A few real estate deals signed this month in Thousand Oaks may help push ahead a long-delayed plan to turn a three-mile stretch of Thousand Oaks Boulevard into something of a downtown, area observers say. Two medical tenants have signed leases in the past month, including Kaiser Permanente, which is leasing 11,000 square feet at 322 East Thousand Oaks Blvd., and UCLA Health System, which is taking 18,000 square feet a few blocks over at 100 Moody Court. The deals come on top of the planned August opening of the Conejo Clinic, which is going into a 41,300-square-foot space just west of N. Moorpark Road. “Change like this does not happen overnight,” said property owner Tony Principe, executive vice president of Westcord Commercial Real Estate Services, which owns the building that UCLA Health System will lease starting in July. “But it’s positive to see these high-quality tenants come into the area.” Kaiser Permanente will move its family practice into the building that was previously home to Verizon Wireless. It plans to relocate its pediatric, OB-GYN and family practices from an existing building on Hodencamp Road. “It will be more family-centered care,” said Linda Donner, administrator for Kaiser’s Thousand Oaks offices. The facility is Kaiser Permanente’s third in Thousand Oaks. The boulevard office will open Oct. 1 and is expected to have two pediatricians, six family practitioners and two nurse practitioners, Donner said. She said the facility estimates it will see 200 to 300 patients a day. Keith Sinclair of the Sinclair Company, which owns the building, said that kind of foot traffic will help jumpstart the redevelopment plan aimed to make the portion of Thousand Oaks Boulevard from Moorpark Road to Duesenberg Drive more pedestrian friendly. The Thousand Oaks Specific Plan, approved last year, calls for a downtown-like hub. “Behind us is a gym, and starting at 7:30 a.m. you’d be amazed by how much foot traffic that creates,” Sinclair said. “Now with Social Security and Kaiser coming in, there’ll be a lot more.” (The Social Security Administration is leasing 40 percent of the same Sinclair-owned property.) That foot traffic will be important, if the development plan is to have an impact. “Having these employee centers will bring in people who will spend time and money up and down the Boulevard,” said Senior City Planner Haider Alawami. “We need that synergy between office and retail in the daytime and with restaurants at nighttime.” The aim of the plan is to turn what is now “a hodge-podge” of different users into something more coherent, Alawami said. Some tenants —namely auto repair shops — will be much more restricted under the Specific Plan, which prohibits any new repair shops. Car dealerships will be allowed, but all service entrances will have to be from off Thousand Oaks Boulevard. The city also is seeking grant money to begin some streetscaping projects, which will include a narrowing of the Boulevard, which at 80 feet is too wide for safe pedestrian traffic. The city plans to widen sidewalks by eight feet on each side, narrowing the boulevard to 64 feet, which should slow traffic and make crossing the boulevard safer. “This, in combination with benches, potted plants and pedestrian lights, will create a pedestrian-friendly environment,” Alawami said. New buildings will have to be closer to the sidewalk, creating a more urban feel. The city also will encourage more mixed-use projects involving retail and residential development. There is no such mixed-use development in all of Thousand Oaks today. Property owners who pushed for the plan are excited to see some action on both the planning and leasing fronts. But they are first to admit that transforming a busy commercial fare will take many years. The idea has been in discussions for some 20 years. “It’s good to see some action,” said Principe, who lost out big when Baja Fresh moved out several years before its lease expired at 100 Moody Court, leaving Principe some $3 million short of the total value of the lease, according to published reports. Observers say it will take many more leases like that with UCLA and Kaiser to achieve the vision of a robust, bustling little downtown in Thousand Oaks. Alawami believes that’s at least five to six years away. “There is still quite a bit of vacancy on the Boulevard…still a lot of ‘for lease’ signs out there,” said Michael Slater, senior vice president at CBRE Group. He believes leasing activity will remain slow through 2012 and ’13 but will pick up in 2014.
New Medical Tenants Snag Space in Thousand Oaks
