Huntsingers Bow Out of Ventura Ave. Project : Development: The move surprises landowners’ partners. It also threatens the future of project, which was opposed by neighboring small businesses.

Stunning Ventura city leaders and their own business partners, a local landowning family announced Tuesday that they are dropping out of a huge private redevelopment effort on Ventura Avenue, possibly putting the entire project in jeopardy.

“We will not participate in a project which is a financial liability to our business neighbors on Ventura Avenue and Stanley Avenue,” wrote Carl F. Huntsinger in a two-page letter to Ventura Mayor Tom Buford.

Together with the Neel family and Kinko’s Service Corp., Carl Huntsinger and his brother Fritz had proposed building 200 homes, office buildings, bike paths and parks on a 77-acre lot north of Stanley Avenue, south of Seneca Street, and west of Ventura Avenue.

The site is now a jumble of vacant lots, citrus groves, auto salvage yards and industries servicing the oil industry.

Some Ventura City Council members said they were startled by the Huntsingers’ decision to pull out of the project, which would upgrade the city’s west end without costing the city money.

“It’s a big disappointment,” said Councilman Steve Bennett. “I called Carl Huntsinger and asked him if there was anything the city could do (to change his mind), and he said, ‘No.’ ”

The way the site is laid out, the Huntsinger family owns a narrow, seven-acre strip across the property’s northern end. The Neel family owns the adjoining 26 acres to the south, and Kinko’s holds the deed to the 22 acres south of the Neel property.

A strip of industrial businesses lines the area’s southeast perimeter, bordering Stanley and Ventura avenues. The Huntsinger family owns a few of these small parcels but most of the land belongs to small business owners.

Bill Neel, one of the partners in the development deal, said he had no idea the Huntsingers would drop out of the project until Carl Huntsinger called him at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday.

“I was absolutely flabbergasted,” he said.

But Neel said he intends to press ahead with the project and hopes Kinko’s also will stay committed to the development.

“Everything we’ve ever said is unchanged,” he said. “I think it’s something that’s needed.”

Neel said since his family owns 73% of the proposed residential portion of the site, he will ask the council to give him 73% of the original housing allocations he requested--in other words, permission to build 146 homes.

On Monday, the council is scheduled to award housing allocations for the first time in four years.

But council members said they fear that Kinko’s would now back out, too. One reason the city staff and council members have been so excited about this project is that Kinko’s officials say if it goes through, they will stay in Ventura and expand their national corporate headquarters on the land they own north of Stanley Avenue.

On Tuesday, however, Kinko’s officials said they are committed to the project only as it was originally proposed, with the city rezoning all the industrial properties on the site to light-industrial and commercial use. Existing businesses would be allowed to stay.

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But small business owners said they worry that they will ultimately be forced out of the area and have spent months lobbying the developers to drop their plans.

Last week, 14 of these small business owners threatened to file a lawsuit if the development went forward. They have complained for months that the proposal before the city was designed to surround them with neighbors who would find their noisy, smelly industries distasteful.

“Alone, the City Council and the Planning Commission were not going to listen to us,” said Bob Casey, owner of OCO Tool Company. “They had their minds made up.”

So Casey and neighboring businesses hired environmental lawyer Glen Reiser, who began digging and soon came up with charges of possible chemical contaminants on the northernmost Huntsinger property.

Late last week, Reiser met with the Huntsingers’ attorney, Lindsay Nielson. Tuesday morning, the Huntsingers said that after five years of working to put the deal together, they wanted out.

Carl Huntsinger said he and his brother have been troubled for weeks over the complaints pouring in from their longtime colleagues on the Avenue.

“We were raised on the Avenue,” said Huntsinger, who now manages family citrus groves in Ojai. “Our father started his business on the Avenue in 1921 and some of our neighbors now used to be our suppliers. We felt we had an allegiance to these people.”

Huntsinger said he also decided to pull out because of opposition from the city’s planning commissioners. Some commissioners have said they think the 200-home community is poorly designed or should not be included in the overall development.

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Yet the City Council often makes final decisions on major projects and most council members say they want the project to go forward.

Huntsinger said it was largely a coincidence that he and his brother changed their minds only days after his attorney met with the business owners’ attorney. But by hiring a lawyer, he acknowledged, “they were a little more organized than they had been before.”

But Planning Commissioner Ted Temple, who has criticized the project as incompatible with the surrounding area, said he thinks Huntsinger just bowed to legal threats.

“When they started looking at the possibility of a real controversy surrounding hazardous waste sites,” he speculated, “that’s when they said, ‘Let’s get out.’ ”