Cannery Monument Proposal Is Canned : Waterfront: Council clears the way to raze Wilmington’s old Heinz pet food cannery. Area may get a museum or plaza instead.

The Los Angeles City Council has scrapped plans to designate one of the port’s oldest canneries a historic monument, deciding instead that a new museum or plaza should launch waterfront development in Wilmington.

The 12-0 decision, urged by Harbor-area Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores, clears the way for razing Wilmington’s old Heinz pet food cannery, a once-bustling facility that traces its history to a one-story shed built in 1914.

The council’s action also puts the city and Harbor Department on record supporting the concept of a new commercial endeavor along Wilmington’s waterfront, which for years has been overlooked by the port in favor of seaside development in San Pedro.

Just how the council and port will bring new commerce to Wilmington, however, remains uncertain.

“We just have to trust them,” said Wilmington’s Gertrude Schwab, a member of a port advisory board on seaside development.

The fate of the Fries Avenue cannery began to draw wide interest last year when Heinz announced it would close the two-acre facility, allowing the port to add the property to its vast construction and maintenance yard.

With the community clamoring for some waterfront development and the cannery awaiting demolition, Flores last August moved to designate the facility a city historic monument. The designation, later approved by the city’s Cultural Heritage Commission, was aimed at prodding the port into saving the cannery long enough to see if it should become a part of a long-proposed waterfront development in Wilmington.

After reports indicated that restoring the old, asbestos-filled cannery would be costly and cumbersome, Flores, port officials and community representatives continued to study the possibility of waterfront development in Wilmington. In January, RTKL Associates Inc., a Baltimore-based consulting firm whose projects include the successful Baltimore Place, outlined several proposals for Wilmington, among them an $11-million development of offices, restaurants and shops along Fries Avenue.

The council’s action this week does not ensure that those specific proposals will move forward, but does include the port’s pledge that a commercial development will result from the wrangling over the cannery.

“We now have a consensus in developing a seed project that will have some historical components and some recognition of the port, the community and the canning industry,” the port’s Dwayne Lee, deputy executive director of development, said after the council’s action.

But Lee cautioned that the details of the project--its location, scope, start-up date and cost--have yet to be decided.

“I wouldn’t want to call it more than a concept at this point,” he said.

Lee’s remarks are at odds with Flores’ spirited description Tuesday of what awaits the Wilmington waterfront now that the fate of the cannery has been decided. Indeed, during a brief council discussion, Flores spoke of a port history museum, with simulated cranes and other equipment, as well as a waterfront plaza--similar to one in Alexandria, Va.--for artists and their studios.

“Those are a couple of the things we are considering,” Flores said.