Long Beach OKs Plans for 16-Dealer $57-Million Auto Mall Near Freeway

More than 1 1/2 years after a task force recommended that the city develop an auto mall to bolster its sales tax income, the City Council has approved a plan to build a 16-dealer mall just south of the 405 Freeway between Orange and California avenues.

Long Beach thus joins a host of other Southern California communities that have created auto malls in the hope of laying a golden egg. Just next door to the Long Beach mall will be a smaller one planned by the city of Signal Hill.

Long Beach Redevelopment Agency officials estimate it will cost the agency $57 million to buy the land and develop the site, which consists of nearly 90 acres of old oil fields and industrial buildings. For the first decade, sales tax income from the mall, an estimated $3.5 million to $5 million a year, will go to the agency to help finance the project. But by the year 2000, the tax money should start flowing into the city’s General Fund, according to Community Development Director Susan F. Shick.

For years, city car sales have been concentrated on “Auto Row” on Long Beach Boulevard, where dealers clustered long before the concept of carefully planned malls transformed the world of automobile transactions. But the general decline of surrounding neighborhoods, lack of space for expansion and construction of the light rail transit system down the middle of Long Beach Boulevard have all made the boulevard less attractive to dealers and car buyers.

The city’s sales tax income from car sales has been slipping and officials fear dealers will leave for other communities if Long Beach does not build its own auto mall where customers can stroll from one landscaped car lot to another.

Under the redevelopment plan approved this week by the council, the Redevelopment Agency will buy the acreage from about 30 property owners, clear the area, clean up oil-contaminated soil and sell the land to dealers, who will pay for only a portion of the total mall costs. More than half the money to develop the project will come from a $31-million agency bond.

Signal Hill is further along in developing its 18-acre, three-dealer auto mall, the first part of which will probably open in 1990, according to Signal Hill’s redevelopment director. Shick predicted the first dealers would open in Long Beach within two years.