Among those present for the Oct. 24 event were LB City Manager Pat West, 6th district Councilman Dee Andrews, City Auditor Laura Doud, LB Harbor Commission VP Dr. Mike Walter and Redevelopment Bureau Manager Craig Beck. [We don't know if Mayor Bob Foster and his chief of staff would have attended but they couldn't...since they were on OC firelines with LB firefighters.]
Mr. Morris began his presentation with a video that packed a wallop: using the audio of the Beatles song "In My Life" ("There are places I remember..."), the audience saw 8mm-16mm home movie clips of things LB no longer has...including surf off of LB's downtown (caused an audible stir) plus large crowds on downtown streets and the former Pike.
The video set the stage for Mr. Morris' remarks, which he delivered basically extemporaneously using only bullet points without a script. LBReport.com provides an extended transcript of salient portions below.
Mr. Morris: ...I'd just like to acknowledge that I know we're in a new era, and I'm really happy to see [City Mgr] Pat West, and [Redevelopment Bureau Mgr.] Craig Beck, and [City Auditor] Laura Doud and [6th dist. Councilman] Dee Andrews because they are the new era in Long Beach and I really, for one, really feel that we're going to see a big difference in what happens at City Hall...
...The things I'm going to talk about today, really, they've really picked up the baggage and they've got work to do, and we also have work to do, we all have to contribute. But I wanted to just take you all back a little bit, to see where we all started:
[Shows video of home movie clips from late-1930s through mid-1960s showing Rainbow Pier, surf in the ocean off downtown LB, Pine Ave., and the Cyclone Racer/former Pike, accompanied by the Beatles In My Life ("There are places I remember...") We watched as audience members viewed the video, some reacting as if they were viewing a family heirloom. The sight of surf off LB's downtown produced an audible stir.]
Well, as you can see, many years ago...you see the waterfront activities, with the water being our major, major asset in this community, and I think over the years...you see the change, and you see what's happened...[T]rade has become the priority in our downtown area...
The Port, the shipyard, Boeing really became the top priority of our area, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's an economic engine that is truly important for this community and to the nation. So as we move forward on that...I sent out an email last week, I had people ask me questions. I think it's much easier for me to [let] the questions tell the story.
And they asked, "Why is there no retail in Long Beach?"...We do have retail in Long Beach. We have huge amounts of retail in Long Beach that are very, very successful. But unfortunately it caters to the market that it's more of a low income...
Then the retail component also fits into what happened at downtown, the Pike and Pine Ave...But the Pike and Pine Ave., we couldn't sell retail, but everything we developed had retail components to it, way too much...
...I think we're the only beachfront community with a Chilis on the beach. I'm not knockin' a Chilis concept, but where I live I can walk to Chilis up on Candlewood Ave. [in Lakewood].
It's just really, to me, we need better. I think we have to raise the bar. We have accept better projects. We have to accept better architecture. We have to force them. We're always accepting second-best...
Well it's time to make changes...
Pine Ave. and the Pike, they don't connect. We don't talk to each other. We don't connect to each other. As of late, we're getting together. We've talked for many years about the linkages...
...Rainbow Lagoon, the Aquarium, Shoreline Village, they're great, fabulous assets -- but the internal portion of that Pike project, it's abysmal, and it's going to take some major, major forcing of things to happen...
[W]e end up with a strip mall on the waterfront...I just think...the City has to look at, there has to be a way to force DDR [Pike developer] to either give up that portion of the project or hammer 'em...
Pine Ave. now, as we all predicted years ago when they built the Pike and the full mass of building begins, it's just going to decimate Pine...and that's exactly what happened.
Everybody above on Pine Ave. is another question: what happened to Pine? Everybody on Pine reinvented themselves. Mum's restaurant was kind of like, well, we lost all our convention business; they're going to the Pike; we knew that was going to happen. Everybody reinvented themselves and ended up with some nightclubs...
...I've spent more meetings in the last five years going to a "pilot program" about the entertainment district on Pine Ave., but what the hell? We've had this thing forever and if we don't have a pilot program, what happens then? Well nothing. So why are they having these meetings? Because it's the City's way, if you have a pilot program, they can funnel money at it...They create money for different programs. It's asinine.
