A look ahead at 2018 in ELB

A look ahead at 2018 in ELB

While the Long Beach Development Services Department pushed the sky-is-falling narrative that retail was dying, in East Long Beach the reports of the death of retail and the automobile by our city planners have been greatly aggregated in their short-sighted schemes to take away retail and church properties for high-density housing.   

The evidence of a booming economy in East Long Beach is everywhere. While retail (like everything in the 21st Century) is changing,  East Long Beach is on the cutting edge of the metamorphosis.

Retail and Banking

Traffic Circle

A multi-million dollar private investment in the Traffic Circle retail will continue.  It also appears that the private sector has not given up on the automobile. All the new buildings in the Traffic Circle-food, retail, and banking feature drive-thru service.  Anyone driving by the Traffic Circle area will see lines of cars in the numerous drive-thrus.

Rite-Aid opened a huge new up-to-date store at the Traffic Circle resulting in closing both the Circle Center and the Los Altos Center North Rite-Aid locations.  The closed former locations of  Rite Aid will now be available for new retail.  The new Rite Aid will have a Grand Opening ribbon cutting ceremony with Fourth District Councilman Daryl Supernaw on Wednesday, January 10th at 9am. The Sunday, January 7th L.A. Times featured special sales insert for Grand Opening specials specifically for the new Traffic Circle location. Those specials run from January 7th- 13th.

A new Wells Fargo Bank is currently under construction. Plans for more new buildings in the former auto dealerships are currently in preliminary stages.

Los Altos Center

The Los Altos Center will continue to be a go-to banking center with the addition of a new Southland Bank at the former Citibank location.

Jose Duarte, the new branch manager at the Los Altos Center Bank of America reports that the local Bank of America will be getting a make-over in the spring to become more CSULB student friendly.  The student-centered financial center will include a theme of black and gold, the colors of CSULB.

New ELB Shopping Centers

Despite the continues proclamations from the Long Beach Development Services staff of the death of retail, two- yes count them- TWO new retail shopping centers are coming to East Long Beach:  The Long Beach Exchange (LBX) and Second and PCH.

Both new developments will feature Whole Foods stores.

The Long Beach Exchange at Lakewood and Carson will include three "themed" areas: McGowens Approach; The Hangar; and The Landing. 

McGowen's Approach is the retail development's "main street".  It will literally be a street (complete with street parking) with street facing retail. 

The Hangar, like the name implies, will be a huge space. The Hangar tops 16,000 square feet that will feature a unique evolving collection of local food, art and design set. 

The Landing is the central plaza area that will cover over an acre.

The stylish urban center will feature the new Whole Foods concept: Whole Foods 365, a smaller scaled concept aimed at everyday values (365 is the house brand) and convenience.  Other retail already signed include: Orchard Hardware Supply; T.J. Max; Nordstrom Rack; Dunkin Donuts; In-and-Out; and the trendy Orangetheory Fitness Gym.  

Adjacent to the Long Beach Airport, the newest addition to Douglas Park is just down the street from the Lakewood Mall promising a retail synergy along Lakewood Blvd. 

The 3rd District's Second and PCH is not as far as LBX, with construction just beginning. Billed as "upscale" the development has one announced tenant the current regular Whole Foods store now located next to the new development.

Currently, the Second and PCH development features a small Facebook page and the linked to website is not operational.  

Land Element Use (LUE) High Density

After passing the Planning Commission in December, the Land Use Element (LUE)  will go to the City Council for approval apparently in the coming weeks.

At the December Planning Commission meeting,  the Los Altos Gateway and the Los Altos Center were reverted back to commercial-only removing the mixed-use high-density apartments designation at the request of Planning Commissioner Joshua La Farga.

However when  La Farga  also tried to include the Traffic Circle land being kept commercial,  the Development Services staff at the staff tables were seen consulting with then Development Services Director Amy Bodek (who was sitting in the audience) and then the staff  immediately pushed back on the Traffic Circle being removed from Bodek's East Long Beach high density scheme.  

Over and over again at the numerous public hearings the Developmental Services staff connected high-density mixed-use projects with a pedestrian, bike, and mass-transit oriented lifestyles. Yet the Development Services own report clearly states that the Traffic Circle, under state control, can only hopefully be "projected" to someday have better bus routes, while nothing is projected for bike or pedestrian safety.

In a Development Services memorandum to the Long Beach Planning Commission for their LUE Study Session titled  Exhibit B  and dated June 15, 2017 (page 16), Bodek and her team write that "The Traffic Circle area does have access to multiple bus lines, however, their frequency is limited."  The Development Services staff goes on to "project" that by 2040 there will be "bus transit improvements",  the report acknowledges that  Caltrans controls the Traffic Circle right-of-way and "there is currently no safe path of travel for pedestrians to traverse the Traffic Circle itself". 

For more information click on EXHIBIT B (and see page 16).

Clearly changing the successful Traffic Circle commercial corridors (that are completely dependent on automobiles to navigate the area) into mixed-use for high-density housing, with the state controlling the right-of-ways, and no pedestrian access is a recipe for a traffic nightmare.

With Bodek gone from Long Beach and starting her new $250,000 planning position with the County of Los Angeles on  February 1st, it now falls on the Acting Development Services Director, Assistant City Manager Tom Modica to fix the Traffic Circle LUE problem.

