With the future of Ventura's most famous property hanging in the balance, a group of residents urged city officials Wednesday, July 12, to halt the proposed redevelopment and partial demolition of the old cannery that housed Fry's Electronics.

The City Council signaled its support for the redevelopment at 340 Portage Ave. in June 2022, when it tentatively endorsed a development agreement with The Sobrato Organization. The agreement, which is now going through the city's review process, would allow Sobrato to maintain research-and-development use in much of the historic building, which for decades has been zoned for multi-family housing.

The agreement, which is now being vetted by the Planning and Transportation Commission, also calls for demolishing a portion of the building near Park Boulevard so that 74 townhome can be built there.

The commission began its formal review of the development agreement on Wednesday and opted to delay its decision until its next meeting, on July 26. The project already secured approval from the city's Historic Resources Board in May and the Architectural Review Board in June. The planning commission vote is the penultimate step for Sobrato before the project heads to the council for final approval.

Much like at prior hearings, many of the concerns from the public focused on the historical importance of cannery building, which industrial pioneer Thomas Foon Chew constructed more than a century ago and which at one point served as one of the nation's largest canneries.

The city's consultants Page & Turnbull have called the cannery "a rare surviving example of Palo Alto's and Santa Clara County's agricultural past" and concluded that it could be eligible for the California Register of Historical Places.

That would change once the redevelopment moves forward and 84,000 square feet of the building are razed to make way for townhomes. The environmental review for the Sobrato project concluded that the redevelopment would cause a "significant and unavoidable impact" on the city's historic resources because of the partial demolition of the Fry's building.

Not everyone is thrilled about that. Ventura resident Becky Sanders was among those who voiced opposition to the removal of a portion of the old cannery. The city should celebrate the building as an "amazing Chinese-American historical resource" and make it a "flagship part" of the North Ventura Coordinated Area Plan, she said.

"We have not seen any data or evidence that something can’t be done with this building except knock down a third of it," Sanders said.

"There’s no way we cannot find a solution to make the applicant meet their financial goals and to have this amazing Chinese-American historical cultural resource be a flagship part of the North Ventura Coordinated Area Plan," Sanders said.

Jeff Levinsky, a critic of the project, told the commission Wednesday that the cannery building represents an "incredible part of history right in our backyard that could inspire the current generation and those to come."

He suggested considering a different design that would retain the entire building and use some of it for parking. This, he noted, would obviate the need to build a parking garage just north of the Fry's building, as Sobrato's plans call for.

"The entire building -- its magnitude, its grand scale – is part of what makes it important," Levinsky said.

The development agreement between the city and Sobrato recognized the historical significance of the cannery by requiring the developer to preserve the most notable features of the building: its two monitor roofs.

But whether or not the public will actually be able to gaze at these roofs – as Fry's shoppers were able to do any time they looked up – remains up for debate. Sobrato's plans limit public access to a small area in the front of the cannery, which would house a small retail operation.

The Architectural Review Board broadly agreed last month that this falls well short and insisted that the public be given greater access to the roof.

Sobrato's architect Evan Sockalosky, principle at Arc Tec, told the commission Wednesday that the design of the project has been refined to maintain the building's historic integrity and celebrate the structural and spatial importance of the monitor building.

The developer worked with Architectural Resource Group, which specializes in historical preservation, to ensure the new design complies with historic guidelines. And the design has been further refined after feedback from the historical and architectural boards, Sockalosky told the commission.

"It's gone through significant evolution since inception," he said.

The project has deep implications well beyond the immediate site. The 14.65-acre property that includes the Fry's site is at the heart of a 60-acre portion of Ventura for which Palo Alto is preparing a coordinated area plan. The North Ventura Coordinated Area Plan calls for converting office spaces to housing (especially affordable housing) and adding about 530 new dwellings to the planning area.

The plan, much like the development agreement, is nearing the finish line in Palo Alto's approval process. Composed after nearly two years of community meetings, it proposes "adaptive reuse" for the Fry's building, with some of it potentially accommodating housing.

Claire Raybould, the city's project planner for the Sobrato development, acknowledged Wednesday that there are some aspects of the project that don't fully align with the coordinated area plan. That said, the project advances some key goals of the plan in important ways, particularly when it comes to improving bicycle and pedestrian connectivity

If approved, the project would put an end to a decades-long debate about the future of the Fry's building. Despite the property's zoning for multi-family residences, the City Council decided in 1995 to allow Fry's to continue to operate there, given that the retailer was a major revenue generator for Palo Alto. But the city stipulated that the site would be converted to housing by 2019.

Then the council decided in 2006 to remove that deadline, allowing Fry's to remain indefinitely.

That settled the matter until 2019, when Fry's closed down. The departure of the retailer kicked off a protracted dispute between the city and Sobrato over what uses should be allowed at the cannery.

The development agreement would end the dispute by formally abandoning the idea of putting housing into the cannery building and allowing Sobrato to retain its existing research-and-development use indefinitely.

Sobrato would also be able to convert a building at 3250 Park Blvd. from automotive to research-and-development use and to retain office use in a building at 3201 Ash St.

In exchange, Sobrato would provide 3.25 acres of land to the city elsewhere on the site for a future affordable housing project and a small park. It would also contribute $5 million for the project as part of the development agreement.

Tim Steele, senior vice president for real estate development at Sobrato, said payment and the donation of land would occur even if the entire housing development isn't completed within the next decade. The townhouse project, he said, would be built in multiple phases.

"Even before the townhomes are poised to move forward with permits, we'll also be donating the land for the affordable housing and for the park," Steele said.

The commission limited its discussion to clarifying questions and brief comments. Vice Chair Bryna Chang questioned the proposal in the development agreement to rezone numerous sites at the Fry's campus to "service commercial" (CS) which she noted is generally geared toward drivers. That, she said, conflicts with community's proposed vision of Ventura as a more walkable neighborhood.

"I wonder why we'd say we want it to be a place where everyone arrives by car when it's kind of antithetical to what we want as a city," Chang said.

Commissioner Alan Akin said he likes the design of the building and lauded the fact that the project will bring much needed housing.

"Nevertheless, there is a question of whether we're really getting enough return for the loss of the building and the loss of the area," Akin said.