Concerns Over Traffic, Pollution Cited : Two Lawsuits Challenge Pike Project

Two citizens groups have filed lawsuits challenging the city’s approval of a massive shoreline development project on the site of the old Pike Amusement Park, claiming city officials have paid scant heed to traffic and air pollution problems associated with the $1-billion project.

The lawsuits, filed in Superior Court in Los Angeles by Long Beach Area Citizens Involved (LBACI) and the Long Beach Housing Action Assn., assert that the city’s environmental impact report fails to fully address the development’s environmental problems or ways of alleviating them. The housing association also claims the upscale, mixed-use Pike development is ignoring a critical need for more affordable housing in Long Beach.

Marc Coleman, an LBACI member and attorney who is representing the organization in its lawsuit, said local officials’ quick approval of the 13-acre project backed his group into a corner, forcing it to either “surrender the city or fight for it.”

Robert Paternoster, the city’s planning director, and Paul Stern, development manager of the project for Pike Properties Associates, said they could not comment on the suits because they had not seen them.

“We believe all the environmental processing was done properly,” Paternoster said.

The LBACI lawsuit contends that traffic traveling to and from the Pike development--planned for a largely vacant tract just south of Ocean Boulevard--will choke freeway lanes leading to downtown and clog neighborhoods with east-west traffic. Moreover, the organization argues that the city failed to take into account the traffic impact of other downtown projects that have been approved or are under way.

The densest project ever planned for Long Beach, the Pike proposal calls for 11 mid- and high-rise buildings of offices, shops, hotel rooms and residences. The Planning Commission and the City Council recently approved zoning and density changes that would permit construction of the development, which still must be approved by the State Coastal Commission.

Negotiations First

The suits, which name the city and Pike Properties, were filed Thursday under the state Environmental Quality Act, which calls for both sides to sit down and attempt to negotiate a settlement before engaging in a full court hearing.

The project’s environmental impact report acknowledges that workers, visitors and residents of the development could make as many 36,000 car trips a day to and from the complex, causing traffic congestion and increasing regional air pollution levels. But the Planning Commission and City Council concluded that the economic and social benefits of the huge development outweighed the environmental problems.

City officials also said the Pike developers will have to adhere to a citywide traffic management study now under way, and will have to make traffic improvements at nearby intersections, as well as take steps to encourage car pooling by the 8,000 people eventually expected to work at the complex.