Building a New Image : Downtown Is Reviving, but Are Consumers Noticing?

John Morris stood outside his new downtown restaurant, scanned the empty sidewalks, pondered the vacant buildings around him and said to himself: “What the hell am I doing here?”

In the months to come, the prominent Long Beach businessman and his wife would work 16 hours a day, managing a restaurant where reservations were never necessary and the cash register was woefully silent. The customers came to Mum’s, slowly, but only for lunch and not before the bank foreclosed on the Morris’ home.

Now, four years later, poorer but more confident, Morris sits on the sidewalk patio of Mum’s sipping tea. “This,” he says, with a sweep of his arm that takes in gleaming office buildings, a newly redecorated cafe-gallery and a dozen construction workers laboring in the muggy heat. “This, is why I am here.”

In the midst of one of the country’s worst recessions, when Long Beach is struggling to make ends meet, some of its proudest companies are faltering, and its beloved icons are being taken apart piece by piece, there is still hope downtown.

Construction is nearly complete on a theater complex billed as one of the largest on the West Coast. Work has begun on a project to triple the size of the convention center. And the City Council recently approved further study of a plan to turn the downtown oceanfront into a tourist harbor that its supporters say will transform the area into a glittering entertainment center.

With every hammer blow that falls, every steel beam that rises and every new coat of plaster, this city is trying to drive away the lingering perception of the downtown business district as a place of decay and dereliction, a place best avoided after the sun goes down.

“So many things have happened,” Morris said exuberantly. “We have the Blue Line, great restaurants, art galleries, a 16-screen theater opening in December, beautiful office buildings, the convention center is expanding. . . . It’s all coming together now, a little bit later than we would have liked, but it’s happening.”

Just when this new downtown Long Beach of round-the-clock hustle and bustle will arrive is a matter of debate. Some give it as little as six months. Others five years or more. Most agree it’s been a long time coming.

“My father always said to me, ‘You wait and see, in five years this place is going to turn around,’ ” said Richard Downs, the owner of Thieves Market--a Western store that has been downtown, except for two years, since 1932. “He kept saying it every five years, and we kept saying, ‘Well, when is it gonna happen?’ ”

If this all sounds familiar, it is because five years ago, merchants and city leaders were predicting downtown Long Beach was on the verge of something big. Investors were rushing to the city. Building was booming. Two prominent developers had unveiled plans for a $1-billion project on the site of the old Pike amusement park. Property values were rising. The Navy base was bustling with 30 ships and plans for $100 million in new construction.

Since then, however, the Navy has decided to move its station out of town and the recession has moved in. Financing for large projects shriveled up, forcing the delay of several of them, including the Pike development. Home building permits dropped from a high of 6,000 in 1986 to 65 so far this year. Property values took a dive, and then sank even further after the April riots. For the first time in three years, more office space downtown was vacant than was leased from January to June of this year, and hotels in the area are struggling with a 60% occupancy rate.

Just when it looked as if Walt Disney Co. was going to come to the rescue with a massive theme park, the deal went sour and Disney jilted Long Beach in favor of Anaheim.

Yet in the midst of all this, multimillion-dollar renovations are going on downtown, several new businesses have opened and more are planned. Downs recently moved the Thieves Market back to downtown Long Beach after a two-year absence.

Moins and Mosha Rastgar, the young, hip brothers who own the System M cafe, are so sure that “the loose ends are starting to meet” that they recently spent $85,000 renovating their cafe.

“We know things aren’t where they should be, we know that downtown is not quite there yet,” Moins Rastgar said. “Everyone has been exhausted and frustrated, but now there is so much excitement. How many places do you know of in these days where a $40-million theater project is going up?”

Not everyone shares the enthusiasm or optimism that seems to pervade the downtown business district. One notable exception is Councilman Warren Harwood, the doubting Thomas of the City Council.

“I think there continues to be a priming of the pump, but that’s been going on for many years,” Harwood said. “In some areas and in some ways, things haven’t improved at all. Crime is still a big problem downtown. We haven’t met the needs of the homeless. So, as far as turning a corner, I heard that a year ago. I just hope things turn up and not down.”

Many downtown business leaders say that things would have improved much faster without the mayor and City Council members. As one restaurateur put it, the council seems to suffer from a “Mayberry mentality.”

“I think our elected officials are off in the wilderness somewhere,” said downtown businessman Lloyd Ikerd. “Instead of thinking progressively, they dwell on the bad. Every time something bad happens they say, ‘Oh, woe is me. What are we going to do now?’ It’s really kind of ridiculous. (In the meantime) everyone else is working like hell.”

