As proposed, the cable-stay design would simultaneously dovetail with the creative reuse of the current Shoemaker Bridge (urged by Mayor Robert Garcia and editorially supported by LBREPORT.com), turning it into a park/pedestrian walkway.

LB's then-Public Works Director Ara Maloyan told the Council in June 2015:

...This [current Shoemaker] bridge is approximately 1,300 foot clear span. The new bridge will be 1,300 foot span, spanning over L.A. River. It's 200 foot longer than the Gerald Desmond Bridge...[The new bridge] has to connect to Cesar Chavez and Drake Park master plan and also be part of park expansion and reuse of the existing bridge...Aesthetically [the new bridge] has to be a significant and a signature gateway to Long Beach. My comments have been to the consultants and to city staff, I would like to see this bridge on a U.S. stamp one day...It has to be sustainable and it has to have the safety elements that the current bridge does not have.

On August 21, 2015, LB's Dept. of Public Works made a PPT presentation to the Council's I-710 Oversight Committee that listed project goals that included "Create an extraordinary entrance to the City." Subsequent PPT presentations agendized for consideration indicated various versions of an iconic cable-stayed suspension bridge concept for discussion:

[Scroll down for further.]

[Mr. Maloyan, June 2015 Council presentation]...Part of our design is to repurpose the existing bridge, and because of that we're going to leave the existing bridge in place, modify the, I would say, west end to allow for a bike lane to connect the east side to the west side. Because of that, and also because of Army Corps [of Engineers] requirements that hydraulic calculations have shown that putting anything in the river will increase the hydraulic grade line or will cause the water line to exceed the dam at this point so we probably will have to design a bridge that is a simple span, spanning the entire span of the river without any supports.

So even if the existing bridge remained or did not remain, the new bridge had to be designed to be spanning over the entire span of the River but also if we want to have a signature bridge, we do want to have some kind of a stay, cable-stayed design that will be a signature to the entrance or the exit to the city at that point.

In late 2015 Mr. Maloyan left the City of LB to become Pasadena's Public Works Director. Since then, mainly outside of public view, the Shoemaker Bridge has morphed from an extraordinary conceptualized project into a now-proposed ordinary (if not arguably mediocre) freeway connector, gussied up with contemporary traffic slowing political correctitudes. The results are evident in a draft Environmental Impact Report (EIR) on which the public has until Nov. 12 to comment.

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The morphed project proposes what Mr. Maloyan sought to avoid: it would put at least one and as many as two additional bridge piers/pilings in the L.A. River. This will to some extent (the draft EIR contends not "significantly") reduce its flood control carrying capacity.

In September 2016, an outside project consultant provided an update for the Council's I-710 Oversight Committee that acknowledged the importance of not restricting the L.A. river channel's flood control capacity. The consultant indicated one concern was to not create a risk of flooding to nearby areas (including downtown.) He indicated that the cable-stayed design was among designs being studied but didn't rule it out.

A year later in Sept. 2017, an agendized PPT update continued to highlight the cable-stayed Shoemaker Bridge design...including on its title page.

But the Council's I-710 Oversight Committee never heard/the Sept. 2017 presentation. It laid the agenda item over to its January 2018 meeting. In January 2018, the Council Committee laid the Shoemaker Bridge update over to a future meeting. Since then, the Council's I-710 Oversight Committee hasn't met on any matters in 2018 or 2019.

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In October 2019, LB City Hall released a draft EIR on the Shoemaker Bridge project. It barely mentions the cable-stayed iconic signature bridge design in its main narrative. It proposes to leave to some fateful future decision whether to pursue a cable-stayed iconic suspension-type design (using one pilon at the western end of the bridge) or settle for a mediocre de facto freeway connector, gussied up with some contemporary traffic congesting ("calming") political correctitudes. As proposed in the draft EIR, the new Shoemaker bridge will can include a cable-stayed iconic design IF the design includes a "roundabout" at the bridge's eastern (downtown) end. Otherwise, the bridge design will put a Y-intersection at the bridge's eastern end that won't enable a cable-stayed iconic design.

