Recommendation to receive and file the Uptown Open Space Vision Plan; and accept Categorical Exemption CE-18-023.  (District 9)
Item 20 item 22 Report from Parks, Recreation and Marine Recommendation to receive and file the Uptown Open Space Vision Plan District nine. Thank you. I'm assuming there's one staff report on this council. That's a staff report, please. We have Hiroto Mowatt and Meredith Reynolds. Good evening, honorable mayor and members of the City Council. Let me call on our park development officer Meredith Reynolds to provide the presentation on the Uptown Open Space Vision Plan. Good evening, Mayor. Members City Council and be brief this evening. As a Councilmember Richardson mentioned, the Uptown Open Space Vision plan serves as a visionary document to guide future development and open space in Palm Beach in the ninth District. The vision plan is built upon years of previous work related to analyzing the North Long Beach environment and incorporated the Los Angeles County Park Needs Assessment. The City's Mobility Element Community Livability Plan, River Link Plan, North Long Beach Design Guidelines, General Plan and Open Space Recreation Elements and several Lower L.A. River Masterplans. Building upon these previous efforts, a series of three unique engagement activities were developed to obtain robust community input that identified and prioritize potential open space in realistic planning obstacles. This culminated in the color black walk, a one day pop up which demonstrated the most popular community, identified open space idea and celebrated the community's participation. We are pleased to be recognized by the American Planning Association for our engagement work on this effort, and this has set a new standard for how the development the department plans to perform inclusive engagement activities in the future. The analysis of opportunities throughout this plan used several types of indicators that all affect a person's access to open space. Through this analysis, the community identified the guiding principles of equity, health, accessibility, habitat, sustainability and creativity that were used to inform the identification of open space projects included in this vision plan. The Vision Plan's content is made up of an existing conditions analysis examination of park opportunity types, summary of the public outreach process, the community driven vision and implementation strategies. The Vision Plan looks back on how the park system had evolved to its current state and the previous efforts in planning and development that inform the path forward. It also develops a blueprint for future open space, recreation facilities and parks. The map here shows the Vision Plan's priority projects are identified by the community through the engagement process, along with four key projects underway. They are geographically diverse and are focused on connect our greenbelt and smaller neighborhood or pocket park spaces at this time. This also includes a location along the L.A. River, which is included in the county's Lower L.A. River master plan to capitalize on regional planning efforts. In all, this plan represents 6.6 acres per thousand residents of Park Space in the ninth District, which demonstrates a meaningful increase over the existing point nine acres of open space per 1000 residents . This improves access to open space acres getting closer to the city's goal, as listed in the open space element of eight acres per thousand residents and improves a citywide average to 6.1 acres per thousand. These priority projects also resulted in all ninth District neighborhoods being within a ten minute walk of a park or open space, which further encourages healthy outdoor activity, livability and connectivity consistent with the myriad of city plans and priority efforts. To conclude, the vision plan is long term, intended to be phased in over time as project operations and maintenance funding becomes available and or as greater stewardship from community and corporate partners is identified. The vision plan is intended to be the framework to guide future investment and will allow the city to be ready to secure future funds from grants as well as public and private partners. This is a tremendous effort, and I want to thank the community, the council office and the city's internal working group with staff from development services , economic development, public works and the Health and Human Services Department for their participation and support. This concludes my presentation and we're available for questions. Thank you. For taking. Public comment on this item, saying please come forward and talk. Thank you, honorable mayor and council members. I'm on that mesa with the Hamilton Neighborhood Association in the ninth district. Our boundaries are from Cherry to Atlantic, Artesia to 72nd. I want to share my experience in advocating, creating and maintaining open spaces within our neighborhood. With the current density, we are so desperate for open space that in 2016 we begin to cultivate a relationship with Caltrans, with the goal in mind to clean, maintain and identify open space opportunities. We found many opportunities from potential, many pocket parks to a greenbelt space that at the time was covered in weeds. Trash was in poor condition, unkept. And add to that many years of maintenance, deferral and negative blight for several miles, affecting several neighborhoods