The century-old Timber School, one of the Conejo Valley’s oldest standing public buildings, will live on as the stylistic centerpiece of a new apartment complex.
Developers of a 218-unit complex at 1872 Newbury Road are refurbishing the historic Mission Revival-style school house along with the former auditorium.
The school building will reopen as a leasing office in mid-2026, said Ken McCarren, president of developer MBK Rental Living, with the first apartments to follow in the fall. Construction on The Sanctuary at Thousand Oaks will be complete in mid-2027.
The Thousand Oaks City Council approved the 7-acre apartment project in 2021 along with an adjacent 120-room hotel that will take up the rest of the 9.7-acre parcel on the corner of Newbury and Kelley roads.
Apartments will range from “micro” units of 500 square feet up to 1,240-square-foot two-bedrooms, according to city documents, and include 26 affordable units. They will be leased at lower rates to families that make less than 80% of the county median income.
State officials marked the 2025 median income of a family of four living in Ventura County at $131,300 a year.
McCarren said MBK Rental Living is installing utilities such as water, electric and sewer for both the apartments and hotel but that a different developer is in the planning phase for the hotel project.
The Marwaha Group family office, a collection of companies based in Anaheim, is leading the construction of a Residence Inn by Marriott, with doors planned to open in the first quarter of 2026.
“It’s going to be an awesome project,” co-CEO Raghu Marwaha said in an email. He said the group also owns the nearby Courtyard Marriott and TownePlace Suites by Marriott hotels.
Stephen Kearns, Thousand Oaks’ planning manager, said city staff are waiting on the developers to make suggested corrections to the hotel plans and return them to the city for final approval.
Timber School stands firm in Thousand Oaks
The Timber School was one of the first buildings with water and power in its area, according to William Maple, a museum designer who has campaigned to protect the schoolhouse and other local historic sites for the last two decades.
The current structure on the site was built in 1924, replacing an 1889 school building, and was joined by the auditorium building in 1948, according to the Conejo Valley Historical Society. The site was listed as a county and city historical landmark in 2004.
Maple said that with the work developers are putting in, he’s more confident the Timber School will stick around.
“We don’t have a lot (of historical sites in the Conejo Valley). What we do have we want to preserve,” Maple said.
The building has been inactive since the Conejo Valley Unified School District decided to relocate Conejo Valley High School to district headquarters before selling the property in 2015.