Ask Mayor Ernie Kell or City Manager James C. Hankla or most of the other city officials, and they’ll point out with some frustration that, No. 1: Downtowns don’t evolve overnight, and No. 2: Downtown redevelopment had been progressing rapidly until the recession cut it down in mid-stride.

“Sometimes when you climb a hill and you keep looking up and the top looks so far away, you get discouraged and think you haven’t gotten any closer,” Kell said. “Well, those times you have to turn around and look down at the valley you left behind, and then you can see how far you’ve come. That’s how people have to look at downtown Long Beach.”

In the past five years, eight buildings have been erected downtown, including the World Trade Center, the Landmark Square office building and a new federal office building. Sales tax figures for the downtown business district rose 63% from 1987 to 1991, despite the closure of Buffums in the Long Beach Plaza Shopping Center.

Downtown commercial property values, which were soaring until the recession and the riots, are now beginning a slow rebound. From 1978 to 1983, Hankla said, the city, using federal funds, invested $100 million downtown. In return, he pointed out with satisfaction, $2.5 billion worth of private development has been generated.

“I’ve been through the ups and downs,” Hankla said. “This city tends to progress in fits and starts. . . . I do know that, if we took a snapshot in time of downtown in 1970, in 1980, in 1990 and today, it is better.”

But the two projects that have downtown abuzz are the Janss theater development and the convention center expansion.

On Dec. 18, Pine Court, a $42-million project built by the same developers who gave Santa Monica the Third Street Promenade theaters, will make its debut in the heart of the downtown business district after nearly two decades of discussions and studies. The complex, at Pine Avenue and 3rd Street, will include a 16-screen, 3,700-seat AMC theater; 142 rental apartments, priced from $850 to $1,300 monthly, and shops, such as Johnny Rockets, Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, La Salsa and Pizza e Contorni.

A few blocks south, bulldozers, cranes and heavy trucks crawl around underneath the mural of dolphins and whales cavorting on the wall of the Sports Arena at the convention center. After three years of delays, construction has begun on a $95.5-million project, underwritten largely by the Port of Long Beach. When completed in the spring of 1994, the convention center will have more meeting room space, more exhibit space, a ballroom and a new parking structure, all on the current site of the center and its parking lots.

The hope downtown is that the theater will bring thousands of people into the area at night. And once the convention center is completed, millions of people a year will pass through downtown, people who have to sleep and eat somewhere.

Harwood, however, said the theaters are likely to be a big hit initially, but that the crowds will die down.

But Bill Janss, president of Janss Corp., said AMC has predicted that next year 1.3 million people will go to a movie at Pine Court theaters. He also said that historically the larger theater projects do better business over time.

Harwood also pointed out that the convention center doesn’t break even now, so there is no reason to believe a larger center will do better, particularly if the Queen Mary moves out of town. Harwood is one of the biggest supporters of keeping the ship in Long Beach.

Christopher Davis, the chief executive officer of the Long Beach Visitors and Convention Council, argues that most convention centers don’t run a profit, and part of the reason the Long Beach center has been losing money is because it is too small to support large gatherings. He said he didn’t know what the impact of losing the Queen Mary would be.

“Though we don’t want to lose the Queen Mary, I think Southern California is the attraction, not the Queen Mary,” he said.

Another major problem, Harwood said, is that the budget passed recently by the state Legislature could hamstring the Long Beach Redevelopment Agency and delay further downtown redevelopment indefinitely.

Executive Director Susan Shick said the Redevelopment Agency will be forced to pay the state about $2.5 million from its budget. She said it was unclear which funds would be cut, but added: “It wouldn’t cripple the agency. Downtown will progress fairly well, but things may slow down.”

Ask downtown merchants who their customers are, and chances are they will say everyone except Long Beach residents. The reluctance among locals, particularly east side residents, to go downtown is so well-known among merchants that they joke among themselves if they have a “Belmont Shore sighting.”

Dangerous. Too expensive. Not enough to do. Ugly. Name a reason, and most merchants say they have heard it.

“There are Long Beach residents who haven’t been down here in 20 years,” said Bob Treese, a member of the Redevelopment Agency board. “They are used to the naval town, the tattoo parlors and the Pussycat theaters, and this is the idea that they are carrying out of the city to others. They are not proud of this city because they don’t know it.”

