Vacant Peirano Building May Get a New Lease on Life

Nearly a decade after city officials bought the historic Peirano grocery in the heart of downtown, the two-story building still sits abandoned and crumbling as planners have been unable to come up with a palatable and affordable blueprint to rebuild it.

But that could start to change tonight.

The City Council, acting as the redevelopment agency, will consider extending an agreement through March with Oxnard-based KL Associates to offer a realistic estimate for renovation, a key step in moving the project forward.

Until now vague cost estimates for restoration of the 119-year-old brick building have worried city officials and effectively stalled progress. The city can spend no more than $500,000 on the project, and officials feared that cost overruns would exceed that amount.

“Because of the condition of the building, and the historic character of the building, the structural costs of repairing . . . are unknown,” said Bill Hatcher, the city’s associate planner. “It’s hard to structure a deal with the unknown. We are trying to pin down the potential costs more closely to cap costs--so we don’t have a proverbial money pit on our hands.”

The city paid $150,000 in 1987 for the old market that was run by three generations of the Peirano family.

But the building, on Figueroa Street across from the San Buenaventura Mission, has been boarded up for years as the city has debated what to do with it. Some have argued that it should be razed, while others maintain that a restored Peirano’s would be an important element in revitalizing the downtown area.

One thing is certain, say city officials: The longer it sits abandoned, the more expensive restoration becomes.

The aging brick shell has fallen into such disrepair that passersby can scrape adobe from between bricks with their fingernails. During a recent blaze, firefighters feared that the seismically unsound building would collapse.

The discovery of a tiled 18th-century Chumash lavanderia (or laundry) under the grocery in 1991 thrilled history buffs but threatens to drive restoration costs even higher. City officials have now reached a point where if they do not act soon the building will crumble to a point beyond repair.

“It’s been unoccupied for at least nine years,” Hatcher said. “Once they are unoccupied, exposed to weather, buildings tend to deteriorate. It has leaks in the roof. . . . It is deteriorating rather rapidly.”

KL Associates entered into a two-month contract with the city in September to come up with a plan for renovating the building. But little progress was made during that time. Hatcher and others feared that the developer was trying to structure the deal so that the city would have to pay all costs in excess of the $500,000 it wants to spend on restoration, something the city cannot afford to do.

KL Associates and the city remain optimistic that restoration will finally move forward.

“It’s all pie in the sky until we get plans figured out,” said Jim Keller of KL Associates. “But something is about to happen.”

He estimates that the city and KL Associates will come up with a workable plan in the next three to four months.

Hatcher, too, believes this could be the beginning of Peirano’s road to recovery.

“That building isn’t going to stand up for nine more years,” Hatcher said. “But I’m hopeful this time around.”