Recommendation to direct City Manager to prepare a report on the status of retail commerce regionally and in Long Beach with a focus on brick and mortar establishments, including best practices and creative approaches cities are taking to manage changes in consumer behavior due to on-line shopping, and provide an update to the City Council in 120 days.
Line Item 14, please. Communication from Councilwoman Price Council Member Pierce, Councilman Austin. Recommendation to direct City Manager to prepare a report on the status of retail commerce regionally and in Long Beach with a focus on brick and mortar establishments and provide an update to the city council. And 120 days? Yes. Do you have any county council comments on this? Very good hill. Mr. Encontraram. Are you going to work on this? Right. Okay. Surprise you. I asked my colleagues to support this item. As we have all seen, the Internet has changed just about every aspect of all of our lives, and there's no exception to that reality when we think about retail establishments and retail health in general, as we know almost daily now, there are articles and newspapers around the country talking about the end of retail malls closing nationwide as a result of Internet commerce and access to goods through the Internet. This has had a tremendous impact, if not already. I expect it will on many of our business corridors. We're not alone in this. The city of Beverly Hills has seen unprecedented vacancies on little Santa monica Boulevard. State Street in Santa Barbara has seen unprecedented vacancies just in the last two years on State Street, upper and lower. And we're starting to see that throughout the state of California in different business corridors. I'm hoping that our economic development department can really take a deep dove on this issue and figure out what is happening with retail and how can retail change so that it is more integrated with online commerce that we're seeing? I'll give you an example of a store that just opened in the third district at Second and PCH. It's called Nike Live. There are two Nike Live stores in the world. There's one in Tokyo and one in Long Beach, which is pretty exciting. And what Nike Live does is that they monitor online sales within the region based on zip code so that they know what people in the area are purchasing online and they stock the store with items that people are purchasing online to create a sense of community trends, community style connection. And that's just one way that they're trying to integrate online shopping with the brick and mortar experience. What are ways that our retailers, our current retailers can continue to stay competitive with an online presence of competing stores? So I'm hoping that our economic development team can come back with some ways that we can help modify the way we're doing things, some education that we can provide to our small businesses and especially our retailers. And some ways that we might be able to change as a city to allow businesses to continue to thrive. Whether that means changing regulations that we've held on to in the past in terms of parking, development, building, etc., to allow for companies to establish here in the city and to continue to help our business improvement districts thrive with both services, restaurants, with all services, restaurants and retail thriving alongside one another. So thank you in advance for your support, colleagues. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilman Austin. Yes, I'm happy to second this item. When this was presented, I thought it was very thoughtful and hopefully so give our economic development department something else to do in terms of making us smarter as a city, in terms of how we we look at, you know, how we help businesses. I know I brought forward an item a few months back to study vacancies and vacant properties, and I think this is somewhat in line with that as well. And I think it would also be good and helpful to understand the the impacts of e-commerce on on sales tax revenue or potential lost sales tax revenue here in the city. Because that, to me, I think, is one area that that we need to look at as well. But I'm happy to support this. And perhaps we can we can have that conversation further in another time. Thank you. Thank you. Our next step is Councilman Pearce. I guess I was happy to sign on to this item. I think it's a great start to a bigger conversation. I am happy to say that I've met with John with economic development this morning and had some conversations similar. Just this week we had another two businesses on Fore Street. The AIDS food store and a barber shop have their rent increase over three over three times. So I went from $3,000 a month to $9,000 a month in rent. And so I know that while there's online challenges, there's also the rental market challenges as well. Additionally, I know that majority of our retail stores on Fore Street also sell online. And so what is the capacity of our local mom and pop businesses to get access to resources and support, to be able to understand how to go out and get new clients, new returning clients as well. And so I look forward to our many conversations to come. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Good here in control. Want to speak to this item at Sink. Seeing nonmembers, please. Gordon, cast your vote.