It is people such as 28-year-old David Samples, a truck driver who lives on Belmont Shore, who drive downtown boosters crazy.

“When I was growing up, the Promenade was something you did not come to after dark,” Samples said. “I mean, who wants to run the gantlet of homeless and freaky people? This place has never been about anything good, just decrepit shops.”

Yet, until a recent Saturday night, Samples had never been downtown at night. When persuaded by a friend to check out a new club on the Promenade, Samples found, to his surprise, that he was actually enjoying himself.

Part of the differing perceptions of downtown may be that merchants define downtown as the small circle around Pine Avenue, the downtown Promenade and Ocean Boulevard, where most of the activities are centered. But to some, downtown stretches more than two dozen blocks north to Pacific Coast Highway, and some of the city’s toughest neighborhoods stand within those boundaries.

And although merchants tend to blame the negative perception on the media and old memories, the fact remains that high crime, vagrants and urban blight have been considered a longtime problem in the downtown area.

Long Beach Acting Deputy Police Chief Tony Van Coutren said crime in the downtown business district has fallen in recent years because of car and bike patrols.

In an attempt to woo residents from other parts of the city, the Redevelopment Agency is putting in white street lights and hiring uniformed guides to greet passersby and give them directions. Morris, as president of the Downtown Business Assn., is even thinking about sending buses to upscale neighborhoods to take people downtown for a night of dining and entertainment.

But it is more than image or urban blight that has stymied the city’s wish to see crowds of people downtown at all hours of the day.

One important facet of the city’s ambitious redevelopment push of the 1980s was forgotten in the scramble to erect office buildings and hotels: upscale housing.

Most of the housing downtown lies outside the relatively small business district, and residents are considered too far away to give downtown a round-the-clock atmosphere.

Few of the people who live on the plain north of the business district can afford the $19.95 skewered prawns with porcini mushrooms at L’Opera, or $8 to play pool at the Blue Cafe. What downtown needs, city officials said, are upper-middle-income residents with money to spend. In the late ‘80s, the Redevelopment Agency began playing catch-up with mixed success, planning several pricey condominiums. Most have been put on hold because of the lean economy, and the one that was built is still not open.

Once the downtown housing part of the puzzle snaps into place and the theater opens, city leaders say, the “18-hour city” will be born.

“It’s kind of like a painting. When the artist is done, you recognize the beauty, but when he’s working on it along the way, you don’t see it,” said Pine Avenue Fish House owner Sam King. “I’m hoping, praying that that is what is going to happen in Long Beach.”

Right now most of the activity downtown is happening within a relatively small area--from Ocean Boulevard to 5th Street along Pine Avenue. Little is going on elsewhere. The blocks east, west and north of Pine Avenue and 5th Street still bear the pockmarks of vacant lots, run-down storefronts and dilapidated buildings. Yet, business leaders and developers say it is only a matter of time before that area begins to grow, because Long Beach has what many other cities do not: acres of undeveloped oceanfront property.

It is for this reason that a concept--not even a plan yet--by a New York city urban design firm, has downtown boosters more excited than they’ve been in years. The Queensway Bay project, in one way at least, hearkens the Long Beach of the past by making the ocean an integral part of downtown. Everything from Shoreline Aquatic Park north to Ocean Boulevard would be filled in with a mix of homes, shops, and restaurants. The park would be dug out and replaced with a tourist harbor.

The concept isn’t a universal hit, but it has caught fire among merchants because it reinforces what many of them have said for a long time: For downtown Long Beach to become a dynamic waterfront community, it must take advantage of its natural assets.

It is downtown’s potential as a seaside community--conveniently located between Orange County and Los Angeles--that gives boosters hope that, sooner or later, downtown will come into its own.

“Sure, we’ve got empty office buildings, but they’re built,” Councilman Ray Grabinski said. “We have restaurants here. We have the hotels here. We have the ocean, the beach. Downtown Long Beach is poised right now, better than any other city, for the good times. And when they come, we will be kicking butt and taking names.”

Since the Redevelopment Agency formed in 1978 , downtown has been undergoing a slow but steady make-over with new hotels, gleaming skyscrapers and a burgeoning restaurant row. But the project most people are talking about is Pine Court, a $42-million project that includes a 16-screen theater, luxury apartments, shops an restaurants. It is due to open Dec. 18 Also in the works is the long-awaited expansion of the Convention Center. Two of the biggest projects are the successful World Trade Center and the not-so-successful Long Beach Plaza Shopping Center.