in North Long Beach, we Hamilton Neighborhood Association entered into a five year contract with Caltrans to build community parks, plant drought tolerant plants, trees and maintain the nine mini parks we built in our neighborhood . Our relationship with Caltrans is very positive and productive. The many parks we have built in our neighborhood have had an extreme positive effect on all of our residents, with the outreach efforts of city fabric. Long Beach Parks Rec Council Member I'm going to say Vice Mayor Councilmember Rex Richardson's office. The residents of North Long Beach were asked to share their ideas for open space in North Long Beach. We are here tonight to show our support for the entire uptown open space plan. Additionally, we know through our experience and partnerships that the 91 greenbelt included in the plan will benefit entirely the North Long Beach area for many generations to come. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank u next week. Hello, mayor councilmembers. My name is Jerry Fink. I'm with the Hamilton Neighborhood Association, also District nine. I just wanted to echo Meredith Meredith's reporting that that the county did recognize in their report that our neighborhood and our district is in great need of open space. We have gotten our neighbors in our neighborhood out to to build parks and train and hold Caltrans off from from carpeting the sides of the freeway, which they had planned to do. But because we're out there building parks and we're active in our community and dealing with Caltrans, they've been holding off on our neighborhood. They actually skipped over our neighborhood doing their rock carpeting along the freeways so we could maintain our parks. So I would ask for the city's help in partnering with us, in partnering with Caltrans to preserve our open green spaces in our neighborhood. Thank you. Thank you so much, Councilman Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So I think it's interesting that all these items are coming back tonight. We were sworn in a week ago and all this work started basically four years ago. We made a motion like a little over three years ago to start the process of the open space plan. This year, $950,000 of one time funds, I believe our heels on put in 5000. And here we are years later and we've done the outreach. It's an award winning plan. The residents own it. And and through that process, one one project emerged as the most popular project to move forward with. And and this project is the 91 greenbelt. And what it does is north of the 91 Freeway, we're about 35% of our residents live in our district, doesn't have access to any open space. And then if you consider north of the 91 and then west of the 17, that's an island as well. We've got some of the lowest amount of open space per 10,000 residents. This plan, the idea is map out where we would actually build new open space so that we have a road map to guide it. So today the good news is, which I was going to announce before you guys spoke, but I get a chance to buy the 91 greenbelt. We've identified $50,000 of a grant from Heal Zone, $50,000 to go move forward with the design of the 91 greenbelt, effectively making it shovel ready and in a strong position for construction funding from the county or any other grants we decide to pursue. So we wanted to make sure when we got this done, we had something tangible connected to the 91 greenbelt because, you know, that was so popular for you. So that's what we have to announce for you. And we'll I guess we'll talk about it after, but thank you. Excellent. Kathryn Austin, anything. Thank you. And just I'd like to congratulate our councilman, Bill Richardson, for his efforts, his work to to map out opportunities. I think this plan also has a quite a bit of atheistic influence. There's a lot of parks in here, a lot of our work identified in his plan as well. When I got elected six years ago, it was a priority to to increase green space in North Long Beach because there was such a deficit. I want to really come in. Parks and Recreation staff, I think they're the best. I can't imagine that there's a better staff out there in terms of just effectuating plans and making things happen. The work that they've done with Davenport Park, obviously we just cut ribbon on 34 acres at the forest wetlands restoration. And we're looking forward to getting a new grant for 51st Street greenbelt in the next couple of weeks. Also, cutting the ribbon on a new Molina Park. You know, the goal has been to increase 40 acres of new park space in eighth District alone. I think we're going to exceed that thanks to this great, great work of the staff, but also partnership with the the ninth district as well. So the Uptown Renaissance is alive and well. We're producing results. Thank you. I just wanted to just give a shout out to Meredith for leading this process from beginning. Thank you. She's a superstar. And and bring you a chef's key from SEAL City Fabric. There was a dynamic duo on this award winning process, but thank you. Great. Thank you. Please cast your votes. Motion carries. Thank you. Final item is 21. 21 is communications city attorney recommendation to declare ordinance amending the language beach municipal current relating to work within or on a public street or right away obstructions of a public street or right away at the first time. And later to the next regular meeting for final reading city y.