NEWBURY PARK : Planners to Vote on Housing Project

The Thousand Oaks Planning Commission tonight will consider a development proposal for a 181-unit condominium complex and 49 single-family houses that has been strongly opposed by residents.

The commission is scheduled to vote on the proposal by developer Borchard Villas Partners to build the residences on a vacant 35.6-acre field just west of Borchard Road and south of the Ventura Freeway in Newbury Park.

The proposal had initially called for building a 275-unit multifamily housing complex and two single-family houses on the site.

But the developer reduced the number of condominium units and increased the number of houses following meetings with homeowners who were concerned about increased traffic and about putting multifamily housing in a neighborhood of mostly single-family houses, a planning department staff report said.

Despite the reduced scale of the development, residents along Alice Drive just west of Borchard Road continue to oppose the project because of their concerns about increased traffic.

The developer has proposed to extend Alice Drive eastward to allow access onto the street by the residents of the proposed, new single-family houses.

But Alice Drive homeowners have protested to city officials that there is already too much speeding traffic along their residential street.

The residents held a public protest last fall to call attention to their traffic problems.

According to an October, 1991, letter from Ventura County Supervisor Maria VanderKolk to county public works officials, most of the existing traffic on Alice Drive comes from residents of the Fox Meadows subdivision getting on and off Wendy Drive.