The "roundabout" design would result in putting one pier/piling in the L.A. River; the Y-intersection would put two piers/pilings in the River. The two piers would "require the permanent incorporation of 0.51 acre of land within the LA River Flood Control Channel" while the cable-stayed design would use a single pylon and require 0.54 acres of land within the LA River Flood Control Channel.

If the old Shoemaker Bridge is creatively reused (turned into a park), the draft EIR estimates cable-stayed design would cost $391,900,000. The Y-intersection version would cost $226,500,000.

The draft EIR's hydrology report acknowledges that putting new piers/pilings in the L.A. River will reduce its floodwater carrying capacity to some extent at two locations, specifically its "freeboard" -- the space between its estimated highest water level and the channel top which is supposed to remain "free" of water. It acknowledges this would be less than specified in Corps of Engineers design standards. It notes that if the old Shoemaker bridge is reused as a park, some of the old bridge's piers/pilings will be removed but acknowledges this won't completely avoid the impacts.

Its narrative tries to downplay the result by describing the change in "water surface elevation" as only 0.14 feet or roughly 2 inches:

...[T]he 133-year design flow (and all flows of lower magnitude) for Build Alternative 2 [the new bridge plus reuse of the old bridge] is completely contained within the Los Angeles River channel, between the east and west vertical parapet walls. The levee freeboard is predominantly above 2.5 feet, as required by USACE for trapezoidal riprap channels (USACE, 1994). Two locations with less than a minimum freeboard (Sta. 58+70 and 62+00) will be improved in the next design phase by repurposing of the existing bridge (some of the existing bridge piers will be removed to increase the flow conveyance at Sta. 58+70 and farther upstream, which will provide more freeboard). In addition, as shown in Table 3-2, the increase in WSE [water surface elevation] for Build Alternative 2 extends about 2 miles upstream of the proposed bridge to Sta. 168+00 (due to a flat slope of the channel), but is not causing significant backwater. The floodplain width remains unchanged within the parapet walls of the flood control channel. The increase in WSE is between 0 to 0.14 feet, and is therefore within the FEMA NFIP regulations and Standard SID 69 and 70.

But the more instructive data are in a table (below) that shows the loss of "freeboard" amounts to losing 9.12" (STA 58+70) to 9.6" (STA 62+00). That amounts to reducing the L.A. River channel's currently available freeboard by 24.3% (STA58+70) to 29.4% (STA62+00). (Alternative 2 below shows freeboard with reuse of the old Shoemaker Bridge. Alternative 3 shows freeboard without the old Shoemaker Bridge.)

Source for above text and tables: Shoemaker Bridge Hydraulic Study, Hydraulic Analysis, pp. 3-4, through 3.6.

Although FEMA regulations "allow" up to a foot of changes, long-time LB residents remember that in the late 1990s-early 2000s, FEMA issued a self-serving bureaucratic decree that required homeowners from Wrigley through much of ELB (whose homes had mortgages/loans through federally backed lenders) to pay FEMA hundreds of dollars each year in annual "flood insurance" premiums until the Corps of Engineers completed a project that increased the height of the L.A. River channels. Going backwards on that scenario by reducing the channel freeboard could have future costly consequences for area homeowners because new development means more impermeable pavement, not less, which means more runoff that the L.A. river has to carry and prudently calls for maintaining the flood protection capacity we have, not reducing it further.

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In September 2016, a project consultant explained this to the Council's I-710 Oversight Committee. He cautioned that putting new pilings in the L.A. River could invite flooding in some parts of Long Beach including downtown and indicated that teams of experts were studying ways to address this, and the cable-stayed design was among options then being considered.

Unfortunately, the Council's I-710 Oversight Committee (Uranga, Austin, Richardson) put off hearing subsequent agendized updates on the Shoemaker bridge scheduled for Sept. 2017 and January 2018. The draft EIR has now surfaced...and comments on it are due on or before Nov. 12.

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Some other media outlets have basically echoed what official press releases said about the draft EIR or otherwise failed to tell their readers about matters that you and other LBREPORT.com readers now know. We doubt that Mayor Garcia or incumbent LB Councilmember have informed readers of these issues via their Council office "newsletters" or on social network channels they operate.

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All of this is public record. It shouldn't be a secret...but if LBREPORT.com didn't tell you, who would?

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