Long Beach OKs Police Substation

The picture was a rerun, the cast much the same. Co-stars were the Long Beach City Council, the 25-acre Scherer Park and citizens concerned with what has become an old theme: to build or not to build on dwindling public parkland.

After 5 1/2 hours of discourse and emotional testimony, the City Council decided Tuesday night to put a permanent $7-million police substation on 2.5 acres of Scherer Park.

The new substation will replace an outdated building and dumpy trailers at the corner of the park at Atlantic Avenue and Del Amo Boulevard, which have been temporary quarters for 100 officers serving more than 100,000 North Long Beach residents.

The charged atmosphere and debate concluded years of effort by the Long Beach Police Department to get the project going. That campaign was part of the department’s 1984 master plan to decentralize police service from the downtown headquarters into four districts serving the city of 461,000.

The decision also capped months of debate by city staff and neighbors, who were divided in their opinions about the substation. Also participating was a broader based group called Stop Taking Our Parks, which has been lobbying against any further encroachment of municipal open space for anything but recreation.

“We were conferring with our attorneys today and will be responding shortly,” Gigi Fast Elk Porter, a neighbor of Scherer Park and the primary spokesperson for those against the substation, said Wednesday.

Critics of the Scherer plan did not suggest the substation was unnecessary, simply that it belonged somewhere outside the park.

Those in favor of keeping the substation at the park argued that it has made residents feel more secure in the surrounding neighborhoods. In the past, dead bodies had been found in the park’s water fountain or pond and gangs menaced the grounds.

Technically, the City Council was certifying an environmental impact report that also analyzed two alternative substation sites--an abandoned hardware store and a nearby shopping plaza--but recommended the park location. Opponents of the Scherer Park plan argued that those alternatives were never seriously considered.

The law requires a report to examine other possible sites. City Hall critics said there was no way the hardware building was a viable alternative for the substation because the Long Beach Unified School District is presently in escrow to buy it for a future school. The city potentially would have had to take the property by eminent domain from the district unless it fell out of escrow.

Low-income residents don’t want to lose the shopping plaza, which has discount stores. Only Councilman Ray Grabinsky, a mayoral candidate, voted against four motions that allowed for the substation plan to proceed.

Most of the eight other council members seemed torn about the latest in a recurring dilemma facing the state’s fifth-largest city: how to balance the demand for public facilities with the need for open space.