Recommendation to receive and file a presentation by members of the University of Southern California Lusk Center for the winning entry in the 2013 National Association for Industrial and Office Parks (NAIOP) Southern California Real Estate Challenge for the Seaport Marina Hotel site at 2nd Street and Pacific Coast Highway.  (District 3)
Yeah. Thank thank you all for coming out, by the way. I appreciate it. Thank you. Just as a courtesy, we'll move to item 17 before 14 because some young people waiting here. So item 17, GREGORY. Item 17 is a report from Development Services with the recommendation of receiving filed a presentation by members of the Unit University of Southern California Law Center for their winning entry in the 2013 National Association for Industrial and Office Parks. As for the council membership scheme. Yes, I would like to introduce or have these gentlemen introduce themselves and I believe one of you is actually a resident of Long Beach. Which one? Yes. Yes. And let the audience know that these were the winners of the University of Southern California Law Center. It's the 2013 National Association for Industrial and Office Parks and AOP, Southern California Real Estate Challenge. And they were given the challenge of looking at the property as second and PCH, and they came back with an exciting design that they are now going to be given the opportunity to present to the council. If you could, introduce yourselves, gentlemen. Thank you. My name is Steven Anderson, and I'm with the U.S. team. My name is Christian Santos. My name is Daniel Bertel. Nick Terje NGO. Good evening, Matt Kiper. And I think one of your staff is getting us to the keyboard for the clicker. But I just while she's getting it, I'll give a quick overview. So every year there's a competition between USC and UCLA on a real estate site somewhere in Southern California. That's a challenge and has had a challenging history. And this year the site is second and PCH was chosen as the site. And it's had many attempts to be developed. And with our challenge to kind of create a project that would work for all the stakeholders, including the city, as a partner of ours. And one of the unique attributes of our program is, rather than just real estate development, we're in the School of Policy Planning and development. So we have a lot of focus on urban planning and policy and the impacts of development and how it relates to the context more than just does it actually make money? So I introduced our team. My name is Steven Anderson. I'll just give you a quick overview and Kristian will take us through entitlements. Daniel the design, Nick the market analysis and finally, Matt, the numbers about the project. So as I mentioned, the sites at Second and PCH, kind of at the confluence of Belmont Shore, Naples SEAL Beach in the border of L.A. and Orange County, 11 acres. And we consider this the most exciting coastal real estate opportunity in Southern California. You just don't find many sites of this size near the water surrounded by so many good amenities. So one of our challenges was why hasn't anything been developed here? And we were tasked with being the developer, putting on our developer hat and how to minimize risk and get something done here. So this is kind of an overview of the plan we came up. We'll go through detail further in the presentation, but we really wanted to connect the site to the water and connect the wetlands to the water. And rather than these islands of shopping centers, try to connect everything as a regional district. So in the upper left, you'll see a retail project, a boutique hotel on the right, an apartment community, and then a groundlings community amenity on the water that would be a permanent home to the farmers market. Here are some views of some of the renderings. We were just really trying to bring the water into the project as much as possible and make it coastal. So and then just a. Kind of a summary that we're. Proposing, this project had 164,000 feet of retail, 80 hotel rooms and 300 apartment units. And then we would do a proposed in two phases, which will outline further and the presentation as the step revision is going through right now. And then we really knew to get a project done here, especially with its history, we needed to create community and political will. So our goals were to stitch the area together, make a new gateway, create a new gateway for the city to the water. And really, this could serve as a catalyst for redeveloping the entire district into a more walkable, connected place. And then we approached this with three objectives. We wanted to identify the highest and best use for the community, the investors and the city, create a new waterfront experience and then maximize those benefits for everyone involved. And now Christian will present the entitlements. Thank you, Stephen, and thank you again to the city council for having us. So I'm going to go a little more into the site now. The site is located at Second and PCH. And as Steven said, we believe it is a rare and significant site and that it deserves a special project. 