More than 20 acres of empty land in West Long Beach will soon become the River Park Residential Project—a 226-unit housing development surrounded by Baker Street, Wardlow Road, the Los Angeles River and the San Diego freeway.
The project also includes plans to create a roughly 5-acre park which will be open to public use, a new traffic light to mitigate increasing traffic, a new bathroom at the existing Baker Street Park as well as improvements to the existing Wrigley Dog Park, surrounding sidewalks and roads.
The housing development will take up about 15 acres and consist of 74 single-family homes, 99 two-story townhouses and 53 three-story carriage townhouses. Twelve of these units (5%) will be made available to low-income renters for 55 years.
“It’s a thoughtfully planned project that balances the city’s priorities; housing with an affordable component, park space and there’s a job creation component,” councilmember Al Austin said.
Austin said it was admittedly “a bit awkward” to pass the item without the presence of councilmember Roberto Uranga, whose district the development will be located in. Uranga has missed the last few city council meetings due to health matters.
Residents of West Long Beach have long hoped for the location, a former oil field production site, to be converted into open park space. The areas surrounding the LA River have some of the lowest rates of park equity in the City, and the Long Beach Parks, Recreation and Marine Strategic Plan of 2022 sets a goal to create more park space in West Long Beach to combat the lower rates of life expectancy in these areas.
Multiple residents urged the council to reject the development during public comment, and at least a dozen more wrote letters detailing their objections. Among the letters of objection were the Wrigley Association, the association for the neighborhood in which the housing development was approved.
The low-income units in the River Park Project meet California’s Density Bonus Law, which allows the City to either grant a bonus or waive a development standard in exchange for a certain number of low-income or very low-income units. The twelve very low-income units allow the developer to build three-story townhouses rather than the two-story limit imposed in the City’s General Plan Land Use Element Map.
Issues the association brought forward included density, height and aesthetic preferences, stating that the project will not match the rest of the Wrigley neighborhood. The letter also cites a need for more community open space for the over 200 families that will be moving in and says the project will contribute to greenhouse gas emissions by creating more traffic.
“This project takes away one of the last spaces we have, takes away any mitigation we have from the toxic air we have to breathe from the [Long Beach] Port and the freeway,” said Long Beach resident Anna Chistensen.
Residents also questioned why Mayor Robert Garcia wrote a letter to the Planning Commission in support of the River Park Project days before they reviewed the item. Multiple letters pointed out that the developer, Integral Communities, has a Political Action Committee which donated $17,400 to Garcia’s U.S. Congressional race campaign.
The City previously attempted to acquire the location to use for park space from 2000-2004 as well as in 2016. These attempts were deemed unsuccessful due to budget constraints including the cost of site remediation of the contaminated soil, private ownership of the site and lack of a willing seller.
According to a staff report, acquisition of the property would have cost the City $17-22 million, with another $10 million in clean up costs. Due to the fact that the seller was unwilling to work with the City, council would have had to utilize eminent domain to acquire the site, barring the project from many grant funding sources, according to City’s Open Space Acquisition Study of 2021.
The study deemed the site at Baker Street as “not recommended for parkland.”
The 4.81-acre park that will be developed north of Baker Street will include a jogging path, a butterfly garden, a wildflower meadow, a picnic area, a 2-to-5-year-old play area and Native American history interpretive signs, according to the City staff report.
The new park will “seamlessly integrate” with the City’s 1.23-acre Baker Street Park to give the appearance of one single, larger park. The homeowner’s association will be required to maintain the upkeep of the new park, an aspect Director of Development Services Christopher Koontz was particularly excited about.
“The reason City staff is recommending the approval of this project is because it’s a good negotiation. It has affordable units, remediation benefits, park space above the required minimum,” Koontz said. “It’s not going to negatively affect the surrounding areas … It’s buffered by trees and open space. It will further park equity and housing means.”
