Recommendation to direct City Manager to identify potential funding sources for the acquisition of vacant property between Baker Street and Wardlow Road adjacent to the Los Angeles River for public purpose and return findings to the City Council in Closed Session.  (District 7)
Item 12 Communication from Council Member Dunga Recommendation to direct the City Manager to identify potential funding sources for the acquisition of vacant property between Baker Street and Wardlow Road District seven. Councilmember Yanga. Thank you. Before we get into a brief staff report on this matter, I want to make some corrections. First of all, the parcel that we're talking about is 20 acres, not 15. And also, I would want to request that once the information is gathered and the recommendation is going to be made, that it be made in public to the city council. I'm sure that any future discussions regarding, uh, the, the report that we would get back would have to go into closed session eventually. But we'll cross that bridge when we, when we cross it. But I would like to have a public open meeting when that report first comes out. So I want to make those two corrections at the present time. If I can have. Mr. Conway, I guess, uh, and perhaps director copy from the Public Health and Human Services Department to step forward. I'd like to for them to make a few remarks regarding this property and where we stand with it currently. As Vice Mayor. Council members, the staff were given by Mike Conway, the director of Economic and Property Development. And we also have with us Kelly Colby, the director of Health and Human Services. Vice Mayor Long, members of the City Council. A little bit of background oil operators as a consortium of a number of independent oil producers in and around Long Beach who achieve synergy and efficiency in combining their oil production and exploration efforts. The subject property was acquired in 1927 by oil operators and has been leased to a number of a variety of other oil operators. The city acquired the areas in blue on this slide for open space purposes in 2001 and 2002. Through cooperative efforts with the Trust for Public Lands utilizing park bond money. The city received a grant from Rivers and Mountains Conservancy in July of 2001 for $5 million to acquire the remainder parcel, which is the 20 acre piece under discussion this evening. However, an agreement with oil operators could not be reached and the funding was returned. The 20 acre parcel has been used to separate brine from petroleum. The brine was then treated and disposed and the petroleum was sold. Operations ceased in approximately 19 1998, and development efforts have continued since that time for uses, including self-storage, the residential cemetery and open space. The property is primarily zoned to see us for commercial storage uses and a portion of the property is owned r-1 one for single family residential uses. The property was the subject of a consent decree entered into in August of 2002, requiring characterization, remediation, quarterly reporting and debris cleanup on the 20 acre parcel. Oil operators has complied with the consent decree and is no longer subject to its requirements. The site was identified in 1973 and the open space element of the city as general plan. And in 1989 the site was included in Recreation Commission's Park Acquisition Plan. In 1996, the site was included in the L.A. River Master Plan, and most recently it is included in the Lower Los Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers and Mountains Conservancy Master Plan. The site is currently undergoing environmental remediation. The timing and cost of which are not entirely known. The property is also currently in escrow and under contract for sale, although a development proposal has not yet been submitted to the city. So in summary, the site has long been contemplated for open space and related uses. Funding for acquisition has been the most significant impediment to acquisition of this parcel, and that concludes my summary. Thank you. Perhaps we could have a report from Director Colby in regards to the cleanup that's been taking place over the last several years. Good evening. I'm going to turn my time. Over to Nelson Kerr, bureau manager for Environmental Health. Okay. Thank you. This site has been under the the health department's jurisdiction only for the basin clean ups, which is just the soil around that, the settling bay since we've been doing what we call bioremediation on the site where basically we are aerating out the soil and the the crude oil naturally is dissipated. And I fail to mention that that's the key constituent right now on the property that we're concerned with this crude oil. I did have a conversation with the consultant last night. We're about 80% clean on the property. There are a few areas of concern, the few pockets that will need to have some further remediation done where bioremediation will not be effective. And this is down to about ten feet below the surface. So that's that's the status of where we're at right now. Okay. Thank you. Of course I have I have some questions that are going to be asking. But in summary, this lot has been vacant for many years now. Some of my predecessors have been approached or were approached by some interested parties in developing the land into housing or into a storage facility as it is currently zoned. One councilmember whom I know who I know very well, told me that her term during the City Council she would receive two or three requests for meetings to talk about the