80,000 cars per day pass the site along PCH and Second Street. It is 500 feet from the water and has a quarter mile of PCH frontage. Naples is just sort of up to the top there. And then further along as Belmont Shore down PCH, we see SEAL Beach, all great communities. Three significant retail sites flank the area we're looking at, including high performing Whole Foods, Trader Joe's and Gelson's. And what you see immediately here is an opportunity to connect all three of these centers. And like Steven said, try and create a walkable destination, a place, something that Long Beach can be proud of. This is a view a little closer of the site. Currently, the Seaport Marina Hotel is located on the site, and one of the things you'll notice from just sort of a design architectural standpoint is that it kind of blocks off the water. So one of the things we were looking at was how to bring PCH towards the marina. This is a view of our project here. And you could see we tried to make a very direct link. We're going to go into little more detail about this later, but this is where we're going. So one of the main questions is why is nothing built here? This is a significant site and it's just something that you think everybody who passes by wonders why nothing has really been developed here. So in 1980, Long Beach adopted its zoning code for the area, the local coastal plan. And what it led to were projects such as this across the street on PCH and here across Second Street and here adjacent to our site. Now, I guess what I'm trying to get at here is the zoning code suggests a certain type of development and a kind of car oriented single story retail center. Now, all of these are very successful and great projects themselves, but one of the things that was indicated to us from the city, from people in the neighborhood, from past people who look at the site, is that everybody thinks our project, our site is capable of a little bit more of kind of this pedestrian friendly civic space , something that that people will come to. And that is very representative at the gateway of Long Beach. Of Long Beach. So taking all this into account. One thing I should also mention, too, is that the city is currently in a revision process of the zoning code for this area. I think that over the years people have noticed that or everyone's kind of noticed that what we want to do here is something a little more so that the zoning codes in a three year revision process right now, which kind of adds a complication to the design, to the development in general, our strategy for this, and we believe it's fairly innovative is to phase the project. Phase one is a retail area. It's on the left side there. It is consistent with the current zoning code. So we believe something like this could get started immediately. We could at least start the talks of it, start getting the process through phase two of our project as a projected development. And by that I mean we're going to wait. We're going to we're going to wait till see that the local zoning code is amended. We're going to adjust our project to that. In our project, just kind of as an experiment, as a speculation, we put a hotel and multifamily on this site anticipating that maybe multifamily would be allowed at this point. Thank you. And Daniel Patel, we'll go a little more to the design. Thank you, Christian, and thank you council members. I want to reiterate what Christian and Stephen said. This is a very once in a lifetime site and it deserves a worthy vision to be a true destination and landmark for Long Beach. When we set out to design and program the site, we had the benefits of learning from the failures of the past. Our goal was to create a place, a destination experience that would connect to the water and be the next step towards creating a marina district. Picture a community where neighbors walk to the bakery, where friends hang out at the local cafe where families can bike to the farmers market. Pair these cores with an architecture that is rooted in the creation of great public spaces. We study the architecture of Long Beach, including the existing Googie architecture of the Seaport Marina Hotel, as well as the mid-century modern Portofino nearby. Additionally, we study the scale and massing of other great public spaces in other cities, and we also research strong urban design moves that could inform us on how we could connect the corner of Second and PCH to the water. Learning from the failures of the past. We push forward with a multi-use site of decreased density and height of previous proposals that included a destination retail center on the north side of the site at the corner of PCH and second. Phase two would include a boutique hotel and multifamily component anchored to the water with views of the Pacific on the marina. We created a community civic space filled with restaurants, eclectic vendors and a permanent farmer's market. Being mindful of the many issues raised by the community, establishing connectivity and being thoughtful about traffic was extremely important in our vision. In addition to safely connecting bike paths with dedicated off street bike lanes and restoring pedestrian access around the site with much needed sidewalk improvements. We create a strong statement of connecting PCH and the wetlands, both physically and visually, to the marina with a pedestrian retail street focused solely around creating intimate and unique public spaces. Our retail street creates a vibrant shopping and culinary driven experience filled with excitement. Picture Tartlets for parents and children. A new local cycling shop for the community program Open Space Safe for Family Movie Night at the end of a retail street as box park, a community civic space and a permanent home for the neighborhood farmer's market. It pays homage to Long Beach's strong shipping import history, as it's creatively composed of recycled shipping containers and complements the local restaurants and regional microbreweries that will surround it. Lastly, Belmont Yards will be a sustainable