Prop H saved city’s semi rural feel




Yesterday I drove by Ladyface Mountain and thought, thank God there is no Home Depot there or, more accurately, an empty building that could house the Spruce Goose “and then some.”

Approaching the 10th anniversary of the Prop. H anti-big box measure in Agoura Hills, my opinion is that it has been our saving grace and that all the rhetoric we heard from those who claimed “we don’t support Home Depot, we just oppose Prop H because it’s badly written law” was a bunch of bunk.

Pouring over my obsolete VHS tapes this week so as not to discard any treasures, I stumbled over a city council meeting on Prop H. One council man admitted that they had already talked to the developers of the Westlake Promenade and the Calabasas Commons.

Woo hoo, we are still the semirural hold out. In my view, Calabasas might as well be Encino.

Agoura seems to find money for those ‘build it and they will come” projects that most don’t want in the first place. The new shops on Canwood are cool but I don’t feel deprived because none of them exceed 60,000 square feet. Do you?

The expansionist cheerleaders, who drooled over developer money 10 years ago admonished that “we were painting ourselves into a corner.” We painted ourselves into a corner alright, one in which there are no butt ugly big box stores or any of the humongous trafficproducing monstrosities that we see if we go three minutes in either direction on the 101.

We couldn’t prevent them from removing the horse from the City of Agoura’s official seal but a decade later, Prop H looks mighty fine in the rear view mirror. I am proud that I helped pass legislation that very effectively did what it was supposed to.

Larry Brown
Agoura Hills



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