We go meeting after meeting after meeting. Parking. We talk about parking till I'm blue in the face. Right now I get red in the face because it aggravates the hell out of me that we can't figure this out.
Ten years ago, we [read] an editorial in the Press-Telegram, a kind of a little backhanded compliment, our favorite troublemaker, John Morris, has a solution for parking. Well, we have this massive monstrosity of parking at the Pike, and we have this massive parking structure at CityPlace, under-utilized at both venues. Yet our community when they come downtown, it's not convenient to park, so we have to make it convenient.
We have to use our Passports, that transportation that we have, Larry Jackson of Long Beach Transit does a fabulous job...That is the future for us. In order to move between Belmont Shore and downtown, all those people, from Ocean to 7th St., when they go home at 5 o' clock at night, they're landlocked. They're afraid to leave their homes at night because they'll lose their parking place...
So transportation and re-educating people on how to move around, and get around in our city, specifically the waterfront area, and I count that from 7th St. to Ocean. We have two totally, totally different markets in our city...
A lot of...people are the eastside [of LB] and they don't venture to downtown anymore, so we're creating our businesses to go to the southbay, Lakewood, South Gate and Downey. They come downtown, they love it, they love everything about it.
The key to the success of downtown to me is all about density...Without the density, it's never going to be a major success.
You saw the video. I mean, it was all about people. We had people. I mean it was like, there was everybody on those videos...but for some reason we have a problem with what's being attracted to downtown today...1% of those people come down on that Blue Line and that Blue Line is a pain in the ass...The MTA supposedly pays for our Sheriffs to be on the Blue Line as they travel. They get paid by the MTA to be on the Blue Line but they're never on the Blue Line...When that Blue Line hits Willow or Wardlow, the main terminal up north, it should be taken over by Long Beach PD and not the Sheriff. We need to take care of our own downtown...
...There's a total, total disconnect when you're dealing with staff in Planning & Building, especially Public Works. They are truly, truly out to lunch. They don't have a clue what it takes to open up a business. They don't know how to communicate with people, and it's so unfortunate, but it just seems like it's about cover your ass.
And I know Mr. [City Manager] West is here today and he's already making changes, and I'm not bagging on the current people as I mentioned earlier, but the history of what's been going on, I know everybody in this room knows what's goes on at City Hall. They've heard it from everybody. Unless you can afford a lobbyist who can guarantee you five votes, you're going to take you forever...
...We have public safety. We argue and argue about public safety and how do we pay these people. Well you know what? It's all about priorities...[Police Chief] Tony Batts went before the Council at least two years ago, three years ago, I was sitting there that night, he pleaded we need 300. I need 300 new cops...Bob Foster runs for office: I'm going to give you a hundred. I going to get you a hundred. That's my pledge; that's my pledge.
Well, budget process starts about a month ago, guess what? There was two classes for the [Police] Academy, we cut one. Why? Because nobody wants to take the damn hard way to go.
We have to change the way we do business...We have a Council that is so unionized right now. It drives me nuts. The priorities are screwed up...
Public safety is the key. Infrastructure needs to be taken care of. And we have this economic engine.
You saw that video. You saw those people surfing, right across the street over there from where I'm facing, where the Aquarium is located, all that whole area over there used to be beachfront, surfing. This city had everything.
We've come full circle today. We have everything again. The CVB does tremendous work in doing the convention business in this city.
But that Port, that economic engine that feeds this country...We have this asset next door to us...[W]e don't get our fair share.
It's time for our city to stand up. It's not taxing the citizens of Long Beach. It's taxing the containers that come into this city. The price of doing business in this city to the container industry should be going up big time.
[State Senator] Alan Lowenthal has got the right idea in the sense that the container bill [fees] to do infrastructure things...but there's no help for this community.
There has to be responsibility of that Port. It's taken away the beachfront. The expansion of that Port, Pier J. The L.A. river turns left, right into the beachfront. So I don't understand why the people in this room who live out on the Peninsula and in Belmont Shore are not ticked off.
When I came here in the '70s...out on the Peninsula, jump into the ocean. I wouldn't do that today if my life depended on it. I wouldn't go swimming out there.
