Garden center proposal motivates the council to redefine parking standards

BILL SPARKES/Acorn Newspapers PARKING- Lesley and Jerry Sullivan of T.O. load items into their vehicle in the Armstrong Garden Center parking lot near The Oaks mall. The city now requires fewer parking spaces for garden stores. The Thousand Oaks City Council established a parking standard for garden centers after receiving a unanimous request to do so from the planning commission.

Armstrong Garden Center, having served Thousand Oaks for 25 years, had been hoping to build a new retail center on Thousand Oaks Boulevard with fewer parking spaces than the number required by the city until now.

Before this issue came up, the city didn't provide a parking standard specifically for garden centers. The city was using the same standards for such centers as auto dealers and other open-air sales.

Armstrong said the standards were excessive for garden centers and asked for new ones.

Joe Annapal, Armstrong Garden Center developer, said Armstrong wants to be able to create a place for relaxation.

"The city is simply requiring too many parking stalls that eat up land and create a problem," said Ted Stelzner, Armstrong's architect for more than 25 years.

Based on his experience, Stelzner explained, the unused parking spaces would either be used to store items to be sold or would end up putting garden centers out of business.

"Every square foot counts," Stelzner said.

The original requirement was one space for every 1,000 square feet of sales area.

City staff recommended one parking space for every 250 square feet of indoor building space and one parking space for every 1,500 square feet of outside sales yard.

Stelzner was at odds with those recommendations. The city used "a rectilinear project that does not exist in the real world" to decide how many parking spaces there should be, Stelzner said.

Nor did the city take into account shared parking, off-site parking or circulation of center, he said.

He asked for a 1to2,500 ratio for outside display parking.

Stricter parking requirements would mean only big box stores would survive in Thousand Oaks, Stelzner said, and residents would have to travel outside of the community to shop at garden centers.

After discussion, the council voted 4-0, with Mayor Andy Fox not present, in favor of a 1to250 indoor building and 1to2,000 outdoor display parking ratio.

Next, Armstrong Garden Center will go back to the planning commission, which has the authority to reduce parking spaces required by 10 percent.