Bud Burgquist’s father, now 82, started the Green Thumb garden shop on Sherman Way in 1946.

In those days, Canoga Park was mostly farmland and Sherman Way was the only business district for miles around.

The Green Thumb, which Burgquist is now a partner in, is still on Sherman Way, but the shoppers and farms are gone.

Today, Sherman Way is a collection of billboards, neon signs and a mishmash of storefronts that make it look like a down-and-out Midwestern town.

“We have an old downtown that’s been around for a while,” Burgquist said. “It’s kind of worn out.”

Now, business and property owners in the area want to take the district back to the past, boost pedestrian traffic and window shopping and make it more of a destination point, something like Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade or Old Town Pasadena. Since the 1994 Northridge earthquake, they have banded together to apply for federal and state grants, forming a business improvement district to revitalize the stretch between Canoga Avenue and Topanga Canyon Boulevard.

This past month, they took another step: getting the L.A. City Council to approve more restrictive rules in the first zoning overlay district in the city. Bans on businesses painting buildings in fluorescent colors, new automotive service businesses opening on Sherman Way, all new billboards and lighted signs are among a host of regulations meant to make the area more people-friendly.

Sherman Way business owners are blunt about the longstanding condition of the area.

“Without (the overlay), it’s a hodgepodge of crud,” said Rocky Rhodes, owner of Rocky Roaster, a coffee shop at Canoga Avenue and Sherman Way, and president of the Canoga Park Main Street Association.

The plan will likely take some time before yielding visible results: The new zoning regulations are only enforced when an existing business does a major expansion to the premises or when a new business moves in.

“We want to restore the old town atmosphere,” said Burgquist. “The community overlay is a template. It causes a situation where people who have businesses have to make them look like they are a part of the area.”

Business and property owners pushed for the district. The effort started four years ago when the city planning department, while updating the community plan, began holding focus groups with Canoga Park residents. Jim Holmes, planning associate with the planning department, said it became clear people wanted to clean up the commercial area.

With community input, the department set the guidelines for what would be acceptable in the overlay zone, a rectangular portion of Canoga Park along Sherman Way from Canoga Avenue to Topanga Boulevard and from Sherman Way north to Wyandotte Avenue. The planning department had been looking at overlay districts for Los Angeles after such districts had yielded favorable results in cities like Pasadena, where they had been used with business improvement districts to enforce a certain design look.

Holmes stresses that the overlay only complements the business improvement district and other revitalization efforts. But it offers a way to enforce BID efforts.

“They are one small piece of revitalization,” Holmes said. “Five or six or 10 years down the road, they will have had a fairly substantial impact.”

By then, businesses will have to maintain at least 70 percent of their building facades as window space on the sidewalk, meant to induce window shopping. And the hope is that most billboards will be gone, along with the tall, brightly lit signs that tower over buildings.

So far, there has been little community opposition.

And that lack of opposition is one reason the planning department moved forward with overlay plans, Holmes said. Another was that Canoga Park already had other revitalization efforts in place.

The area also has been designated as a “main street” by the state, qualifying it for grants to improve everything from school facilities to sidewalks.

“For me, this is another element to help Canoga Park become a very vibrant and viable business community in the city,” said Councilwoman Laura Chick, whose district covers Canoga Park. “My hope here is that the design overlay encourages businesses to be part of a team effort and to create a look that draws customers, that draws people.”

While business and property owners stress the cohesive look that the overlay will eventually create in the area, Chick and Holmes say the guidelines allow for some variation and individuality.

For example, businesses can paint the exterior a color they choose, so long as it blends with the area. And they may still have individual signs, just not tall neon signs.

Rhodes said, “As far as the Canoga Park Main Street program goes, that overlay is essential to growing a cohesive community look.”

The Canoga Park Business Improvement Association had already started sprucing up Sherman Way and developing the many antique shops along the block into a destination. The overlay was one more way to help their efforts.

“We’re focused on stimulating the economy in the (Sherman Way) business district,” said Vicky Gilkey, the BID’s executive director. “We’re just really trying to resurrect the area.”

The planning department is now working with residents in other parts of the Valley such as Sun Valley, Van Nuys, Toluca Lake and in Los Angeles proper to put more overlays in place.