(For more LUE related information, see Local Elections below)

Bellflower Boulevard Bollard Bottleneck

Just in time for the local elections, Bellflower Blvd., between the Iron Triangle and the Fourth District Border at Boulton Creek flood control. Bellflower Blvd will be getting a make-over that will include: reduction of one lane; reduction of on-street parking; and a green bollad bike lane.

That reduction in lanes will only be between the 4th District border and 7th Street.  So southbound traffic from the 405 and Los Altos and northbound traffic from Park Estates, CSULB's Beach Drive,  the VA Hospital and the Iron Triangle will all be bottlenecked into two lanes.  Neighborhood leaders expect that many drivers will start using a workaround of PCH to travel North-South. Which brings us back to the Bodek Traffic Circle Plans above. 

This new Bellflower Boulevard Bollard Bottleneck comes on the heels of  Councilwomen Stacy Mungo reporting that the 5th District's Studebaker Bollard Boondoggle will be reduced by 1/2- with every other bollard being removed.   Whether Studebaker's slimmed down Bollard Bike Lane will then get the Orange Ave Bollard  "curb"  has not been disclosed. On Orange Ave.,  between each of the spaced-out Bollards, a four-inch-high asphalt curve was made in the street to further separate the bike lane from the street.  

Has anyone in City Planning heard "If it isn't broke, don't fix it."?

JetBlue Late-night flights and LB Airport fines

At the urging of  Fourth District Councilman Daryl Supernaw, a process was started last year to look at the fine structure for Late Flights at the Long Beach Airport. That plan is likely to be announced in 2018.

JetBlue racked up a historic amount of violations and resulting fines in 2017.  The U.S. Transportation Department's on-time performance Data through October of last year shows that JetBlue's 70% average is the airlines worst performance since 2007.  The industry average for the same period is 79%.

With 70% of its flights stopping in the Northeast, the airline has blamed airport runway repair work at Boston's Logan and New York's Kennedy airports as well as having less time padding in its flight schedules for its on-time problems.  The U.S. Transportation Department reports that JetBlue is responsible for 8 percent of its delays compared to the U.S. industry average of 5.1%

New York and Boston are not the only cities JetBlue is having on-time issues.  Here in Long Beach. plus in San Juan Puerto Rico and in Orlando Florida, JetBlue's on-time-performance has declined for the last three years.  

JetBlue's five consecutive months of  "chronic delays"  (more than 30 minutes, 50% of the time)  of JetBlue Flight 687 that flies between  Orlando and San Juan has prompted a review from the U.S. Department of Transportation.  

Delays have cost JetBlue money other than the Long Beach fines.  Delays cost airlines about $62.55 a minute according to the Airlines for America trade group.

JetBlue has faced other problems. It's pilots joined the Air Line Pilots Association in 2014. but have not yet reached their first contract.  The JetBlue Pilots took out advertisements about the impasse in papers across the nation on January 1st, including the LA Times.  

Later, that week after similar announcements from its competitors,  JetBlue announced that it be paying its non-administrative employees a $1000 bonus from the savings the airline is expected to achieve under the new Republican Tax Cut.   

2018 Local Elections

Local elections for city-wide positions and the odd-numbered council districts will take place during 2018.

High-density development has become an election issue in the East Long Beach 3rd and 5th District elections.  

Neighborhood advocates in both districts have stepped up to challenge the incumbent councilwomen, 3rd District Suzie Price and 5th District Stacy Mungo.

In the 3rd District, neighborhood and environmental advocate Gordana Kajer was opposed to the approval of the high-density plans for the SEASP (also known as SEADIP) wetlands adjacent area which Councilwomen Price supported.  Kajer will be having her first fundraiser on January 10th at the Belmont Heights EJ Malloy's from 6 pm to 9pm.

In the 5th District, neighborhood advocate Corlissa Lee was the co-founder of the Eastside Voice neighborhood association that was formed in response to the Land Use Element plans for high-density in East Long Beach.  Shortly after announcing her run, Lee replied with her own video Councilwomen Mungo made about the LUE. Lee, who has studied the LUE extensively and the new state laws mandating more housing, was one of the first neighborhood advocates to sound the alarm bells over the LUE.

For the Lee video click on: Corlissa Lee LUE Video 

For the Mungo video click on the video below:

The other major candidate in the 5th District race is Richard Dines. Dines who has labeled Mungo a "flip-flopper" spoke at the LUE community meetings, but does not at posting time have a LUE position on his website: DINES for City Council

How big an election issue is high-density and its assorted problems?

In Orange County, the City of Lake Forest held a special Recall Election on January 2, 2018, for Councilman Andrew Hamilton. The election was billed as a referendum on Hamilton's support of re-zoning the 4.5 acre Nakase Nursery for high-density development that recall proponents opposed as a traffic producing nightmare.  Hamilton's demeanor towards residents and cozy relationship with developers along with developer campaign contributions was also an issue.  

The recall effort won with resounding 72% of the vote.  Hamilton will be replaced by neighborhood advocate Tom Cagley who ran on the slogan: "People not Politics".  

On his website, Cagely blamed the Lake Forest Planning Commission for the growing community traffic nightmare:

"Traffic in Lake Forest is sometimes like the weather: everybody talks about it doesn't seem anything can be done about it.  Of course, actions of the planning commission over the past few years has only contributed to the problem, as little forethought appears to have been invested in how to handle the increased traffic loads."