Jennifer Carey of LB's Public Works Dept. tells LBREPORT.com that Public Works is holding discussions/working with Leadership Long Beach (a non-profit which commissioned the mural in 2000) seeking to find a place to relocate the artwork. While nothing has been confirmed at this point, Ms. Carey said Public Works is working to prevent it from being destroyed when the building is demolished (which isn't imminent) and is looking into options on how to do it and where to relocate it.

Ms. Carey indicated the old City Hall needn't be demolished until a year after full move-out.

Who owns the mural? The City of LB. Why is Public Works working with "Leadership Long Beach" on this? Ms. Carey said the group commissioned (paid for) the mural and accordingly Public Works wants to incorporate them in the process of finding a way to remove the mural and relocate it, possibly somewhere in LB's new City Hall (although this hasn't been decided.) [Leadership LB's annual "classes" have guided a number of individuals who've pursued establishment positions within LB city government and the city's private sector.)

A Facebook dispatch (below) by a former Leadership Long Beach classmember Carl Kemp (who ascended through City and Port management, created a PR/gov't relations firm, finished second in a 2014 run for 5th dist. City Council and welcomed G-d into his life after pleading guilty to a federal tax-related offense) created a flurry of social network activity.

[Scroll down for further.]

Mr. Kemp triggered the activity by writing that the "20 years ago the "mural entitled 'Long Beach: A New Dawn, A New Day' by renowned artist Richard Wyatt was installed in the lobby of Long Beach city hall. Countless photos have been taken in front of it, and now as City Hall is set to be torn down in a few weeks, it has no place to go. It's on canvas and affixed to the wall, and is totally transportable. Can anyone help it find a home? If not, it will be lost on the rubble, and that seems like a shame. It was a community project associated with the Leadership Long Beach Class of 2000, done with teammates Anitra Dempsey, Anita Velasquez Kinney, Paul Fornell, Christine Choppin Lorenzetti, Stephen Gordon, and me."

Among those responding was 9th dist. Councilman Rex Richardson who wrote: "On it."

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As previously reported by LBREPORT.com, on December 18, 2018, the City Council voted 7-0 (motion by Mungo, Richardson and Pearce absent/exited earlier in the meeting) to approve spending $1 million from the City's "Advertising and Promotion Fund" to include a "media wall" in the lobby LB's new City Hall. City staff said, and the Council voted to approve, allocating the sum on grounds that the Special Advertising and Promotions Fund (fed mainly by LB hotel room taxes) could be used to support art-related projects which the media wall could display in video form.

LBREPORT.com used the Public Records Act to obtain an artist rendering of the "media wall" and some of its contemplated content.

[Source: Internal city staff communications obtained under LBREPORT.com Public Records request

Below are some types of content LB taxpayers might see on City Hall's million dollar media wall.

[Source: Internal city staff communications obtained under LBREPORT.com Public Records request

(Detailed LBREPORT.com coverage of the media wall can be viewed here.)

The new Civic Center's "Grand Opening" is scheduled for July 29 from 6-8 p.m.

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