Proposal for Old City Hall Leaves Council With a Tough Choice : Thousand Oaks: Group hopes to use facility rent-free as a children’s science museum. But officials had counted on selling the site to raise money.

What will it be: cash or children?

That’s the stark choice facing Thousand Oaks council members Tuesday as they consider a proposal to give their old City Hall rent-free to a nonprofit group intent on developing a science museum for children.

Museum backers have promised to renovate the run-down, neglected building at 401 W. Hillcrest Drive at a cost of up to $600,000. In return, they will ask the council to grant them rent-free use of the space for five years. If the museum proves successful, the backers will negotiate with the city to buy the property outright.

The proposal forces council members to make a tough decision.

All five have backed the concept of a Discovery Center--a fun-for-all-ages museum where students could explore scientific principles through hands-on exhibits, nature walks, even overnight camp-outs.

But council members have also counted on raising $13 million from the sale or lease of the Hillcrest Drive property to pay off debts from the Civic Arts Plaza project. Giving the old City Hall away--even for just five years--would leave a huge gap in their funding plan for the $86-million arts plaza.

Without revenue from the property, city officials would be hard-pressed to replenish accounts they tapped in the scramble to pay arts plaza bills. They borrowed more than $20.5 million from various city funds, including accounts set aside for affordable housing, construction projects, golf course repairs and other needs.

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And they have pledged to repay the internal loans, with interest, as soon as possible.

“The basic concept was always to sell (401 W. Hillcrest Drive) to raise cash to pay for the new City Hall, or to lease the building on an interim basis” until real estate prices rebound, Councilwoman Judy Lazar said. “If we’re going to change the concept, the council has to buy into it, and it better be the whole council.”

While emphasizing that she has not made up her mind on the Discovery Center proposal, Lazar added, “It’s not necessarily the city’s responsibility to provide space to every nonprofit in town. I know their intentions are good, and the idea is wonderful . . . but good intentions alone don’t hack it. There are a lot of questions to be asked.”

The two council members most concerned about the city’s massive arts plaza debt--Elois Zeanah and Jaime Zukowski--have already signaled strong support for converting the old City Hall into a Discovery Center.

Both Zeanah and Zukowski fear that a future council may rezone the Hillcrest Drive site to allow for intense development in order to inflate the parcel’s price and fill city coffers.

The most recent appraisal listed a site value of up to $14 million--but only if the city would permit condominiums, a restaurant and office space there.

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By allowing the Discovery Center group to fix up the gutted building, Zukowski hopes to ease the pressure for more intense development on the dramatic, grassy hillside.

“To continue to neglect the building like (we have been) will lead to only one result: razing the building and maximizing the land use,” Zukowski said. “People will make the rationalization that we should just start from scratch. But that building was created for public use.”

Discovery Center backers say they believe their exploratorium would attract at least 50,000 visitors a year. With ticket sales, gift-shop revenue, grants and donations, they hope to raise enough money to buy the Hillcrest Drive building within five years of the museum’s opening.

“We don’t have the money now,” organizer Carrie Glicksteen said. “But we’re sure we can do it.”

If her group does not amass the resources to buy or lease the building at market rates, Glicksteen said, the city can always evict the Discovery Center and look for a more profitable tenant.

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That option, however, does not appeal to Lazar. The community has expressed enthusiasm about a children’s museum, and would very likely clamor to keep any center that was established in Thousand Oaks.

“It would be difficult to kick them out--it always is,” Lazar said. “They can rally a great deal of support.”

Hoping to capitalize on that support, Discovery Center backers have laid out lavish plans for their museum: a technology lab where students could conduct research, a virtual reality center with state-of-the-art equipment, a lending library and countless science exhibits.

They will take their dreams to the council at Tuesday’s meeting with one simple pitch: “This community,” Glicksteen said, “is built on families. It’s built on good things for families to do.”