Photos by James Glover II / Star staff Jamie Gordon, Kaitlyn Serafin and Gabrielle Uy take notes during a class visit to the Ventura County Maritime Museum in Oxnard on Friday. About 20,000 people visit the museum every year, many of them children.

"Bella Venezia," an oil painting by Edward William Cook that hangs in the Ventura County Maritime Museum, is a work of art that can't be appreciated up close.

To really take in Cook's depiction of 19th-century Venice, you'll need to stand a few yards back from the canvas. But back up more than a step, and you'll walk right into a glass case holding a 214-year-old model of the HMS Mars.

The rest of the museum floor is just as crowded.

"We've got a large collection in a small building," said Bill Conroy, the museum's executive director.

That's just one reason the Oxnard museum is planning to move across Channel Islands Harbor to a building that's nearly three times the size of its current home.

Last week, the Ventura County Board of Supervisors voted in closed session to pursue a lease with the Maritime Museum for a building that is now occupied by the Port Royal Restaurant. The details still have to be hammered out, but the museum, the restaurant owner and the Board of Supervisors have all agreed to the general terms, Channel Islands Harbor Director Lyn Krieger said.

The Port Royal has struggled for years, and the owner has been looking for someone to take over the lease, Krieger said. The county heard proposals from a few private developers but settled on the museum, in part because it promised to spend about $1.5 million on improvements to the Port Royal building.

"They won't pay as much rent as a restaurant, but the biggest thing we were looking for was that reinvestment in the building," Krieger said.

One of the developers interested in the building, Younan Properties, is owned by real estate investor Zaya Younan of Westlake Village. The firm has been buying up beachfront homes near Channel Islands Harbor, and Younan has talked of investing hundreds of millions of dollars in the area.

Last year, Younan Properties was in escrow to buy the rights to the Port Royal lease, but the deal never closed, Younan Properties Vice President Denise Davis said.

Krieger said the harbor hadn't heard anything from Younan Properties since the fall. The Maritime Museum's plan, she said, represents the best opportunity for renovating the Port Royal building.

In an e-mail interview, Davis said Younan is disappointed at the county's choice and considers it "another example of harbor mismanagement."

Jonathan Ziv, a Hollywood Beach resident and a frequent critic of the county's management of the harbor, said he would like to see Younan open a high-end restaurant at the harbor, but he doesn't see any problem with moving the Maritime Museum into the Port Royal building.

"We love the Maritime Museum," Ziv said. "I wish them the best of luck, and I would hope the county would consider a proposal by Younan to develop another area."

The Maritime Museum was also a logical choice, Krieger said, because the county is responsible for the museum's impending homelessness. The museum is now located in Fisherman's Wharf, and the county recently leased that property to a developer who plans to level it and replace it with a 1 million-square-foot apartment and commercial center.

"We're not sure where we would have fit in," Conroy said. "It was very important for us to stay in the harbor; we are a maritime museum."

The Fisherman's Wharf redevelopment probably won't happen any sooner than 2010, leaving time for the Maritime Museum to renovate the Port Royal building and move in.

The restaurant will close and the museum will take possession of the property within the next few months, once the Board of the Supervisors approves a final lease and the California Coastal Commission signs off on the change, Krieger said.

The museum will then spend a year or two renovating the building, Conroy said. First, though, it must raise $1.5 million.

The fundraising campaign is under way. It will be the museum's biggest campaign since it raised about $3 million to open its doors in 1991, Conroy said.

About 20,000 people visit the museum every year, many of them children on school-sponsored tours. Conroy said he expects to be much busier after the move because the Port Royal building is more visible than the museum's current spot tucked into Fisherman's Wharf.

The museum will also have room to add to its collection of about 80 paintings and 100 models and other displays.

"I don't see any real downside to this," Krieger said. "They'll have a bigger place, more visible, and it gives them some independence. They won't have to worry about who's going to be the tenant next to them, like they would at the new Fisherman's Wharf."