Time to change the Agoura Village plan

EDITORIAL

With its pristine weather, proximity to local population and gorgeous views of the Santa Monica Mountains, the stretch of Agoura Road from Kanan to Cornell in Agoura Hills has long been viewed by city land use planners as the ideal setting for a new town center.

The Vons and Ralphs shopping centers across the freeway are currently the best the city has to offer in terms of local gathering spots. Have an outdoor coffee at Starbucks while the Kanan Road traffic rushes by. Not the same vibe as in Old Town Calabasas, Main Street Ventura, or State Street Santa Barbara, but for better or worse the friendly shopping centers have been the focus in the city for better than 40 years.

Agoura Hills can do better, and it tried.

In 2008 the city unveiled its 180-page Agoura Village Specific Plan, a document that outlines precise development parameters for the section of Agoura Road known today as Agoura Village. Yet, 13 years later, there is no village, no town center, no heartbeat of the city—and little to distinguish the area other than the street and lighting improvements installed by the city itself in anticipation of the new shops, restaurants and pedestrian-friendly walking paths that were supposed to follow.

The guidelines in the specific plan are stringent, as they should be. Nobody wants to stroll down Agoura Road and have their views of Ladyface Mountain obscured by more than 40-foot tall office buildings and apartments. Nobody wants to deal with more traffic at the already stressed out Kanan-Agoura Road intersection. As a result, developers with designs on the intersection have been stymied in their plans to bring the very same housing, shops and restaurants that Agoura Village is trying to attract. On Page 1 today, read how one builder has been shut down altogether.

The planning process in the City of Agoura Hills is Byzantine and not conducive to building the village center that was envisioned a decade-and-a-half ago. The developer whose plan was denied by the city last week spoke of the “brokenness of the process” that exists in the Agoura Village Specific Plan area.

“The system in this city is set up for applicants to fail,” the builder said.

The back-and-forth that has gone on for more than a decade between the city and its developer applicants is maddening. Agoura Hills boasts some very fine projects north of the 101 Freeway, but on the south side, where Ladyface looms, little has gotten done.

The city is correct when it says now’s the time to rework the Agoura Village Specific Plan and figure out a way to make the vision a reality—while at the same time protecting the needs of the environmentally sensitive Agoura Road corridor. Developers must scale back their ambitious plans—and at the same time some of the city’s building height and setback requirements must be relaxed as part of the very “flexibility” that the city itself encourages.

Get back to the drawing board and get it done. Residents who want to see a vibrant, Agoura Hills town center shouldn’t have to wait another 20 years.