Mayor Kell’s View on Navy Land

I agree completely with Mayor Van Nostran on only one point in his recent letter (Dec. 30) to your newspaper. It is indeed a shame that Lakewood must spend one penny on its efforts to derail the Long Beach Base Reuse Plan. That money should be directed instead to participating with Long Beach in our efforts to save the naval shipyard and support the C-17 production efforts. Lakewood has always been strongly absent from such causes which, by Mayor Van Nostran’s logic, must be regionally significant. Instead, they are requiring Long Beach to spend time, energy and money defending a reuse strategy which includes the regional benefits of port expansion, a University Research Park, a new high school, homeless housing and job training, all because they are threatened by the competition of one relatively small component of our overall reuse strategy.

We do not dispute that other cities have an interest in the defense downsizing. But, amazingly, they have had little interest in working with us to minimize the impacts by retaining the bases and defense jobs in the first place. After all, Long Beach has provided the land for the naval station, the naval hospital and the university, all of which are regional economic generators. We even provided the land for the Hawaiian Gardens Civic Center. To deprive this city, with a population of 436,000, of the opportunity to develop a 1-million-square-foot power center because the owners of Lakewood’s 2.5-million-square-foot mall are doing poorly is a travesty, and should be held up for what it represents--greed!

That there is a market niche for this center is indisputable.

ERNIE KELL

Mayor, Long Beach