Historic Status Sought for Wilmington Site : Harbor Dept., Flores in Row Over Cannery

In a move that has put her at loggerheads with the Los Angeles Harbor Department, Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores is trying to prevent the department from demolishing a cannery that Wilmington residents want renovated into a restaurant and shopping arcade.

In a motion introduced Tuesday before the City Council, Flores asks that the city’s Cultural Heritage Commission examine the 71-year-old Heinz Pet Food Cannery building to see if it can be declared a city historic monument--a designation that could prevent its demolition for at least a year.

Demolition Permit

Flores also wants the council to order the city’s Department of Building and Safety to refuse to issue a demolition permit for the building, which the pet food company intends to vacate Sept. 1.

Flores’ move comes in the wake of a months-long dispute between the Harbor Department and a citizens advisory committee that is studying community access to the waterfront in Wilmington.

The committee, appointed by the Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners and headed by Wilmington businessman George De La Torre, is working with a consultant on plans to develop land the port has set aside. The 29-acre parcel is odd-shaped, running along Avalon Boulevard from C Street to the water, with 600 feet fronting the harbor at Slip No. 5.

Several months ago, De La Torre proposed converting the cannery, which is on Fries Avenue, into a restaurant and including the two-acre cannery property in the consultant’s study area. He took Flores to a Newport Beach cannery that had been similarly renovated, and she has supported the idea ever since.

But Harbor Department officials have long-standing plans to reorganize their maintenance yard, which adjoins the cannery property. They want to raze the cannery and use the land as a storage area for heavy machinery.

The cannery proposal has been the topic of two heated meetings between the committee and Harbor Department staff. On July 6, De La Torre said, he received a letter from the department’s director, Ezunial Burts, telling him the department’s decision to demolish the cannery was firm.

As a compromise, port officials have offered to let the citizens committee salvage whatever artifacts it wants from the building for possible use in a new restaurant with a cannery motif to be built on the Avalon Boulevard land.

But both Flores and the committee say that land is not enough. Further, they say, the cannery conversion is the kind of project that could give the waterfront development an identity, reflecting the community’s history as a center for fishing and the canning industry.

In an interview, the councilwoman complained about what she sees as the rigid attitude of the department’s staff.

“What I don’t like hearing is ‘We don’t like that idea because our mind is made up and we’re not willing to think about it,’ ” Flores said. “ . . . I think what it shows is they’re not really interested in the idea of having real meaningful community access” to the waterfront.

Replied Harbor Department spokeswoman Julia Nagano: “The port has been very concerned with the community’s desire for a viable development in Wilmington, specifically the cannery, and so we did take time to reevaluate it as a potential site for a restaurant. . . . It wasn’t something that we just adamantly said no. We did in fact look at it very closely.”

Nagano said the department decided the cannery is not a good site for a restaurant. Flores disagrees.

‘Long Overdue’

“It’s vacant; it’s got a heritage of something that was very important not only to the port but to the community,” Flores said. “I believe that kind of development in the harbor area in Wilmington is long overdue.

“I know that we’re working on something at the foot of Avalon but I believe that we really need to expand into something a little more viable than that small area will allow us.”

Flores’ motion is scheduled to come before the council Tuesday. On Wednesday, De La Torre and his committee intend to ask the harbor commissioners to overrule the department’s staff and include the cannery property in the study area.

In addition, De La Torre said, he will ask the commissioners to agree to a plan that calls for the further, phased expansion of the land that has been set aside for community development. Included in his plan is a request for the port to relocate the Catalina Freight Terminal, which now occupies the waterfront property adjacent to the land the port has already set aside.

De La Torre said committee members are concerned that unless the scope of the study is expanded, the consultant will be too restricted to come up with a creative proposal.

“All we’re saying,” he said, “is that before they get too far along, why don’t we enlarge the area so that we can do something we’ll all be proud of?”