February 20, 2004

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Palo Alto Online

Creamery crumbles, but history remains

by Rachel Metz

A long, battle finally ended this week as demolition crews made way for the controversial 800 High St. condominium project. But underneath the torn-down walls, metal scraps and bits of foam insulation lies an important piece of Palo Alto's history -- the Peninsula Creamery's ice cream plant.

Generations of Palo Altans enjoyed the plant's flavorful creations, which ranged from traditional vanilla and chocolate to blue-vanilla ice cream with yellow banana marshmallows (a response to the '60s Batman craze). However, the building originally housed something quite different -- a laundry service.

The Creamery plant, originally located on Hamilton Avenue, didn't move to the High Street site until the late '60s.

Dick Kratt, who served as manager of the plant from the late 1960s until 1992, remembers the site well.

"It was a great place to work, great family business. You know, the people were nice to work for. Plus I was born and raised in the area so I didn't have any reason to move," Kratt said.

Many people worked at the plant for a long time, he added.

"We had families. Sometimes we'd have two or three people from the same family working there. Brothers, fathers and sons, cousins, that type of stuff," he said.

As manager, Kratt wore a variety of hats. He purchased ice cream ingredients and machinery parts, tasted ice cream and -- perhaps the best of all -- decided what flavors would be sold.

Kratt said the plant made a good strawberry and "one of the best vanillas there ever was," but also veered away from the tried and true. The Batman flavor was a good example, although it didn't really sell.

"People just don't eat blue," Kratt said.

His favorite? A flavor he put together for his father, who liked chocolate ice cream with chocolate syrup. Kratt called it "coco-fudge."

In 1976, to honor the country's centennial, the plant rolled out nationalistic ice cream flavors like "patriotic peach," Kratt recalled.

While Kratt worked at the plant an unrelated accident left him a quadriplegic in 1992. The plant closed in 1994.

Although many assumed the shut-down was prompted by poor profits, others suggest otherwise.

James Santana, whose family owned the plant, said the city of Palo Alto shut the business down. The city wanted the Creamery to switch from an ammonia cooling system to freon, which was considered more environmentally-friendly. However, the switch would have cost $1.5 million, a price that was too high for the company.

His father never took his case to the public, but that was the real reason for the plant's closure, Santana said.

"Business was fine," he said.

According to Fire Chief Ruben Grijalva, the switch was mandated by a local ordinance -- ammonia is considered a toxic gas while freon is not. There were also fire code requirements on ammonia storage and building code constraints concerning its use.

"It was not an ideal location for that ammonia to be in the downtown area," he said.

With the building's demolition, however, such concerns seem a distant memory. Ken Kiser, a former milk deliveryman for the Creamery, was at the plant when it closed in 1994. He and others helped dismantle the plant so equipment could be auctioned off.

"Any time you're in one area for such a long time, you're bound to connect with a lot of people," he said. "But anyway, everyone loved the Creamery and we hate to see it go, but the stories will linger on forever."

Rachel Metz can be e-mailed at rmetz@paweekly.com

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