Firm Gains Rights to Restore Peirano Site

Impressed by a proposal to turn the old Peirano Market into an Italian restaurant and deli, the Ventura City Council has awarded KL Associates of Oxnard the exclusive rights to develop the site.

The developer plans to come back in a few months with a more detailed proposal and hopes to sign a binding contract with the city to purchase, seismically upgrade and then remodel the 119-year-old building.

City staff members Monday night presented the council with a number of options on how to deal with the grocery, which is one of the oldest brick buildings in the city and in dire need of repairs.

Of the options, city officials strongly urged the council to move forward with a plan that would give the building at least $330,000 in city-funded structural repairs before winter.

The city has owned Peirano’s for nine years. The building’s condition has deteriorated badly in that time and could get worse if repairs are not made soon, officials said.

“We are now at a point where we absolutely need to have some structural work done within the next year,” Community Services Director Everett Millais said. “We are truly concerned that a part of that building may collapse.”

But city leaders said they would rather see private developers pay the rehabilitation costs. And Councilman Jim Friedman questioned the urgency of repairing a building that has endured winters since 1877.

“I am not going to buy the concern that if we don’t do something tonight, the building is going to fall down in the next three months,” he said.

Like the majority of her colleagues, Councilwoman Rosa Lee Measures supported the KL Associates plan over the staff proposal.

“I think it would be a shame to pass up this opportunity,” she said.

KL Associates partner Jim Ludwig said his firm will try to get a contract signed with the city by fall.