When Ventura County Superior Court appointed a receiver to take over the Paraiso Town Center in Dos Vientos Ranch after the owner, Miller Family Companies, defaulted on a loan, some residents began asking, “Whose idea was it to build a shopping center there in the first place?”

Thousand Oaks community development director John Prescott offered some historical background on that decision.

The Specific Plan and General Plan amendment that the city approved for the Dos Vientos community in 1988 designated the Paraiso Town Center site as a shopping center. 

“This was part of the developers’ request, which the city approved,” Prescott said.

If the developer hadn’t asked to build a shopping center, the city might have suggested one for that area, Prescott said.

The city approved the development permit for the shopping center—which includes the specific site design and architecture—in 2002. 

“This was also a developer request, which the city approved,” he said.

The development permit was subject to a number of conditions, but nothing out of the ordinary as compared to development permit conditions for other shopping centers in the city, Prescott said.

Paraiso Town Center opened last year 

On Aug. 19 the shopping center’s owners defaulted on a $16.8million loan from California National Bank.

Most of the suites in the 18,000-square-foot retail center aren’t rented, but several of the businesses that are open say they are doing well. Among them are ETF Portfolio Management, a firm specializing in designing and managing individual investor portfolios, and Fitness Together, a place for private personal fitness instruction.

Restaurants, clothing boutiques, an ice cream shop, a dentist, a nail salon, a dry cleaners and other businesses are also serving the community.

But notices have recently appeared on the doors of retailers in Paraiso Town Center informing the store owners that management of the shopping center has changed.

Paraiso Deli closed last month. Before that, other tenants disappeared from or failed to even materialize at the upscale retail center that serves 2,300 homes and 6,000 to 8,000 people in the surrounding community.

“The Miller brothers made a supreme effort to attract quality tenants but could not get the anchor stores they needed,” city economic development director Gary Wartik said.