old operators property, to discuss and share plans, and on how it would be developed. But none of those came to fruition, at least not until now that we have now. In my short stint here a year and a half, I've had three interested parties come to me to share with me their their views on this property. And we still are at the same point, there is no application for development of the land. So I just want to make that very clear that there's still nothing there at the present time as Mike which was kind of kind of Mr. Conway a very of share his summary there has been. Some activity with the with that land presently. And there's also been some remediation done. However, because it's been so, so long and because the remediation is is intense, I think that when we look at the possibilities of acquiring this parcel would require quite a bit of cleanup. It's my understanding perhaps the representative from the Health Department could help me clarify with this is that there are several different layers of of soil that would be they would need remediation. The highest standard of remediation would be obviously to clean it up to the point where it can be appropriate for housing or any other kind of a daily living type of activities. And then the remediation lessons as you go, different uses of the lease being what it is for now for storage where you would just basically cement it and lock everything down and that would be the least impactful for whatever use it is at that time. However, there is that in between the highest being housing, the lowest being storage, and then somewhere between or usable space such as open space. And that's one of the things that I'm looking at in terms of trying to develop some kind of mechanisms that would allow the city to purchase the land and have it restored or revitalized . The the present efforts that we've done as as has been described, it's it's been part of the plan with with a river link proposal, a project that I think I gave my my colleague a copy of. And it'll be exhibit 19 on page 12 where you could see that. And as you as you heard Mr. Conway, the Rivers and Mountains Conservancy did make an effort to assist the city of purchasing that land highway that that money was given back. So it's going to be an effort to to reopen that possibility. They have made some several efforts already to look at this possibility. I've sent letters to the Department of Toxic Substances Control, the State Lands Commission, Rivers and Mountains Conservancy, and to our legislators. Congressman Alan Lowenthal. Congresswoman Janice Hahn. Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon. Senate Pro-Tem. President Kevin De Leon. Supervisor Ken Duncan. RB Senator Ricardo Lara and Assemblyman Patrick O'Donnell. And I've asked for their assistance in trying to determine what is available out there that could help the city look into this project and making it available for open space. So I want to at this point, I guess we could go to to the public, see what their views are and share their ideas and then bring it back. Actually, yes. But if I can go to Councilmember Richardson as a second year. I stand in support of Councilmember Garrincha. Wonderful. Thank you. Is there any member of the public that wish to address Council on item 12? Please come forward. State your name. My name is Miranda. I live in that neighborhood there that's adjacent that blue square. I'm actually the home on that corner. And so we've seen a lot of activity both on the positive and not so positive side in the years that I lived there. When we purchased our home, there were discussions about the potential use of that land. And I would speak for my neighbors. We've all been very hopeful that that land would be developed and cleaned up. There have been many issues around that property and we've been promised a lot of things. One of the things obviously was the park. So we did get that cute little Baker Street Park that we're very thankful for, although there's been some additional issues with that park being placed there. I personally would love to see that developed into public use that would be to benefit of the community. Some of our major concerns with any of those proposed developments would be access to the area currently that Wardlow Street. I don't know if you can pull that map back up, but that Wardlow a little Wardlow that is adjacent. Big Wardlow is a very narrow street and currently parking is allowed on both sides of that street. So any time you go down that street, one car has to pull over so that the other one can get by. And that's on a daily basis just getting into our current neighborhood. I can't imagine that any more activity on that land would create a bottleneck and problems. There's also a blind corner now because of that area that they the little park that's now the pit area. So it's caused a lot of problems there as well. So if anything is developed on that land, I would love to see access from the main street into that area so that no more no more increased traffic is brought into that community. They're speeding down that street, a lot of speeding because people think it's a free for all. It's a very wide open street all along golden. I'm no speed bumps, even though we've requested for them have been added. There's a park there now, so cars constantly run into the gate. There's no security for the children. There's no speed control. And so people think it's a great place to park there and smoke and do all kinds of things at all hours of the day and night. And so even though the park is very