Boaters concerned CenterCal’s 2nd & PCH will greatly affect parking
June 20, 2019
Long Beach city staff, boaters and business owners met at a Long Beach Yacht Club to receive feedback about parking.
LONG BEACH—CenterCal Properties’s 2nd & PCH project, positioned near the newly renovated Alamitos Bay Marina, appears to be making waves. Initially, 2nd & PCH had gotten off to a good start, but on May 23 at Long Beach Yacht Club, more than 300 residents showed up to a planning meeting to express their concerns.
The Grunion reported, “City officials said before the meeting they were looking for comments to help create a master plan for parking and traffic circulation in the area. Attendees at the meeting focused on the increased business traffic that will be generated by 2nd & PCHshopping center and San Pedro Fish Market.”
Boaters were especially concerned the city had allowed CenterCal to build the shopping center without enough parking. The area near 2nd & PCH can be highly congested along Pacific Coast Highway and Marina Drive. With San Pedro Market Place also opening sometime in the future, residents are worried the parking issues will increase.
This is not the first time the developer has faced trouble from the community – in Long Beach and elsewhere. Citizen’s feathers were ruffled when CenterCal began to remove palm trees that home the protected great blue heron along Marina Drive.
The Log’s Parimal M. Rohit reported on the issue writing, “A group’s challenge to Long Beach’s plan to relocate palm trees near Alamitos Bay Marina wasn’t successful, as the California Coastal Commission, on May 9, endorsed a recommendation to allow the city’s coastal redevelopment project to move forward.”
Initially, CenterCal had removed 22 palm trees without a permit.
“Thirty of 193 trees in the area needed to be relocated for safety and public access, but will remain somewhere on site. There were 22 trees removed but those would be replaced. The city would also add 23 canopy trees. In all there will be 238 total trees once the project is complete,” Rohit continued.
CenterCal has also been in heated litigation with the city of Redondo Beach for several years over a waterfront development, which local citizens voted to overturn. In another recent blow to the city, CenterCal decided to press charges against the city for the recent BeachLife Festival. Because the lawsuit over the waterfront is still ongoing, CenterCal believes it has vested rights to approve or deny activities taking place on Redondo Beach’s waterfront.
Sergio Ramirez, deputy director of Economic & Property Development, stated at the meeting in Long Beach that updates about the parking plan would be available in a few weeks. The Log will update any information that becomes available online or in an upcoming issue.
CenterCal is famous for ignoring the community and the environmental impacts of their projects. In Redondo, people were so upset that CenterCal was ignoring their concerns that by the last public visioning session, CenterCal did not allow public comment. At the scoping meeting for the EIR, CenterCal and City did not even provide chairs at the meeting and prohibited public input again… they made you submit your comments in writing so that the others could not hear your concern. In the end, despite thousands of comments from the public, CenterCal pressed ahead with its plan and with a very flawed EIR. It took resident action to get the Coastal Commission to void the development permits and a judge to throw out the EIR and order the city rescind its project approvals. The Coastal Commission unanimously voted the project had substantial issues with compliance with Redondo’s Local Coastal Program and with the California Coastal Act. The judge threw out the EIR because it violated CEQA. Rather than quietly go away, CenterCal instead sued the city and residents who opposed their project. A judge recently through CenterCal’s one suit against the residents as “frivolous” and awarded the resident attorneys nearly $900K in legal fees. CenterCal tried to get the resident approved Measure C thrown out, but a judge upheld the initiative. The Coastal Commission later certified the Measure C zoning with no changes.
All this shows that CenterCal is willing to violate the law with its projects and when it does not get its way they are willing to sue the bejesus out of their opponents.
CenterCal is bad news for any community.