By Sean Belk - Staff Writer

January 17 - A new policy aimed at luring private investment, attracting new development and enhancing design standards in Downtown Long Beach was approved by the Long Beach City Council (on a 7-2 vote) at its January 10 meeting, despite claims the guidelines would allow developers to drive out low-income residents and skimp on affordable housing.

Additionally, the city council denied appeals (6-3) against the new plan’s final environmental impact report (EIR), which was unanimously approved by the Long Beach Planning Commission last December. Councilmembers Gerrie Schipske, Rae Gabelich and Steven Neal voted against the action, requesting staff to look into adding an “inclusionary zoning” ordinance that would require developers to provide a percentage of low-income housing downtown. But, that plan was nixed by a majority of the council.

What was approved, however, was for city staff to come back in nearly 45 days with recommendations and suggestions on how to create a “citywide” ordinance for conditions of new development, including a Project Labor Agreement, local hiring and the first right of refusal for displaced households.

A second reading of the approved new ordinance will be laid over to the next regular meeting, scheduled for tonight, January 17.

The new “Downtown Plan” culminates nearly seven years of studies, community meetings, visioning processes and planning in order to update development standards known as PD-30. Intended to attract new businesses and development, the new plan looked at changing policies, such as parking requirements, entitlement processes and density, in a 725-acre area from Ocean Boulevard to Anaheim Street and the Los Angeles River to roughly Alamitos Avenue.

The vision of the plan is to create a “waterfront metropolis,” a “vibrant, compact city core,” and “bold and unique architecture,” through making the guidelines more comprehensive, with revised development standards and elements of historic preservation and adaptive reuse, said Derek Burnham, the city’s senior planning officer.

The new plan bases guidance on projections for the next 25 years, expecting the new standards to result in thousands of new residential units; new square footage of office, civic, retail and cultural space; thousands of new restaurants; and hundreds of new hotel rooms.

However, appeals to the planning commission’s approval of the final EIR on the plan came from the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, an advocate for low-income residents, and from the Natural Resources Defense Council, claiming the new plan would cause health impacts by displacing low-income residents, among other arguments. The groups submitted their own commissioned environmental study and called for the council to approve a “community benefits” package as part of the plan.

However, city staff refuted several of the issues. “It’s certainly possible people may be displaced but the plausibility of the displacement would be questionable at best,” said Amy Bodek, director of the Long Beach Development Services Department, who added that private developers are most likely to build on the cheapest land available, such as parking lots, which have no houses. Further, Burnham said, regardless of the plan, all projects in downtown will still have to be environmentally reviewed. “I think there’s been a lot of concern that environmental review won’t happen on individual projects. It will, but it will just be a lot more streamlined,” he said.

Kraig Kojian, president and CEO of the Downtown Long Beach Associates, told the Business Journal that the new plan is going to ensure that development downtown is more “expedient, consistent, predictable and of enduring quality.”

He added that if the loss of redevelopment was known some seven years ago, the vision for the downtown plan might have been different. “If in fact we knew then what we know today, this thing could look much different,” Kojian said. “But, given the facts that we have, what I think the city council did was exercise a strong position of leadership and vision by passing the plan as presented and dealing with the ancillary issues separately.”