Renovation Is in the Works for Santa Paula : Main Street: A lack of specialty shops and restaurants has contributed to a decline planners now hope to reverse.

Two wrought-iron arches spanning Main Street, each about 35 feet wide and 40 feet high, with inlaid tile, would frame a three-block stretch of downtown Santa Paula to be revamped in a revitalization project.

The project, planned by the town’s Chamber of Commerce and an architect who revamped the Unocal Oil Museum in Santa Paula two years ago, is in its early stages, said Margaret Burleson, a Main Street Project Committee chairwoman.

The Chamber of Commerce has been working for about three months on a plan to renovate the retail area on Main Street from 7th to 10th streets. The improvements range from planting trees and reorganizing parking to installing turn-of-the-century street lights and giving several buildings face lifts.

“We’re really just at the beginning stages of trying to do something,” Burleson said. “What we hope to do right away are the smaller things so that businesses will do the bigger things.”

Among the downtown’s detractions is a lack of specialty shops and restaurants, she added. “It’s a sad thing that it has just kind of died downtown. We’d like to see something with some sort of a track record come in and stay here,” Burleson said.

Al Fiori, the project’s designer, shares that goal.

“I’m trying to revive this town,” he said. Fiori hopes to complete a master proposal within six months and secure federal funding and grants using personal contacts with several corporations in Santa Paula, including citrus and oil companies.

The Limoneira Co. and Saticoy Lemon Assn. plant, grow and distribute citrus in Santa Paula. Atlantic Richfield, Getty, Seneca, Sun, Texaco, Union, and Unocal oil companies have operations in the city. Fiori declined to say which companies he would be soliciting.

The Chamber of Commerce may also reapply for membership in the state Department of Commerce’s California Main Street Program, which provides training and advice to small towns wishing to renovate downtown areas.

The program, however, requires the hiring of a full-time coordinator to organize renovations and promotional events. During Santa Paula’s participation from 1985-88, the manager’s salary and program costs totaled $60,000 per year, with the city donating $20,000. When the Downtown Merchants Assn. tried to tax about 80 merchants to cover the costs, the merchants balked and the city withdrew from the program.

“We are starting over. We are starting from scratch,” said Jim Brucker, co-chairman of the project.

In July, the city formed a redevelopment agency to raise funds for improvement projects.

But that has also created controversy. Ventura County sued the city last August to secure a percentage of the funds that the redevelopment agency collects, assistant county counsel Dan Murphy said.

The county contends that Santa Paula’s General Plan, which guides the city’s development, is incomplete and outdated, Murphy said. The county also claims that the environmental impact report done on the proposed renovations is inaccurate, Murphy said.

The Ventura County College District is suing the city because redevelopment funds would cut into funds raised in taxes for the college district, he said.

Officials with the college district and the county will meet with city officials at a court hearing in August.

Meanwhile, the project organizers are busy with designs.

The wrought-iron arches that Fiori hopes to include in the project would be similar to one constructed in Kansas City around the turn of the century, Fiori said. He said he intends to restore artifacts that were used between about 1910 and 1920.

“I don’t want it to be like Main Street U.S.A. in Disneyland,” Fiori said.

Elaine Musselman, an owner of Musselman and Luttrull Antiques and Old Lighting on Main Street, said her company has located “traditional old genuine metal street lamps” to line Main Street. The store will also supply antique park benches and iron gratings for trees, she said.

The store, which serves as a meeting place for the Main Street Project Committee, is already renovated, with a tin-pressed ceiling, maple floors and an awning that spans the front of the store.

People recognize the store “and realize that this is the way to go,” Musselman said, referring to the building’s period renovations.