welcomed, there wasn't much thought put into the repercussions of increased traffic both by foot and by car into the area. So I'm really nervous about what they put there because that's only going to, you know, impact that as well. It's also caused a problem with it being vacant because there's so many homeless folks now with the closure of the golf course right above that area there. So we have homeless encampments and that's brought a lot of problems. Truly homeless people and undesirables as well. There's also because there's nothing there now, there's a lot of dust. So the quality of air and soil and water is of concern. And the owners of that property have spoken to us. But I'm not completely convinced they've been completely straightforward or honest about all that they know. So I feel that if it was allowed to be developed, that more cleanup could be done. There's a lot of illegal activity that goes on in there, including drug trafficking and of course, the speed and traffic that accesses that area. So if anything, please, is develop there, I would please beg you that there be Access Streets, consideration and speed control. Thank you so much. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening, Vice Mayor and members of the City Council. My name is Joan Greenwood. I reside at 2091 San Francisco Avenue in the district of Long Beach. I am the president of the Wrigley Area Neighborhood Alliance, and our members stand firmly in support of a low impact development of this area. We desperately need more park space in Wrigley. We have 114 acre park for almost 30,000 residents. We are nowhere near the eight acres per thousand residents that the city has set. A goal is and this is the last viable piece of property for that purpose. We need another senior center in Long Beach and this would be a good location for one. We could use a nature center west that would be low impact native natural habitat. Now, one of the things about in-situ bioremediation is the planting of many drought tolerant native plants, especially grasses, will hold down the dust and will facilitate the bioremediation without having to move the dirt around. That is a viable approach and there is major funding with brownfields and other areas. The other thing is that particular property would serve as a superior urban forest buffer for that neighborhood because they live in a corner with some of the worst air pollution around there, south of the four or five downwind of the seven, ten and downwind of major refineries. I cannot imagine anyone wanting to develop homes on that property, knowing what they should know about what's going on around them in terms of the need to improve our air quality. So therefore, we have been working on this for many, many years. I was the senior project manager on the Long Beach River link phase one project. We held 12 neighborhood community meetings from the mouth of the L.A. River to the boundary with Paramount. Back then, they looked at putting in an amphitheater. There's also an historic wetland that was formerly on that property. The Coastal Conservancy in the late nineties was interested in it. Many, many organizations were interested in it. We tried to get it into a redevelopment zone by making it contiguous to the West Park, and that failed. And quite truthfully, where this has had such high importance in so many of the city's planning, and yet we've let it fall through the cracks. I think we need the citizens of Wrigley deserve a strong effort by the city to try to purchase that property, because I don't think we should start phase two of River Link until we've completed Phase one. Thank you for your time and attention. Next speaker, please. Good evening. Members of the council. My name's Rene Lawler. I live in the seventh District and I represent a minority organization, a nonprofit, the Wrigley Equestrian Homeowner's Association. We have been struggling for many, many years to to retain our functionality and survive within the community. And open space and open space adjacent to the L.A. River is critical to to our survival. The I would like to focus my comments to the entire council, but specifically to Councilman Urunga and also Councilman Austin. Councilman Austin has a unique opportunity. Congratulations to you being assigned a member of the task force for the L.A. River revitalization. Because of that fact, he works directly with state legislature speaker Assemblyman Rendon, and that task force was established with the intent to revitalize the lower L.A. River. The reason for that task force and for that legislation, which became effective law in January, is the fact that the southern reaches of the L.A. River. I have not been given the same attention that the Upper River has, and there is a complexity of unique communities within the lower reaches, such as the equestrian community that have been sorely missed with regard to planning and preservation and and protection of the open spaces needed for these communities. So I encourage you, Councilman Austin, with the task force, because you have such a great opportunity with the Resource Committee to to look at outside funding sources other than within the city. You'll be working with the Mountains and Rivers Conservancy already. You have a great number of individuals that are coming to the table, and now is the opportunity to be able to utilize those resources and protect communities such as the equestrians. This particular site is actually comprised of multiple parcels, so it's not just one big parcel. There are actually multiple parcels and several of the parcels do have an equestrian history. So for those of the community that aren't aware, the Long Beach Mounted Police used to actually reside in retain facilities on several of these parcels. Currently, the County of Los Angeles is proposing a public equestrian arena as an overlay behind the the ten homes, one of which where I reside in. And that public arena will actually negatively impact the homeowners and what we have to utilize. We would request that you would consider working with the county supervisors office, putting the public equestrian rest area in this location, and finding the funding resources in order to do that and not ruin what we currently have. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Candice Meade and I've lived in Wrigley for almost 30 years and years ago, several neighbors and I spent quite a few Saturdays providing input to the general plan. I can't honestly remember it was 2020 or 2030, but it was thoughtful input and everyone requested open space. I specifically remember this parcel because there was a lot of discussion about it. So we would like open space and I and I am happy to see this this put forward tonight for funding. So as you know, open space is not plentiful on the West Side like it is on the east side. And I do support the the identifying funding for the purchase of this property in closed session. I would very much like to see a discussion of this property in open session because the property is highly toxic and it needs to be made safe. That is our number one priority for all of us. I'm very happy to see the city stepping up to do the right thing, and I thank you very much for this opportunity. My name is Richard Sherman. I live at 602 West 37th Street in Wrigley Heights. Most of our I plan on things already being covered, so I'll make it pretty short. I just want to say that Long Beach, West Long Beach is very poor park poor assembly speaker Brendan's Abbie 530 has made $100 million available pardon me to purchase land and make improvements along the southern L.A. River. This property is the only riverside site of its size available in Long Beach. I just want to mention that the same developer is going to build 131 tiny lot homes on the beautiful Boy Scout Park in North Long Beach. He also seeks to build 275 tiny lot homes in Wrigley Heights. That would double the number of homes in Wrigley Heights. I'd just like to mention that years ago, when they wanted to build some stuff over there, the traffic engineer said that it was not possible to go out to Golden Avenue because it's on a high speed curve, going uphill over the bridge, over the river. Anyway. I would love for the city to obtain this property. I just hope that it isn't a ploy on behalf of oil operators to get a higher price from the developer property or stick it to Long Beach with their highly polluted site at an unreasonable cost. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Regina Taylor. I'm a resident of the Wrigley District 3206 Oregon Avenue. I, too, am very much in support, as some of you know, of trying to keep this open space. Despite the fact that we have big lots in Wrigley, we really are sitting on each other's laps. Um, I did notice that the original proposal, the way it was written, was indicated 17 to $22 million per acre, and that has been removed. I don't know whether that's significant or not. Also, you had mentioned that there is no terms contract on the table or someone coming forward with an application willing to build or to buy it. How long is this directive to the staff? What period of time is this for? Is there an end to it? A month, two months? And would we be jettisoned or would they be redirected to stop pursuing funding if there was an application on the table? Whatever the term is for someone to want it to build or to use it. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening, council members. My name is Robert Richardson and I live at 525 or 37th Street in the Wrigley area. It's a great neighborhood. We have one way in and one way out. I've been living in that particular house for 35 years and I just want to speak at the ground level of all my neighbors who's died of cancer. And there's a lot of them right now walking around with cancer because of that Baker oil area back there. And as you go back to right now, all is going up as we speak. The area cannot be cleaned up. It's just been like that for 35 years. We get odors and it's just it's a bad sight. But whatever you put. There, please do not put any single family Holdens because you know their kids. We have kids up there and you. Know, they're our life and that's our future. And whatever you do. Please do not put any single family homes. I think it'll just be field and capped and be done with it. Thank you. My name is Lena Hayek and I actually also live in Wrigley and I manage the whole Golden Ranch away. And there's ten homes of us that are right there, a Golden Ranch. And right behind us is Countryside Lane one and countryside lane two. That should tell you a little bit about how compacted we are. I've also spoken with James Stein, the owner of the Oil Operation Land, and I think the North Division Department for always coming out when we've needed them for help with the homeless, drug activity, etc. I think we call them about ten times a week. So I'm also in favor of the open space. We currently have about two neighbors who are suffering from cancer. And, you know, we went to these meetings where Tesoro was there with the environmental speakers who told us that basically we had