leader in the community, designed and constructed to the lead for neighborhood development standards. Belmont Yards is the next step towards creating a new place for Long Beach. A new marina district and ultimately Southern California's next great coastal community. Now to talk about the local market, I'm going to hand it off to Nick. Thank you, Daniel, and good evening and thank you for your time. Council Members. Belmont Yard sits within a population base that is underserved by and has a strong demand for retail and multifamily uses. In general, because of a limited supply of retail space and strong sale levels. There is a men's competition among among new retailers to be here pushing rents to levels that are approximately double the greater market average and vacancy to approximately zero. It's worth noting that retail space in this immediate area is approximately 60% per capita of the greater Los Angeles region. Because of a large regional void and shopping center and regional shopping centers. Many of the local residents are leaving that area to shop. They're looking for soft goods, apparel and other goods and other items. Many of these local residents shop are shopping and traveling to South Coast Plaza, 30 to 45 minutes south of here. There's also clearly a strong and growing demand for restaurant space with a fixed and tapped out supply. Restaurant rents have grown by approximately 15% this year alone in the Second Street area. There's a waiting list for space and tenants are buying out existing tenants to be in this area. As a result of assessing retailer voids and demand and speaking with tenants and brokers directly, we've confirmed that many great retailers want to be here. These include. Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie, Apple. Crate and Barrel. Porto's Bakery and Stone Brewery's Beer Garden, Equinox Fitness and many of the Long Beach's local best restaurants. After doing our initial study, we recently walked into Michael's Pizzeria and talked to him about the site and he quoted, I've wanted to be at that site for 30 years. Additionally, because of a lack of available land, housing supply has before been far outpaced by population growth in the immediate area within the last ten years. East East Long Beach has accommodated approximately 700 new households, while there has been only 55 new rental units added to the market. As a result, the market consists of predominantly dated rental units and apartment buildings. 95% of the existing stock built over 30 years ago. People continue to move into this area based on the desirable location and irreplaceable nature of the area being located directly in between Los Angeles and Orange County's. And now for an overview. Matt Kuyper. Thank you, Nick. Good evening. Thank you for your time. Taking into account the entitlement landscape. Site forces are design intention as well as the pent up demand for retail, hotel and multifamily users. We've designed a project that is both feasible for the developer and beneficial for the city of Long Beach. Our proposal anticipates a total project cost of approximately $200 million, which will include 164,000 square feet of retail, 80 acres of hotel rooms and 300 unit apartment development broken up into phase one and phase two. Importantly, we view the city as a partner in this project. The key financial takeaway is the significant positive fiscal impact our project will create for the city of Long Beach. The current project, the Seaport Marina Hotel, is estimated to produce annual revenues for the city of Long Beach of approximately $154,000. Our proposal anticipates a 16 fold increase in that figure. Two and a half million dollars per year to the city of Long Beach, made up primarily of sales tax and hotel tot revenue. To recap, our objectives for this project were threefold. Identify the highest and best use. Shape a waterfront experience and maximize benefits to all the stakeholders involved. We've accomplished this by filling the market void for retail, hotel and multifamily. We've created an outdoor pedestrian and marina focused design. And finally, we've created a feasible project that is both financially beneficial for the developer and for the city of Long Beach. While slightly outside the scope of our project, we spoke to many of the adjacent landowners and we envisioned a larger marina district where Belmont Yards could be the catalyst for a greater district of connected properties, which will promote walkability and a pedestrian oriented environment. Beyer, Vice Mayor, City Council, we thank you again for your time, and we're happy to address any questions at this time. Thank you. Thank you, gentlemen. Very creative. This should go on. Thank you. First of all, congratulations. You guys did a great job putting that together. Very interesting. There have a couple of questions. What's the height in phase two of those of those structures? The heightened phase two would be six storeys, so roughly 60 feet. It's a residential building. The entire project would be below that. One of our objectives, if we really wanted to create a project that was less dense and from the water, you had many more views through PCH. Great. And do you have any do you recall about what was the percentage open space in the project? You know. I believe our percentage open space was close to 30%. Great. Thank you. And of course, former city staff Amy. I see over there. You know, I think it's a very intriguing idea that they went across into the parking lot. What's your perspective on that? Certainly, there are some complications with