BY NICK DIAMANTIDES
Staff Writer
A real estate/development company is planning to convert the vacant Robertshaw Controls Company industrial building to a warehouse and distribution center. Community activists are hoping to stop it from happening.
The industrial property is located at 100 W. Victoria in North Long Beach, adjacent to Colin L. Powell Academy for Success, an elementary school in the Long Beach Unified School District.
Community activists spent the past two weeks warning residents that the proposed warehouse/distribution facility could be a way for trucking companies to circumvent the Long Beach and Los Angeles ports’ clean truck program, which bans all pre-1988 trucks from delivering or picking up cargo containers from the ports. Their fear is that the cleaner-burning newer trucks will haul cargo containers to the converted Robertshaw plant where they will be loaded onto pre-1988 trucks for transport to destinations throughout the United States. In fact, a recently distributed flier warned that 75-250 trucks per day could be arriving and departing from the facility causing “increased noise and pollution levels (and) traffic congestion to an existing heavily stressed intersection” and endangering the health of the students at Colin Powell.
John Killen, director of development for Seal Beach-based Xebec Realty Partners (the company that owns the Robertshaw property and plans to convert it), said that the activists’ fear was not based on reality. “This is not going to be a cross-dock facility, where two trucks pull up to opposite sides of a dock and the cargo is taken off of one and loaded on the other,” he said. “This is going to be a warehouse where goods are stored for transport at a later date.”
Killen explained that Xebec is looking for a national tenant, a company that ships products all over the U.S. “Companies like that do not use the older trucks; they have fleets of trucks that already comply with the ports’ clean trucks program,” he said, adding that the company did not have a prospective tenant yet. He also emphasized that at this point it was impossible to predict how many trucks would be entering and exiting from the site every day.
According to Killen, Xebec has owned the Robertshaw property for about five years. “The Robertshaw manufacturing facility was vacated five months ago, and we moved forward to do a cleanup of the site, which included the demolition of 45,000 square feet of dilapidated office space and the removal of asbestos,” he said. “What remains is an 183,000-square foot warehouse. We are proposing 7,000 square feet of new office space.”
The site is zoned Industrial Preserve, which, according to Killen, means it can be developed as a warehouse and distribution facility by right. He stressed that converting it to warehouse and distribution use will lower the intensity of the property’s use. He explained that the Robertshaw facility had 300 employee parking stalls and the warehouse will have far fewer workers on site. “There won’t be nearly as many vehicles entering and exiting the facility as was true when the Robertshaw plant was in operation,” he said.
Killen added that the facilities for loading and unloading the trucks will be on the south and east sides of the warehouse, facing away from the school. “Colin Powell Academy is on the west side of the property, so the trucks will have a minimal impact on the school,” he said. “The trucks are not going to be parked on the street.” He added that it was possible that most of the trucks would be using the facility during the hours when classes were not in session.
Chris Eftychiou, LBUSD director of public information said school district officials were aware of Xebec’s plans and concerned about the facility’s impacts but they didn’t have enough information about the facility yet. “We have asked to see a project description in writing so that we can determine what kind of an impact it will have on the school,” he said. “We need to see that before forming an opinion on it.”
Long Beach Vice Mayor Val Lerch has been talking with LBUSD and Xebec officials to address the concerns of the residents. Lerch, however, declined to comment on the facility planned by Xebec.
Dave San Jose, president of the Coolidge Triangle Neighborhood Association, talked to Xebec officials too. “Right now it looks like what they want to do is not as bad as we thought,” he said. “We are concerned about the quality of life in our neighborhood and the health of the kids at Colin Powell, but using the site as a warehouse is not going to create the huge traffic and pollution impact that we would have gone to war over.”
Killen said that the city had already issued building permits for the office space and other renovations to the property. He noted that Xebec was moving forward within the parameters of the existing zoning designation for the site. He added that the area was zoned for industrial use for several decades before LBUSD decided to build an elementary school there.
Nevertheless, Killen insisted that Xebec is carefully considering concerns being expressed by residents and school officials. “We put the safety of the kids at highest priority,” he said. “We are having a dialogue with the school district and people in the neighborhoods. We want to be a good neighbor.”