We need to be forcing these things to happen. We need to force people at City Hall that set the policy guidance over there, you know the nine people over there that don't love each other in any way...they're all making deals about that deal in their community. It's not about the city as a whole; it's nine people talking about their individual territory, and that's dead wrong.
I think that we have an asset that needs to be tapped into. We can change the wharfage fees...We can change the Tidelands agreement we have with the State. We can do a lot of creative things to pay for public safety, to pay for infrastructure.
And that economic engine, I'm talking billions and billions and billions of dollars coming through this Port, we're getting the shaft. Yeah, it may create jobs out there and may do all these wonderful things, but look what we've been breathing the last twenty years. We have the worst air quality in the country in this city. How can that be? When we have such great, great assets over here. We have everything.
But the one thing we're really lacking is our water quality. Our water quality sucks. It's an embarrassment...[notes other beach cities like La Jolla, San Diego, Manhattan/Redondo/Hermosa.] How did we let it happen?
...Why I think we're at the crossroads today is that Port has major plans for expansion coming up. That Port is going to tell you that the old bridge, the Desmond bridge, is a little iffy and through this container fees they're going to do, they're going to talk about building a new bridge, bigger. What they don't want to tell you is that so it'll let these new super-tankers, with big super mounted containers, triple the amount of containers.
The Alameda Corridor was never built to alleviate traffic on the 710 freeway. It was never intended to take the trucks off the 710 freeway. So we need to look at other ways to bring people into our city because that's only going to get worse...
And we have the opportunity today, because they're going to need some mitigation to keep ahead of everything that's going on at the Port, and I think we have to raise the bar and make this happen.
Another way of fixing public safety...We should put all the stops out today [displays slide of Queen Mary next to elegant Las Vegas style hotel/casino], I'm not talking card clubs, I'm not talking anything along those lines. I'm talking first-class.
We should do a Bellagio type concept on that property next to the Queen Mary, sitting where we are now today, you would generate, I saw the numbers for the City of Garden Grove...They were going to be giving the City of Garden Grove $125 million a year guaranteed.
Imagine what we could do with our public safety. We could give Tony Batts his 300 cops he needs and not even worry about it. The only fear I would have with something like this, I'd be one of those leading the charge to make sure this doesn't go into the General Fund, make sure this money is a dedicated funding source that takes care of things the community really wants and let the community control that money. Do not let it get inside that General Fund because once it does, it's hooked, it gets used for everything.
I think that we're so close to being there. You know, you look at everything else that's gone around downtown, the Convention Center, and then like I said, the Rainbow Lagoon, it's all awesome. But you cross 4th St., I often look when I've brought people over here and I look back at the skyline, and my only comments are, 'May you never judge a book by its cover.' I said it's a beautiful skyline, but once you get on the other side, there's a lot of work to do. We've forgotten about the inside...
...It's all do-able. Everything that I'm talking about with the Port and the Tidelands is all do-able. It's all about priorities and the political will to do it...
And we have a Councilwoman today, Suja Lowenthal, who's such a breath of fresh air. I don't agree with some of her philosophies on labor but that's a different issue; we agree to disagree. But she gets it. She understands what we're trying to accomplish and she's a driving force for a lot things we're trying to do.
Unfortunately she doesn't love my favorite Councilwoman, Rae Gabelich because, I don't know, because Rae likes to meddle in her district. And that's my issue with all this. What's wrong with somebody in the 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th or 5th making a statement to the effect 'I think this would be great.' Not only you can't talk about it; you can't bring it forth; that's 'my district.'
It's our district. This waterfront. This is the key to Long Beach to me. It needs to get back to its hey-day...
...Density [downtown]. Public safety. Clean water. Force that Port of Long Beach to take over responsibility for the damage it's done to this community. We've allowed it to happen...
[Commends and shows portion of downtown visioning video]
(Oct. 26, 2007) -- Delivering a personal "State of the City Message" to a larger-than-usual Rotary Club crowd, long-time Pine Ave. businessman John Morris spelled out in affirmative but unflinching terms what he believes should be done to revitalize the City of LB and LB's downtown area.
As with all Rotary Club speakers, Mr. Morris offered personal views, not necessarily those of the group or its members...but we heard no boos or negative audience responses during Mr. Morris' roughly 35 minute presentation which drew generous applause at its conclusion.
