Condo Project Atop Bluff Begins

Don Besic opened his window Thursday morning expecting to see transients camping out on a vacant lot along Long Beach’s Ocean Boulevard. Instead, he saw well-dressed men and women eating pastries and drinking coffee.

The retired broker put on his shoes and went out to take a look.

What he found were city officials, developers and real estate brokers getting ready to break ground on a four-story, 70-unit condominium complex designed to stretch down a 40-foot bluff to the beach below. It was a welcome surprise for Besic, a resident of Long Beach for 19 years.

“This place has been an eyesore for eight years,” he said. “I’m glad that they’re building something here finally.”

So were the people he ended up meeting, such as Arthur Bullard. A Long Beach broker, Bullard had been working on the project even before bulldozers wiped a dilapidated 20-room mansion from the site in 1994 after a failed preservation effort.

“Why wouldn’t somebody want to live here?” Bullard asked. He said the current blueprints for a “mid-rise” complex built around a central courtyard look better--and inspire less opposition--than the 20-story design originally approved by the city in the late 1980s.