Firm Divided Over Plans for Peirano Building

Two months after City Council members voted in a rancorous public hearing to raze Ventura’s historic Peirano building, the development company planning to do the demolition is deeply divided over the deal and may not go forward with the building’s purchase, company officials say.

Tom Wood, president of Ventura Realty, said his company’s shareholders are at odds over his proposal to knock down all but two walls of the old Italian grocery to expose a Spanish laundry underneath.

At least one of the five board members is strongly opposed to the deal and one major shareholder, Wood’s uncle, former Rep. Robert J. Lagomarsino, said he has also strong reservations about buying the building from the city.

As a result, the company’s board of directors will take the unusual step of letting the 25 shareholders vote on the proposal at their annual meeting June 15. The shareholders generally do not weigh in on specific projects.

“The board members said they would wait (to vote on the project) until the shareholders meeting because the shareholders raised hell over the bad press,” Wood said.

The city’s sale of the old Italian grocery became a controversy in November when Ventura Realty said it planned to raze most of the crumbling brick structure to expose a lavanderia underneath. Wood then hopes to restore the lavanderia and surround it with a courtyard full of restaurants, shops and offices.

The lavanderia , a 26- by 30-foot tile-lined pool, may have served as the laundry for San Buenaventura Mission, which is across the street from the Peirano building.

Angry residents jammed the council chambers and begged the politicians to reconsider.

But with the price tag running at $430,000 just to bring Ventura’s oldest brick building up to present seismic standards, council members said they were not averse to tearing the structure down.

Peirano’s Market operated on Main Street from 1877 to 1987, when the city bought it from the Peirano family with the intention of preserving it as a historic landmark. The now-empty building still sports cheery murals on its west wall advertising Borax laundry detergent and Ghirardelli chocolate.

Ventura paid $150,000 for the property seven years ago. City officials soon realized, however, that the city could not afford to restore the building and agreed to sell it this spring to Ventura Realty at a loss of up to $75,000.

Lagomarsino does not think that the purchase is a good deal for Ventura Realty.

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For one thing, it’s controversial, he said. For another, he does not believe that the company’s retail development plan is a guaranteed moneymaker. And he wonders if it is the best use of a structure that the state lists as a historic building.

“From what I’ve read about it in the paper, I have really serious doubts,” he said. “I wonder, why take on a controversial project when we’re not sure of making money off of it?”

Chuck Cole, another shareholder and a Ventura native, said he is also uneasy about ripping down the building to make way for a new shopping center.

“I like old things,” he said. “But if the cost (to preserve it) is so much . . . well, I’m torn.”

Cole said he will wait to get more information at the June meeting before making a decision.

For their part, city planners say they are tired of stalling on the project.

“We’re not going to linger on for months and months, waiting for a negotiating agreement,” said Everett Millais, Ventura’s director of community services. “We’re a little frustrated.”

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Councilman Gary Tuttle, who voted against the project because he wanted to preserve more of the building, said he has heard the rumblings of discontent.

“It is a little disappointing, to go this far through the process, and assume certain things that aren’t true, like that Ventura Realty is behind the deal,” Tuttle said.

Wood said he also is getting tired of waiting and may try to poll shareholders this week to get the city at least an informal answer before June 15.

City officials say they may be inclined to look elsewhere for a developer if Ventura Realty’s shareholders turn the project down. But a tenacious Wood insists that he still could be part of the deal.

“I made the proposal, and I’m obligated as the president of the company to give Ventura Realty first dibs on it,” he said, adding that he could find someone else to finance the project.

“The project is not dead if they say, ‘No.’ ”