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Planning Comm'n Will Hear Testimony, Offer Recommendation To City Council, On Proposed New Civic Center Site Plan And Draft Supplemental EIR Today; LBREPORT.com Will Carry VIDEO Live @ 5 p.m.


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(Nov. 9, 2015, 12:05 p.m.) -- LB's non-elected (Mayor chosen, Council approved) Planning Commission will hear testimony and offer its voted recommendations to the decision-making City Council on a proposed new Civic Center site plan and a draft Supplmenental Environmental Impact Report.

It's a specially scheduled meeting at 5:00 p.m. today (Mon. Nov. 9), given only a few days public notice.

City management's supported site plan includes demolishing LB's current Main Library (138,000 sq. ft.), replacing it with a smaller Main Library (92,000 sq. ft.) and allowing a privately owned high rise to be built on land that's now public property to tower at more than roughly twice the height of LB's new City Hall and Harbor Dept. HQ buildings.

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The draft Supplemental EIR (which under CEQA is required to present alternatives) devotes relatively scant attention to the option of retrofitting LB's 1970's era City Hall, an alternative urged by multiple members of the public, including (independently) by an award winning LB architect and a Columbia University Master of Science student's thesis. Instead, the supplemental draft EIR conflates retrofitting City Hall with retrofitting the former courthouse (an option not seriously advanced by the public.)

Although city management cited City Hall's seismic issues as its basis for considering an entirely new Civic Center, and city officials became aware of City Hall's seismic issues from 2005-2007, city management never put out to bid a seismic retrofit of City Hall that could have established its real marketplace cost. Istead, city management estimated/extrapolated a City Hall retrofit cost using seismic studies and then asserted the retrofit cost was unwise. (Under Mayor Foster, LB's now-former Public Works Director offered measures to address seismic issues at LB's Main Library; she was moved to LB Airport management, then chose to leave Long Beach.)

A City Hall seismic retrofit would effectively require a vote of the public to finance its cost. In contrast, city management's proposed "public private partnership" for the Civic Center transaction avoids a vote of the people, although LB taxpayers will pay annual escalating financing costs to a private/developer operator.

As previously reported by LBREPORT.com, earlier this year, the City sought and obtained Sacramento legislation (supported by State Senator Ricardo Lara (D), Janet Nguyen (R), and Assemblyman Patrick O'Donnell (D)) allowing the project's payments to extend to up to fifty years (instead of 30 years, then 35-years, first indicated by city management), likely increasing the project's total cost beyond what taxpayers were first told.

Tomorrow's (Nov. 10) Council agenda also includes an item seeking Council approval for an additional $4.4 million cost item to abate asbestos in the former courthouse building prior to demolition; city management failed to include this in the project's cost as first represented to the public. The cost of demolishing the former courthosue will now also be borne by LB taxpayers, a cost not previously included, since the City was unable to secure Sacramento legislation that would have had state taxpayers bear the cost.

City management has also backed away from its previous suggestions that the project could save money by bringing some city offices back to City Hall which now occupy space leased in buildings elsewhere. (City management is now vague about the savings, if any.)

Although City Hall seismic issues were the publicly stated basis for the project, the most recent timeline stated by city management for occupying a new City Hall was in late 2019.

The Civic Center project is strongly supported by Mayor Robert Garcia, downtown Council reps Vice Mayor Suja Lowenthal and 1st dist. Councilwoman Lena Gonzalez, the immediate past and current City Councils without dissent (with the sole exception of dissent from now former Councilwoman Gerrie Schipske.) The Civic Center project is also supported by Downtown Long Beach Associates and multiple downtown area interests. [The project is supported editorially by the PressTelegram and Gazettes; LBREPORT.com editorially named the Council's 2013 approval vote its "Outrage of the Year."]

The Planning Commission's non-binding recommendations today (Nov. 9) will go to the decision-making City Council. LB Development Services spokesperson Jackie Medina tells LBREPORT.com that the item may reach the full Council in either December or January (currently unclear.)

LBREPORT.com will carry today's Planning Commission meeting LIVE on our front page (www.LBREPORT.com) starting at 5:00 p.m.

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