nothing to worry about. So I don't know. Like Brenda said, is it a watered down version of what the truth is or are we just blinded to what will happen with the land? So. Councilman Aranguiz, thank you for bringing it up. I would like. The. Land acquisition to go to the city, obviously, and to leave it open space and a lot of great things that Joan had mentioned regarding why we want to push for for that. And just remember, I mean, I understand many of you probably do not live there and you don't see the activities in and out daily and the things that we go through as a community trying to just keep a strong support of what our land would look like. If you have high density buildings, they are single homes, etc.. So anyway, I just wanted to say that thank you for your time. We certainly appreciate you listening to us and our concerns. Thank you. If he comes down, council up. I agree with everything that been said and I don't think anybody that sits at the council could disagree with anything that's been said. The only concern I have is that when the city acquires property, a lot of times it seems like it's sold at a much less value than we acquired it for. And that's concerning to me. $20 million. If their funds come from outside the city, that would be tremendous. I mean, it would save us a lot of money they could use. Instead of a sales tax to provide infrastructure. And it does affect everybody around there. The wind blows. It does smell, you know, stuff oozes. I mean, very few of you live around there that you don't know what it's like. I remember when they scraped the cap off the other dump we have here in Long Beach. And everybody was upset about that overall Pacific Coast Highway. Remember that a couple of years ago. And that was a tremendous problem. So I support Perch. It'd be great, but let's use it for residents. Make it a part. Don't sell it to a developer that's going to overbuild at a cheap price. That's not what you're here for. You're here to do what's best for us. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Steele. Councilmember. Well, first of all, I want to thank all the speakers who came forward and shared their ideas and their perspectives on this parcel of land that is available. I think we have an opportunity here for the city to increase our park space. We need more open space. The seventh District is especially especially in need of more open space, and this would be a great opportunity to do that. So what I'm asking basically is your support in directing staff to pursue some some avenues of being able to finance for funding. It is my intent to minimize any kind of use of city funds to acquire this partial land and hopefully it can be done through either has been mentioned through a cap and trade money that that might be available out there through the river link efforts that are there through the 8530 funding that's available to connect the river . And this this is an excellent opportunity here to connect this parcel of land with the river and with other activities that would be enjoyed with the activities that that are already set in motion for the river in terms of for where it starts to where it ends here in Long Beach and brownfield designation would certainly help be a big help towards that. So I'm asking staff to go ahead and do that. And perhaps this would be an opportunity to to discuss how long do we do this? Is there a. Time limit that we need to put on this in terms of what efforts we need to put. I know we're coming on to a new budget season for the state as well as for the city, and perhaps the city manager can can give me or give us a somewhat of a lay of the land and what awaits us for the future in this effort. Vice mayor, council members. We can probably certainly come back with 90 days with thoughts of where funding sources might be or might not be. I mean, this is going to be something very, very creative. Certainly the city doesn't have to purchase it, but we would we could certainly outline that very quickly and get direction from the council . I'm in the process of contacting our legislators to have a face to face with them, to talk about this project, in particular, to see if appetite available for them in terms of what they might be able to make available towards towards helping us acquire this land. So I'd be more than willing to help in this effort. And certainly my my office's is is available to help in any way that we possibly can with with pushing this forward. So I ask for when it comes to my my colleagues or support on this. That I thank you, Vice Mayor. I really want to thank our counsel, Roberto, you know, for his efforts to create an open space, you know, in our community. And I'm enthusiastic supporting your effort. You know, we can find a way to create Eldorado Park experience in our community that has an open space in parks. That would be for all of Long Beach to enjoy. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Andrews, we have no further comment on this item. Members, please cast your vote. Motion carries. Next item, please. Okay. Actually, 1/2. Okay. Thank you. I apologize for coming late. I was at the one of the commencements for for Cal State, Long Beach. So let me move on to the agenda. We're going to I know we have a time certain for our hearing and also just to just add our offices, just because I know she's here and I want to make sure that we we get to this item quickly as well. Can we just do item 21st before we get to the hearing? Which is the Jose ordinance. So Madam Clerk, if you can just read item 20, please.