Long Beach planning staff has sent out a request for proposals (RFP) to hire a consultant team to take the lead in a collaborative planning process to update the Southeast Area Development and Improvement Plan (SEADIP).
The zoning code, established in 1977, governs coastal development on property near the Alamitos Bay Marina and neighboring the Los Cerritos Wetlands by restricting land use, density and building heights.
City staff is now expected to bring a consultant team forward to the City Council in the next few months for approval to start the update process.
Now that the City is looking to update the decades-old
zoning code, however, environmental lawyers say there’s still nothing
preventing any property owners from putting forth projects that conform to the
existing code, which would ultimately undermine efforts to revise the law.
Building ban proposed
Michelle Black, attorney for environmental law firm
Chatten-Brown & Carstens, said a building moratorium on development in the
SEADIP area would help close any loopholes. The attorney presented draft
language of a “blanket” building moratorium to the Los Cerritos Wetlands Land
Trust at its member meeting on Thursday, March 28 at Kettering Elementary
School
“We want any plan that is approved to have a chance to
succeed– not be limited by what’s already there by the time it gets
implemented, so a building moratorium is one possible knight in shining armor
to fix this,” she said.
Although degraded by oil pumping and other utility
operations, the Los Cerritos Wetlands, that once spanned 2,400 acres,
overlapping Long Beach and Seal Beach along the mouth of the San Gabriel River,
is home to threatened and endangered species, including the Belding’s Savannah
sparrow, California least tern and the California brown pelican.
Over the years, however, SEADIP restrictions on property
near the wetlands have held back numerous building proposals because of its
limits on height, density and land use, ever extending costs and time for all
parties involved.
In an attempt to resolve long-fought quarrels over projects
along the corridor that is already heavily impacted by traffic,
environmentalists and property owners have agreed that the city ordinance
should be revised with conciliations from all sides of the spectrum.
“It is our opinion that the zoning is so old and so out of
date that, basically, it’s like an area without zoning, which is why you see
one huge inappropriate development after another,” said Elizabeth Lambe,
executive director of the Los Cerritos Wetlands Land Trust, who supports the
zoning update even though not all Land Trust members agree.
The most recent failed proposition was a $320-million,
mixed-use project to turn the SeaPort Marina Hotel site at 2nd Street and
Pacific Coast Highway into a “southeastern gateway” with upscale storefronts, a
theater and a 12-story residential and hotel high-rise.
After opponents, including wetlands advocates, vigilantly
argued against the project, the Long Beach City Council ultimately rejected the
proposal in a divided 5–3 vote in December 2011, voting down an environmental
impact report.
The project would have required variances, traffic
mitigations, overriding considerations and coastal-development allowances. Most
of all, the proposal didn’t conform to SEADIP, which disallows residential use
and caps building heights at 35 feet.
Long Beach city officials and the California Coastal
Commission, which has ultimate authority over such coastal-development
projects, have since called for a full revision to SEADIP. In May of last year,
the City was awarded a $929,000 grant from the California Strategic Growth
Council to fund the update process.
Forming 'citizens committee'
The revision to the zoning code, which would result in
amendments to the City’s General Plan and the Local Coastal Program requiring
approval from the Coastal Commission, would involve creating a “citizens
committee” made up of local residents, property owners, wetlands advocates and
other community members to collaborate on establishing the new law. The
revision would also involve a wetlands delineation study of the SEADIP area and
an environmental impact report, among other actions.
Just five months after the previous proposal was shot down,
however, SeaPort Marina Hotel property owner Taki Sun, Inc., a family-owned
property-management firm led by Raymond and Amy Lin, applied for another
proposal, only this time without the 12-story, residential building and
featuring mostly retail.
Though the new proposal, called “The Shoppes at 2nd and
PCH,” conforms to SEADIP, allowing such a project to move forward before the
zoning is updated would possibly unravel the update process, creating the same
disputes that have occurred for years, Black said.
“It’s likely that we’ll continue to have the same situation
where developers propose projects that comply with the existing SEADIP and need
to get variances for projects,” she said. “That will continue the controversy,
delays and expense, and we’ll be in the same situation we’re in essentially.”
Black presented language of a possible building moratorium
that would last for at least one year, with an option to renew until the SEADIP
process is complete. The temporary moratorium would prohibit any “building
permit, construction permit, conditional-use permit, administrative-use permit,
variance, zone change, or other land-use entitlement for the establishment, or
relocation of land uses within the SEADIP area.”
Request for exemptions
Mike Murchison, a lobbyist for three property owners in the
SEADIP area, including Lyon Communities, which owns the “pumpkin patch” site
and other property across from the SeaPort hotel on Pacific Coast Highway, said
during the Land Trust meeting that expecting the city to conduct the update
process in three years is “laughable.”
He said the City hasn’t even selected a consultant or
brought the action in front of the City Council for approval to go forward even
though it’s already been a year since the City received grant funding to start
the process.
“To think that a revision to SEADIP is going to occur in
three years, when it requires the EIR and all that, again, on coastal schedule,
it’s just not going to happen,” Murchison said. “So when you’re talking about a
temporary moratorium, you’re probably talking more along the lines of four to
five years, in my opinion.”
He added that proposing a blanket moratorium, meaning it
would apply to all property owners, could be problematic since local property
owners already have project applications in the pipeline that conform to the
existing SEADIP. Murchison questioned whether the City would be able to grant
the property owners exemptions, similar to the City’s action in approving a
moratorium last year on payday-lending and title-loan companies, which involved
“grandfathering” in two out of three applications.
“[Property owners] are attempting to put forth a project
that will conform with the current SEADIP, [and] that is going to fly in the
face of any moratorium,” he said. “I can see it right now… it’s just going to
be a big problem, because that’s what the property owners are banking on, that
they can conform, and if it’s a blanket moratorium… I don’t know where it’s
going to go. It will probably end up as a legal argument.”
Murchison added that such a building moratorium may also
hinder wetlands restoration efforts that may also require conditional-use
permits.
Source: Signal Tribune newspaper
Four ZIP codes in Long Beach (west, north and downtown Long Beach) are ranked as being in the top 5 percent in the state with the worst combined "burdens and vulnerabilities" from pollution, other environmental factors and population characteristics, according to a new pollution-tracking tool released by the California Environmental Protection Agency (Cal EPA) 
