On Tuesday, March 6, the Long Beach City Council will hold the anticipated public hearing that will update the municipal General Plan. A decision by the council body will have long-term effects on the local neighborhoods and will set the direction for development throughout the city for the next 20 years.
According to a staff report from Interim Director of Development Services Tom Modica, the City must adopt and maintain what is called the General Plan in order to comply with state law. As part of that process, the council on Tuesday will be considering the proposal to update the land-use element (LUE) and the urban-design element (UDE) placetype design maps. These maps would help determine the kind of buildings that could be constructed, how tall they would be and where they would be located.
The council will also consider the recommendation to direct the staff to update the Program Environmental Impact Report as well as approve $350,000 to cover the cost of that report.
Councilmembers do have the option to adopt the recommendations by the city staff as is. The Planning Commission had reviewed and modified those recommendations, but the councilmembers also have the ability to recommend changes this Tuesday.
“General plans provide a pathway for cities to accomplish shared goals such as shared economic prosperity, broad housing choices and availability, promoting multimodal mobility and overall sustainability,” Modica stated in his staff report. However, he also warned that the lack of action to adopt a current plan will have repercussions, including legal challenges.
“Staff remains extremely concerned,” he said, “that in the long run, a failure to update the Plan and increase housing production may result in an erosion of local control with the State and others using litigation and regulatory means to usurp the City’s land-use authority.”
Modica described how the City had developed the LUE and UDE maps over the course of 13 years. The General Plan is meant to serve as a “comprehensive roadmap” for the City’s development until 2040.
In a phone interview Wednesday, Mayor Robert Garcia acknowledged that there have been concerns voiced especially by community residents, and he also articulated a concern that most of the housing targets set by the State are “unrealistic,” since Long Beach is already a city that doesn’t have a lot of available land. He said that the current proposed LUE and UDE maps did consider residents’ concerns over housing density.
“But a majority of the housing is really going to go in that downtown core, which is where it belongs,” Garcia said. “The communities that are currently suburbs should stay suburbs. That’s what’s so great about our neighborhoods.”
While there are some residents who said they need more affordable housing, many have voiced another concern that the character of their neighborhood would be threatened if taller structures that reach several stories would be allowed to be built near single-family homes.
Some have written opinion pieces with media outlets questioning the need to develop a plan that would span 20 years.
Long Beach Planning Bureau Manager Linda Tatum explained in a phone interview Wednesday that state regulations don’t require cities to create a 20-year plan, but the State’s general guidelines very clearly point out that a plan covering two decades is considered good practice.
“Preparing a general-plan update is very costly,” Tatum said. “It’s a very complex [and] very time-consuming effort. Cities don’t usually have the resources to do that on a regular basis.”
City Councilmember Stacy Mungo has taken issue with a few key aspects to the changes proposed for her 5th District.
Last month, she stated in a press release that she would recommend keeping the “commercial areas for community serving commercial uses only. This will eliminate any potential residential uses in those areas and will limit the height of commercial buildings to no more than two stories.”
In a phone interview with the Signal Tribune Wednesday, she described how one area slated for business had a high vacancy rate, but after a few years since she started her term in office, that business corridor recovered.
“The community needed a little bit of love,” Mungo said, adding that once the City began to work with the business owners and create business associations, those corridors began to thrive and residents began to love those stores.
She also opposes having those areas zoned for “mixed use,” which would have included residential use.
“The neighbors have been clear that they want to protect the community-serving commercial corridors,” she said.
While Mungo noted several issues in the 5th District, she also acknowledged the importance of maintaining local control. She pointed to the threat of state legislation, including a state bill proposed by Sen. Scott Wiener from San Francisco. Wiener’s legislation, known as SB 827, would allow for more housing near public-transportation hubs.
His office released a press statement that describes his bill.
“Under SB 827,” the statement declared, “parcels within a half-mile of major transit hubs and within a quarter mile of high-frequency bus stops will be required to have no density maximums (such as single family home mandates), no parking minimums, and height maximums between 45 and 85 feet (4-8 stories).
The press release added that the new amendments do provide some assurances that local control will remain intact, however the actual text of the bill has not yet been published.
That proposed law did draw the ire of Councilmember Daryl Supernaw, who represents the 4th District.
“I think SB 827 represented a gross overreach of power […] that would circumvent any protections we would have in place here locally,” Supernaw said.
Mungo said she will request the council to take action on any recommendations from the State Legislation Committee.
She said that committee meets March 6, just before the council hearing. The 5th-district councilmember added that that body can recommend its opposition to SB 827 and other bills that might threaten the City’s ability to maintain local control over its own developments.
The Signal Tribune asked Garcia what direction he might give to the council members when they review the proposed changes to the General Plan on Tuesday.
“They are really engaged,” Garcia said of the council members. “And I really trust that they’re working hard, and they are going to bring forward what they believe works for their neighborhood.”
The hearing will take place this Tuesday, March 6 at 5pm.
