Shortly after 1 a.m. Wednesday the City Council voted down construction of a Home Depot on Hampshire Road.

After more than seven hours of first listening to city staff reports, appellants and applicant presentations and rebuttals, and about 50 public speakers for and against Home Depot, and then deliberating, the council voted in favor of an appeal to the planning commission's January decision to allow Home Depot to proceed. When the meeting began, there were about 300 in the audience.

With Mayor Tom Glancy voting no, the council approved the appeal 4 to 1, thereby stopping Home Depot from tearing down the former Kmart store, encroaching upon a landmark Sycamore tree and constructing a 97,000- square-foot home improvement store with an attached 14,000- square-foot outdoor garden center at 325 Hampshire Road.

"Home Depot is the wrong use and, with its unimpressive box design, the wrong project at this important gateway site," the appeal said.

Volumes of staff reports disagreed with the appeal on every point, saying the new Home Depot would be an attractive store where noise, traffic, and light and air pollution could all be mitigated.

"When I came here I worked for an engineering firm that designed that Kmart store, and I thought that was the worst-designed project I ever saw in my life," said Frank Lussier, a resident since 1957. "I'm glad to see that this potential problem and error that occurred in this community could possibly get resolved tonight and fixed."

For the first time since she moved to Thousand Oaks in 1963, Ardis Nelson spoke at a council meeting.

"Do we need two of everything in this city?" she asked. "I think a second Home Depot is redundant."

"At a time when so many cities and communities are losing businesses, it's quite gratifying to have one added here," said Frances Prince, a former mayor and 41-year-resident of the city.

"I've heard that a test of the quality of civilization or community rests on how they treat their very young and their very old. I'm appalled, because of the diesel fumes and the noise, that we'd even consider putting a Home Depot next to a preschool or a senior citizen's center," Victoria Alexander said.

Former planning commissioner Janet Wall pleaded with the council to "at least do it honestly" without destroying the municipal code by changing the zoning to C- 3, which is for shopping centers that serve several neighborhoods. The Kmart site is now zoned C-1, which is for shopping centers that serve one neighborhood.

Later on, Councilmember Andy Fox agreed with Wall. "At the end of the day, I think this is in the wrong zone," he said.

"If you're going to do it, make them do it right and it needs to be in a C-3 zone," said Fox.

The future of the site is now uncertain.

"The likelihood that this is going to be developed into a shopping center is very, very remote," Fox said. "Significant, expensive grading . . . has to be done," he said. "It's an unsafe condition as it exists."