Harbor Board OKs Concept of San Pedro Office Complex

The Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners took several important steps toward approving construction of an office complex on port-owned property in downtown San Pedro Wednesday, but nevertheless declined to give its full commitment to the project.

By a 4-0 vote, the board accepted a conceptual master plan for the development, ordered an environmental impact study and authorized port officials to pay a consultant as much as $879,000 over the next three years to help oversee the project.

But the board members--particularly Commissioner Ronald Lushing--made it clear Wednesday that they are not yet convinced the development should be built on the scale outlined in the master plan, which was drafted by yet another consultant who received $204,000 for the work.

The plan envisions a heavily landscaped, two-block complex that would encompass the port’s current headquarters, a new visitor center and a new 11-story office building that would be occupied jointly by port employees and tenants.

The complex, which would force the abandonment of a portion of Palos Verdes Street, would be the last major project in San Pedro’s downtown redevelopment area. The 200,000-square-foot office building would be roughly the same size as the Sheraton Hotel now under construction a few blocks away.

Lushing, however, said he wanted more information on whether there is a market for that much additional office space in San Pedro. He successfully pressed the board to agree to review the scope of the project before an architect is hired to design it.

“It seems to me,” Lushing said, “that all of us need to decide, before it goes to an architect, what the project should be.”

In an interview after the meeting, Chief Harbor Engineer Vern Hall said the port staff intends to use the master plan as a guideline for the “maximum project” the port would build.

Hall said the new consulting firm, URS Consultants Inc., will provide the port with architectural and engineering expertise. Although the port does have architects and engineers on its staff, Hall said they are unaccustomed to building commercial developments and in any case would not have the time to devote to the proposed office complex.

He said the commissioners’ decision to withhold final approval of the master plan should not affect the port’s efforts to find an architect to design the project and that he expects an architect will be selected by next April.

The commissioners’ reluctance to give their full backing to the master plan was a disappointment for San Pedro’s business leaders, who for years have been pushing the port to develop the vacant parcel across the street from Harbor Department headquarters.

After the commissioners’ vote, Leron Gubler, executive director of the San Pedro Peninsula Chamber of Commerce, said the business community’s “gravest concern is that we get a commitment to this project.”

Gubler said the additional office space is essential to the rebirth of downtown San Pedro. He noted that some corporations have left the community for Long Beach because there was no place for them to expand.

“What we’re trying to do is create a corporate climate here,” Gubler said. “In order to do that, you’ve got to create a critical mass. We want to get enough business in here so that we don’t lose business.”

Plans for the port office building have been kicking around since 1983, when the Harbor Department paid the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency $4.3 million for 2.6 acres of property in the Beacon Street Redevelopment Area, an urban renewal effort launched by the CRA in 1969.

The property, which fronts Harbor Boulevard, adjoins a parcel the port already owned.

The agreement between the CRA and the port called for the Harbor Department to select a developer and submit basic plans for the parcel by Aug. 7, 1984. After numerous deadlines came and went, the port selected a Hollywood firm as a developer, only to ditch that company in August, 1988. At that time, the port declared it would build the office tower itself.

The current timetable calls for construction to begin in the spring of 1992 and to be completed in the mid-1990s.