Options Still Include: Renting, Buying Or Building After Previous Plans Nixed

By Sean Belk - Staff Writer

February 14, 2012 - Port of Long Beach officials will soon make recommendations regarding plans to move the port’s administrative staff out of its current 50-year-old, seismically outdated building and into a new home.

Plans for the port’s new headquarters have so far fallen flat after two proposals were nixed: first, a $300 million project to construct a new facility was vetoed by Mayor Bob Foster in 2010; and second, the Long Beach Harbor Commission came to a heated stalemate last August on buying the World Trade Center building downtown.

Within the next few weeks, port executives are expected to recommend options for a new home, port Executive Director Christopher J. Lytle said during a January 23 harbor commission meeting.

“This is an item that everybody in the room, on the staff side, considers to be very, very high priority and, really, for good reason,” Lytle said. “We have been moving things forward.”

Since the matter involves potential real estate negotiations, Lee Peterson, the port’s spokesperson, told the Business Journal that the harbor commission is most likely to receive a briefing in closed session and advise port staff about what to do next.

The port’s existing administration building, located at 925 Harbor Plaza within the port complex, is currently in disrepair, according to port staff, who said the building needs upgrades to elevators and air conditioning systems, and noted that it would be unsafe in an earthquake. The Long Beach Harbor Department’s more than 400-member staff has also outgrown the seven-story, 120,000-square-foot building, with some working out of nearby trailers.

The original plan was to build a new, environmentally-friendly-designed facility on a vacant lot adjacent to the current building as part of a massive capital improvement project. But Mayor Foster scrapped that plan from the port’s budget, and ordered port staff to look at cheaper options.

Port authorities then jumped at the chance to buy the World Trade Center building downtown. Harbor commissioners had negotiated the deal with property owner Legacy Partners for months in closed session, choosing the 27-story Class A building as the best and cheapest option. The port purchased the building’s 659-stall parking lot for $8 million, which it still owns. The deal was nixed after commissioners deadlocked, 2-2, with one commissioner recusing herself per instructions of the city attorney.

As before, options on the table include renting space, buying an office building or constructing a new facility, Peterson said. Price, security and proximity will most likely be the main issues again.

“[Port staff will] try to provide for the commissioners a menu of options at this point, given what we’ve looked at in the past and what other things we might want to add to that,” he said. “Executive management is looking at those options and would need to present that to the board to really find out which direction we would like to go in before we go too far down the road.”

The harbor commission would also have the option of revisiting the World Trade Center deal, but that’s still unknown since port staff refused to respond to Legacy Partners in writing to work on objections brought up by the commission. “That’s not to say that they can’t look at things we’ve looked at in the past or add certain things in the future,” Peterson said.

One proposal for the port was brought to the table by the law firm Keesal, Young and Logan, which, in association with Molina Healthcare, have a $2 billion Golden Shore Master Plan project that would significantly change the downtown skyline. The proposal would build a new port building as part of that development.

Another proposal presented to the harbor commission is purchasing or leasing space at a building Boeing recently vacated at 4801 Airport Plaza Dr. near the Long Beach Airport and the 405.

Doug Thiessen, the port’s managing director of engineering who is now leading the search for a new headquarters, said little during the recent harbor commission meeting about what port staff plans to recommend. But he added that a determination must be made soon.

“There are a lot of decisions that need to be made in a relatively short period of time and some of them have pretty significant consequences, so we want to be mindful of the board’s need to participate and give us guidance,” he said. “I can make some suggestions right now, but we haven’t really fully cooked this thing . . . In the near future I would say we will be coming to the board with some requests for communications on how to move forward.”