the kind that first emerged in communities decades ago. “We didn’t want the area to develop like any other commercial area with any type of commercial use,” said Mike Kamino, the city’s director of planning and community development. “We needed to create a special set of land use regulations and design standards so we could accomplish the vision of the community.” What architectural style should such an area have? And how will the city pay for the infrastructure, the parking areas, the streets, the lighting, even furniture like benches, tables or bandstands for community events? Then there are the strategic questions. How does the city design something that will hold up for generations to come without becoming blighted or irrelevant? How can it make sure that the shops and restaurants are the types that will encourage foot traffic so motorists don’t zip from one destination to the next by car? What does the area need to remain vibrant day and night? “We’re trying to create this mixed-use concept,” said Kamino. “The residential component truly creates more of this village environment. It creates more of a 24/7 environment.” Deciding on apartments Single-family homes would not do because the area has no schools or parks, amenities required for families. So officials decided on apartments, but how many? Special sessions of the planning commission were needed before the city decided on about 150 to 200 apartment units, mostly built over retail shops and restaurants. E.F. Moore & Co., an Ojai-based developer, has partnered with the Kim Family Trust, which has owned about 18 acres within the site for some 25 years, to build the residential component and some of the retail. The company filed conditional use permits a few weeks ago. “There’s so many elements I have to balance,” said Ted Moore, the company’s president, referring to the difficult topography and the economics of the project as well as how to get tenants in the commercial portion. Moore said he’s hoping to build the focal point of his development around an ongoing array of activities that might include a farmer’s market and seasonal events like pumpkin patches and egg hunts. “I don’t have a major book store or department stores and Agoura is a town of 20,000 people and most of them live on the other side of the freeway,” he said. “So my whole thought was the more I can create in the way of family activities from morning ’till evening, I will have succeeded.” Then there was the problem of how to keep the area pedestrian friendly despite the fact that Agoura Road is a main thoroughfare that parallels the freeway, and locals often use it as an alternate route when freeway traffic is snarled. The city designed two roundabouts, traffic circles that lead into and out of the central core of the district, and it determined that the main stretch of Agoura Road would have diagonal parking, both features designed to slow down the cars. Keeping them interested But the shops located along the avenue need to be varied and interesting enough to keep folks from driving from one destination along the strip to another. “If there’s something interesting happening all along the street, people are more apt to walk,” Kamino said. Officials plan to develop a list of the types of retail allowable in the area. Predictably, there won’t be any automotive uses or destination stores like furniture warehouses and mattress retailers. But officials also want to be certain that, as tenants change, the ambiance of the area remains the same. “The first generation may comply, but things morph,” Kamino said. “It becomes something else. We don’t want that to happen.” Still, today’s hot retail concept may be irrelevant tomorrow, and Agoura Hills will need to build in some flexibility to its guidelines. “What we’ve learned in these places is that retail changes every five years,” said Kosmont. “A four-plex movie theater just a few years ago was a popular item. Then it became an eight-plex and then it was a 16-plex. Now it’s stadium seating.” Finally, there is the problem of the pre-existing businesses along the strip, including a self-storage company and a building supply shop. “We’re trying to orchestrate all these things with private property owners,” said Kamino, “but it’s not going to happen overnight. It’s going to happen one property at a time.”