Oaks Christian plans to build dorms

Office building will be turned into student housing



LIVING SPACES—At top, an artist’s rendering of the new Oaks Christian dorm. Above, the actual office building that will be converted.

LIVING SPACES—Above, an artist’s rendering of the new Oaks Christian dorm. Below, the actual office building that will be converted.

Oaks Christian School is offering students the option to live on campus if they desire.

The school has begun demolition of a building at 31255 Cedar Valley Drive, an office building the school already owns. Pending approval from the Westlake Village City Council at its April 11 meeting, the school will begin converting the premises into dorm rooms. Kris Thabit, the school’s director of special projects, said the venture was conceived about a year ago.

RICHARD GILLARD/Acorn Newspapers

RICHARD GILLARD/Acorn Newspapers

“I always like to tell this story—I have a friend who lives in Beverly Hills and his kid applied to Harvard Westlake and to Oaks Christian,” Thabit said. “They ended up going with Harvard Westlake, but he told me if we had a boarding facility they would have chosen us. That was kind of the start because we figured there are probably a lot of families who feel that way.”

The school is demolishing the office building’s interior so it can be turned into dorms. The three-story structure will house approximately 150 high-school-age students when finished. Oaks Christian has a two-phase plan in place. Because half of the building on Cedar Valley still has existing tenants, only the other half will be made into dormitories while waiting for the tenants’ leases expire.

The first phase will accommodate 70 students.

The work will continue through the rest of the year, and Oaks Christian will be accepting boarders for the spring semester of 2019.

Thabit said that for families living outside of the Westlake Village area, a dormitory will relieve the pressure of a daily commute through the notoriously traffic-heavy region. He said students from the greater Los Angeles area, as well as international students, will be encouraged to attend.

“The parents can still participate in their child’s daily life, it’s just the kids won’t be spending weeknights at their house,” Thabit said. “It’s not like they send them to boarding school and don’t get to see them play sports or do theater. They just don’t have to slug it out in traffic twice a day.”

As part of the dormitory supervision, four Oaks Christian families will live on each of the three floors. Each room will be home to a pair of students who will be able to eat, sleep and study at the sectarian private school.

Officials will also draw up plans to address student safety issues, such as when students are permitted to leave campus.

To prepare for the project, Thabit said, school officials are researching boarding programs at other schools.

Scott Wolfe, planning director for the City of Westlake Village, said he had concerns about security and site design when the school approached the city with its plan.

“It’s not something we’ve dealt with in Westlake Village. (But) if we look at it as an extension of their campus as opposed to a conversion of an office building, it makes a lot of sense,” Wolfe said. “The closest place around here like this is Cal Lutheran, which gives you an idea of some of the issues you’d be looking at,” he said.

Westlake Village City Councilmember Kelly Honig said she was excited by the idea, and hopes it will be a success for the school.

“It’s awesome. We approved the dorm concept itself some time ago,” Honig said.

“There will be a girls floor and a boys floor; they’re going to have Oaks Christian families living on each level of the dorm just to supervise and provide a familial atmosphere,” she said.

More information about the dormitory can be found here: https://www.oakschristian.org/programs/residential-life