Open and shut case at Agoura apartments

According to city, gates leading to homes should not remain locked



Agoura Hills, a city known for its opposition to gated communities, will require the gates to remain open at the Avalon Apartments despite concerns about safety for the residents of the 336-home complex.

When Agoura Hills incorporated in 1982, its leaders chose to prohibit gated communities in order to promote friendly, open neighborhoods within the city.

Residents in the apartments on Oak Creek

Lane say the gates separating their homes from nearby Chumash Park and The

Shoppes at Oak Creek retail center are necessary to keep them safe and should remain closed to everybody but the homeowners. But the City Council ruled at a Dec. 9 meeting that the gates should remain open from sunrise to 10 p.m. so the public at large can access the park to the north and the shopping center to the south.

Agoura Hills planning director Doug Hooper said the city intended to maintain pedestrian access through the apartments in its 2002 approval of the development because Chumash Park was already in existence and the shopping center was about to be built.

Gates around communities “are not what we stand for,” City Councilmember Linda Northrup said.

But over the next decade there were a “significant number of events” in and around the complex, including sexual battery, petty theft and vandalism, according to Jason Blue, who represented the Avalon complex at the December meeting.

“We came to a middle ground about locking them at night so we can maintain the security of the community,” Blue said. The gates were also locked periodically during the day.

Agoura Hills resident Kara C. said she was assaulted in the complex about a year ago by somebody who didn’t live there. She said the perpetrator was passing through the apartments on his way from the shopping center to a bus stop.

“If it was locked, I wouldn’t be going through this a year later,” Kara said.

Resident Rhoda Monkarsh said that strangers coming in and out of the complex are “not the most comfortable thing. . . . It can be very eerie.”

Jay Crutcher, a three-year Avalon resident, also had concerns about trash that is dumped around the complex from the shopping center’s fast food restaurant customers.

The trash has turned the complex into a “garbage can,” Crutcher said. “Soda cans and other garbage are dumped on the sidewalk outside my door.”

Former Agoura Hills Mayor Ed Corridori, who was on the City Council when the homes were developed, spoke to the issue.

“I’m astonished that keeping the gate open was not one of the conditions of the projects,” Corridori said.

“Part of the rationale is that the pathway (provides) an interesting view of city. I’ve made the walk through Chumash Park and the gate. I’ve complained about the gate being locked.”

But, Corridori said he sympathized with the residents.

“I actually do not object to the gates being locked at night. Clearly there are people who are afraid, (but it’s a) horrible mistake to lock them during the day. People do go through for the hike.”

Initially, the council said the two gates that access the park and the shops should be open only from sunrise to sunset, but then decided to leave the gates open until 10 p.m. to accommodate shoppers and pedestrians.

“When you have a safety issue it’s always going to be traumatic,” Mayor Harry Schwarz said. But, he added, “We want to keep that tradition of having access to the public so they don’t have to take the long way around. We live in a fearful time and must balance that with the public’s right to have access. We want the community to feel safe, but we want the public to have access.”

Signs will be posted at the complex indicating when the gates will be locked.

“There is still general access off Canwood at all times,” Schwarz said. “All we have done is close two gates from the park in the late hours of the evening for security purposes.”



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