Approval to Be Urged for Coffee Drink Factory : Business: Proposal includes enlarging PepsiCo facility where beverage exported to Japan would be prepared. Some neighbors balk at project.

VENTURA —  Seattle may be America’s coffee capital, but Ventura is set to become the U.S. home of a sweetened java drink produced by PepsiCo Inc.

Despite brewing opposition to the beverage giant’s plans to turn part of its North Ventura Avenue distributing plant into a coffee processing and canning factory, a Ventura County hearing officer said Thursday he will recommend that the project go forward.

“I don’t see that we’ll recommend anything other than approval,” said Jeff Walker, the Development Advisory Committee’s acting hearing officer. “It seems that the plant will be as clean, odorless and as quiet as it can be.”

Walker said Keith Turner, the county’s planning director, will decide early next week whether to issue permits to allow Pepsi to modify its facility.

The $18.5-million overhaul involves adding about 7,000 square feet and building two 60-foot sterilizing towers by the year 2002. A dozen residents who live near the existing 72,000-square-foot plant complained Thursday that the coffee operation would become an eyesore and release pungent coffee odors into their neighborhood.

“I’ve never been around a can of coffee that’s of minimal odors,” said 66-year-old Dick Fredrickson, who lives in the Magnolia Mobile Home Park across the street, referring to officials’ description of the plant’s impact. “What’s this minimal odors?”

Still others said they feared the around-the-clock noise from distribution trucks and machinery would only increase with the coffee plant addition.

“With the forklifts, it sounds like they’re playing bumper cars in there all night long,” said Peggy Gartman, a 33-year-old homemaker who lives across the street from where the factory’s new driveway will be built.

But Cyril Chong, who will become plant manager on Oct. 1, said the company plans to reduce noise by moving truck loading docks now facing North Ventura Avenue to the plant’s side adjacent to the Ojai Freeway. Additionally, the company plans to build a 10-foot wall along the avenue to muffle sounds coming from the plant.

“[The modifications] are going to be an improvement over existing conditions,” Chong said.

Pepsi officials said the company will use the facility to brew coffee, which will be enhanced with milk, sugar and other ingredients. Workers will can the sweetened beverage and then send the product into the towers on conveyor belts for steam sterilization. Officials claim the operation will produce no odor because the coffee beans will already have been roasted and ground when they arrive in Ventura.

“That’s not what we’re doing here,” said W. John Kulwiec, the project’s architect.

What Pepsi plans to do starting March 1 is build up an operation that will produce about 4.4 million cases annually of Birdy, a sweetened cold coffee beverage the company exports to Japan.

“In Japan, this is a big product,” said Paul Merrett, a county planner. “This is all brewed and canned like a can of soda pop.”

Chong said he will hire 29 to 31 employees in addition to the 60 who now work at the distributing facility.

Most residents said they welcomed new business and jobs in Ventura. But they also said they dreaded the continuing noise of trucks--even though Pepsi agreed that no more than six vehicles would enter or leave the facility between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m.

“I would be glad to let any of the gentlemen reside in my house for a whole week,” said Augustin Ramos, a 55-year-old mechanic who lives across the street. “You hear this [noise] off and on all night long.”

Residents may appeal the planning director’s ruling within 10 days if they fill out a written request and submit a fee that can top $1,000.

Although Kulwiec said he designed the plant upgrade with the residents in mind, he also said that “trucks are trucks.”

“We understand that you have a noise problem,” Kulwiec said. “What we’re trying to do is mitigate it. We can’t go out of business.”