Coalition Gains a Toehold for Its Apartment Proposal

An unlikely coalition of business and community interests espousing high-density apartment construction along major streets throughout the city failed to get its way this week, but it did succeed in keeping its proposal alive.

While the City Council approved a citywide planning blueprint that calls for concentrating high-density apartment complexes along thoroughfares in the downtown and central portions of Long Beach, the council also asked the city planning staff to examine suggestions that such complexes also be permitted along major streets elsewhere in the city.

Impromptu Partnership Formed

In an impromptu partnership that took council members by surprise, the Chamber of Commerce joined with a housing group and a liberal citywide political organization in supporting the higher density to promote construction of reasonably priced rental housing. The proposal set off warning bells on the council, which in recent years has been battered by neighborhood groups fighting apartment construction in areas of single-family housing and duplexes.

It is “a vehicle to get more housing and more density, which flies in the face of everyone who has come before this council,” said Councilwoman Jan Hall. The proposal was presented by the chamber, Long Beach Area Citizens Involved and Long Beach Housing Action Assn. Indeed, the planning document adopted this week calls for reduced density to protect the city’s many and varied residential neighborhoods.

Councilman Ray Grabinski complained that it was precisely the argument for more cheap housing that had spawned the construction of ugly, badly built apartment complexes he called “five-year slums.”

“Selfish though we may be, we want to protect the quality of life for those who are here,” Grabinski said.

The chamber has consistently supported higher residential density during the months of review and discussion leading up to Tuesday’s council vote on a major revision of the planning blueprint, which is called the Land Use Element of the General Plan. The land use element, which spells out the city’s land-use policies, was last updated in 1978.

But it was just recently that the business organization joined forces with the other groups under the theme of pushing for low-rent housing.

“We need to provide additional affordable housing within the confines of Long Beach and we need to spread it out,” Steve Sanders, a developer and chamber representative, told the council. “It’s good business and it’s good for the community.”

To encourage affordable rents, Sanders said developers who agree to set aside a certain percentage of rental units for low- or moderate-income renters should be given density bonuses, allowing them to build more than the normally permitted number of units. But Robert Paternoster, city planning director, said the city already has such a policy.

Adopted by Unanimous Vote

The Long Beach Area Citizens Involved group went a step further, arguing that developers of high-density apartment complexes be required to rent a certain percentage of their units at prices affordable to low-income tenants. That is a concept that was rejected by the council only a few weeks ago, when it voted on the Housing Element of the General Plan.

The council, while instructing city planners to report back on the suggestions, adopted the land-use document as recommended by the city staff and the Planning Commission. With Councilman Warren Harwood absent, the vote was unanimous.

On another matter that drew public comment, the land-use document will change the zoning of the city-owned strip of the old Pacific Electric right of way to permit commercial nurseries and tree farms to lease the land to grow plants. The privately owned portion of the right of way, once used by rail cars, will be zoned for mixed-use development.