`MEDICAL CORRIDOR' EVOLVING; SENIOR FACILITY APPROVED.

Byline: Sylvia L. Oliande Daily News Staff Writer

The development of several residential health care centers along Sycamore Drive is expected to create a unique medical corridor designed to handle the needs of the area's growing number of seniors.

The city's Planning Commission unanimously approved Wednesday the Sycamore Healthcare Campus project at Alamo Street and Sycamore. It voted to recommend that the City Council alter the zoning designation for the 9.43-acre property to allow the development of the proposed short- and long-term care facilities.

``There are a lot of warm fuzzies to this project,'' Dean Kunicki, chairman of the commission, said Thursday. ``It works out particularly well with the (Simi Valley) hospital one block away. It's a great addition to the community and something we sorely need.''

The project was proposed last year by Westlake Village-based Selleck Properties, the developer of a new shopping center near City Hall. It is expected to go before the City Council for a zone change within a few weeks.

The first phase of the campus includes a 96-bed Alzheimer's care facility run by Silverado Alzheimer's and Dementia Care and a 104-bed assisted living residential facility run by Chancellor Assisted Care. If construction of that portion begins in late summer as planned, it could be completed by April 2000.

The second phase, estimated to be available a year later, would include a 119-bed skilled nursing care facility, which would house patients while they recover from serious illness and injury, and a two-story medical office building.

City officials said the plans drawn up by the developer met with approval from residents and commissioners because they included landscaping and other buffer zones that went beyond expectations for the site.

The buildings themselves are expected to take on the look of a housing development rather than a hospital, and the campus will include large trees and lush landscaping, along with a 6-foot-high wall separating existing housing from the new campus.

Robert D. Selleck, II, president of Selleck Properties, said the design was created not only to appeal to existing city residents but also to attract people to the facilities.

``The building was designed that way because, with the assisted care, the people who are going to be living there really are residents,'' he said. ``The (care providers) want to create an atmosphere for them that's as homelike as possible.''

The four buildings that would make up the medical campus would provide short-term, outpatient and long-term care for any age. But some of the uses are geared more toward the burgeoning senior population.

The welcome reception given to the project by residents and city leaders is a far cry from a previous proposal by Smith Food King to build a supermarket and drug store on that corner.

Officials said that when the grocer was considering establishing a presence in the area, residents came by the hundreds to the Planning Commission and the council to protest.

The medical facilities proposal, which the developer has been working on since September 1997, attracted two residents who opposed the project at the meeting Wednesday. Others, including medical professionals and those involved with local senior concerns, praised it.