HILTON—An artist’s conception of the hotel proposed for the Janss Marketplace. The hotel will sit between Old Navy and the parking structure in a space recently occupied by Reign of Terror. Courtesy of the City of Thousand Oaks
Plans for a five-story hotel at Janss Marketplace may move forward now that the City Council voted unanimously to approve the project.
With a maximum height of 73 feet, the hotel will tower over the next tallest building at the Moorpark Road mall. The parking structure, which will be next to the hotel, stands just shy of 48 feet, and the former home of the Burlington Coat Factory at the north end of the shopping center is 44 feet tall.
The height of the proposed 216- room hotel is one of the reasons the project had to go before the council. Current zoning allowed for a maximum height of 35 feet.
The hotel will take the place of the former Marshall’s site, which most recently hosted the Reign of Terror haunted house. That spot is sandwiched between another row of stores and the parking structure. Council members said that location and the fact that it is set back from Moorpark Road in the front and Wilbur Road in the back means the hotel won’t have the visual impact it might in another setting.
RIGHT ABOUT THERE—A map shows where a hotel will be situated at the Janss Marketplace. Courtesy of the City of Thousand Oaks
“It ends up being a very nice place to put five stories to meet a market need here,” Mayor Kevin McNamee said.
That need was addressed by Josh Gray, director of government affairs and tourism for the Greater Conejo Valley Chamber of Commerce.
“The city of Thousand Oaks needs more hotels,” Gray said during the public speaking portion of the Nov. 14 council meeting. “We haven’t built a new hotel in Thousand Oaks in 14 years. The hospitality industry has significantly evolved since 2009 with modern amenities and an evolving economy.”
Locally, the industry has bounced back from COVID lows, he said.
The hotel builder and operator, Irvine-based Greens Group, will be bringing in Homewood Suites by Hilton, an extended-stay hotel, said Atman Kadakia, Greens managing principal.
This type of hotel, he told the council, is especially lacking in the city.
“If you wanted a high-quality extended stay hotel and you’re visiting Amgen, for example, you have nowhere to go,” Kadakia said. “You have to go down to Westlake. You have to go to Camarillo. You simply don’t have that product here within the city of Thousand Oaks.”
He said the rooms include full kitchens with dishwashers, microwaves and cooktops. There will be an outdoor pool deck on the second floor, with the 22,700-square-foot ground floor containing a lobby, a 5,200 square-foot outdoor courtyard/ special event area and 13,300 square feet of retail space.
Though the hotel project will not remove any parking, it also won’t be adding any. The net difference in terms of required parking spaces is a 30% reduction, an allowance the city is making.
Meeting the need for more overnight rooms is only one benefit to the city, officials said. The developer expects the hotel to bring more than $2 million annually to the city’s general fund, and council members said they hope it will help stimulate the shopping center itself.
“The other aspect of this I want to underline is we’re looking to this to not just meet that need (for hotel space), but also to help bring more business and more vitality to what is a landmark in our town, that being the Janss mall,” said Councilmember Bob Engler, who attended the meeting remotely.
Councilmember David Newman said he was originally opposed to the project when he first learned of it because he thought it was out of scale and not a good fit, but he’s come around, even with concerns about how slowly retail space is being filled at some of the city’s other mixed-used projects.
“I’m there often enough to know and I’ve seen enough changes over time to know it is a challenged environment for retail and it needs help,” Newman said. “This is a way to stimulate not only the hotel, but also foot traffic to the surrounding retail businesses.”
