2nd + PCH Council Vote Five Days Before Christmas

The Long Beach City Council has scheduled their vote on developer-sought zoning changes and entitlements for the project the same week as Christmas, pleasing some and upsetting others in Belmont Shore and Naples.

The vote may come at the December 20 City Council meeting and some local activists are worried that the public--and media-- will be disengaged from civics that close to holidays.

Also questioned was whether all city councilmembers will be able to attend and vote on what is a huge development during one of the year's busiest travel periods As with public schools, many people take off the last two weeks of the year.

On November 18, , which moved the vote into the hands of the City Council. Years in the making after their first project failed, the longtime property owners, the Lins, have spent a fortune over time, and the community has spent hours and hours attending forums and meetings trying to understand the real impact on their property values, time in traffic and the air that may become less healthy during construction if not later.

Perhaps the biggest issue at stake is what the City Council's decision will leave as a legacy, if members vote to allow much higher buildings and effectively remove the existing coastal land use restrictions. The current limit is 35 feet high and the city planning staff publicly supported allowing a 12-story hotel with other buildings taller or shorter but averaging a total of about five stories.

The concept is to concentrate density and height in some places to allow open space in others. But the iron-clad protection of open space is in the very zoning limits the City Council may decide to change. Open space advocates note that there is little legal defense against a future builder wanting to create 12 story towers if the City has already allowed one.

The elected Council has the power to approve or deny the project -- and the ability to ignore the Planning Commission's decision or planning staff recommendations. The staff acknowledged that changing coastal protection zoning could result in attempts to build developments of equal density. The staff's latest advice to the Council won't be known until the day before the meeting.

Supporters like the height and modern glass look depicted in renderings of what it might resemble (the drawings aren't official). Equally vocal are opponents such as the Los Cerritos Wetlands Land Trust who think the Coastal Commission won't approve a development that presently wouldn't be permitted under the Local Coastal Act.

The current project proposal includes a 12-story building, 275 residential units, 175,000-square-feet of retail space, a 100-room hotel, 20,000-square-feet of restaurant space and a marine science-learning center. The shopping-dining-hotel complex would stretch from Second Street back to near the Seal Beach border.

Even if approved by the Long Beach City Council, the development is then subject to the approval of the California Coastal Commission.

Local activist Heather Altman, a firm opponent of the current 2nd and PCH model, commented on her blog that the decision to hold the vote just days before Christmas "is an action indicative of an agency unconcerned with trying to effectively incorporate public participation into the decision-making process."