Timed to coincide with the club's 50th birthday, the Thousand Oaks Rotary Club is working with the city of Thousand Oaks to install a town clock at a gateway to the community.

Members believed that a public timepiece would mark the club's half-century of service to community causes, said Richard Williams of Newbury Park, chairman of the club's birthday celebration committee.

Work has begun on installation in a median on Thousand Oaks Boulevard about 20 feet west of Moorpark Road, according to Grahame Watts, special projects manager for the city Public Works Department.

Design sketches show an antique-looking four-sided clock on top of a pole rising from a base of granite or marble.

Rotary members chimed in with $25,000 to purchase the analog clock, and the city is providing the installation work up to a cost of $25,000, said City Councilman Dennis Gillette, former city police chief and Rotary celebration committee member.

The clock, which will run on electricity, will stand 14 feet high, including a 26-inch-tall concrete base so it "can't be so easily attacked by errant vehicles," Gillette said Thursday.

He described the clock as weatherproof, lightweight and manufactured of a steel alloy. Its hue will match the dark green-color motif on light fixtures and bicycle parking racks already dotting the boulevard from Moorpark Road eastward, Gillette said.

In the public right-of-way, the work involves drilling, running power to the base and making sure the installation is secure, Watts said. The clock face will be attached around July 28 to 30, he said.

"We spent a lot of time deciding what gift we might want to donate," said architect Neil Scribner, a Rotary Club member who sketched the design.

"We wanted to do something significant and lasting."

Once the clock is in place, finish work and mounting of memorial plaques will take about a week.

In a Dec. 2 letter to the city, Vicki Eagleson Arndt, who then was the club's president, said the organization would like to contribute the clock because "after all, the city and our club have grown up together." The city was incorporated in 1964, six years after the club was officially established.

Also, she said in the letter, "a street clock harkens back to the era where such a fixture heralded the prosperity of a city and welcomed all to the downtown area."

The club raises thousands of dollars each year for nonprofit purposes through such events as the Midsummer Eve of Wine and Arts, scheduled from 3 to 7 p.m. July 27 at the Westlake Village Inn. Proceeds are earmarked for Special Olympics of Ventura County.

Club leaders said their main 50th anniversary celebration will be a dinner at 6 p.m. Nov. 1 at the Hyatt Westlake Plaza hotel.

On the Net:

http://www.thousandoaksrotary.org