that from a zoning perspective in the Coastal Commission's perspective, but it does provide for additional activation of the waterfront. So in many regards it's a very positive feature. So as the City of update process gets underway, do you think that that's something that the committee and the consultant should look at is whether or not there's some viability to link those areas together. That part of the waterfront is not in the ceded boundaries. So the committee would really need to determine whether or not they wanted to expand the boundaries of seating to include the actual waterfront. Okay. Well, I could tell you I find it very intriguing. I know that we've had developers in the past, Mr. Mayor, you might recall they've looked at trying to combine those. And I guess I would encourage the the group to at least take a look at what the potential feasibility and benefits to the city would be. Very creative idea. Thank you. Councilmember Cioffi. First of all, I want to thank city staff for arranging the presentation and also again to congratulate you. This is an extremely creative, bold, exciting plan. And I do think everyone here agrees that that particular parcel of land is probably is probably the most exciting waterfront waterfront adjacent parcel probably in Southern California that has has not been looked at in the way that you have done it. I guess I would ask, have you talked to the owner of the property about his interest in your plan? Has he seen your your award winning? Planning design. Yes. The owner was at the presentation when when we won that night and was part of the submittal to Knapp for the site to be considered. So he he has seen the plan. Okay. Well and I thought was very thoughtful on your part was to recognize the current planning situation with the need to update CDEP and what the city is going through so that there's a possibility to do things incrementally. If if a developer wanted to do that. So I'm going to thank you and hopefully everybody will keep this in mind as as the city moves forward. And it's probably one of the most exciting plans that I've seen since I've been on the city council about the use of that property. I don't know. The question would be, did you address anything about traffic mitigation? Because as we know, that has been the biggest concern right now. Traffic in that particular corner of Long Beach is already troublesome. So that was the concern about adding additional retail and other amenities in that area. We looked at mitigating traffic in two different ways. First of all, expanding capacity, doing that through dedicated right lanes, looking at potentially working with adjacent land over to create a future street shopkeeper road that would alleviate the traffic burden in terms of what we did on our site to alleviate traffic. We created more of a destination retail center where people would come in. You would actually enter the site off of a new street that we've created so that you wouldn't have cars coming off of Second or PCH or Marina. And then in addition to that, we took a second approach because every time you increase capacity, traffic is going to grow to meet that capacity. And so one of the things that we did was really educate the people and try and get the people out of their vehicles, do whatever we can to encourage people to bike to the site, encourage ride sharing programs, increase pedestrian activity. And so really, I think the two different ways that you can tackle traffic, there are two different ways that you can tackle traffic expanding capacity, but that's only going to take you so far. And so it's really finding ways to creatively bring people to the site and get them out of their vehicles. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Mr. Neil. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Gentlemen, I think your. Design is very creative, very visionary. Mr. Bodak, in regards to the height restrictions now, how does their projection fit in, in what is currently existing? Well, a project of this magnitude with the design that they've approached suggested does require some amendments to current CDP regulations, not only to allow the residential use, but to deal with the height restrictions. The height currently right now is limited to 30 feet. And so their proposal is 60 feet. That is much more in keeping their 60 foot height that they're proposing, as much more in keeping with what staff was expecting that that site should be able to accommodate. The previous proposal by the developer had much higher heights than that which were not well received by the community. Thank you. Thank you, gentlemen. All right. Thank you very much, gentlemen. I appreciate that. I agree with Mr. DeLong. We've both long thought that this project needs to go to the water to increase its viability and its usefulness. Did a great job, and we appreciate it. You want to make a motion, please? You haven't seconded any member. The public would address the council on this item. Move aside. Gentlemen. Mr. Good. You, sir. Very good. You clearly as the address as a Buckeye. I want to commend the guys. This is, I think, the best rendering and most creative that I've seen since I've been here that's been presented to this council, notwithstanding the fact that I think this the obviously the six feet, the six storeys isn't going to fly, but everything from like this portion here is outstanding. And bringing the water in, connecting it to the water is just right in concert with what everybody is trying to do. One of the things I've looked at to try to look at is actually where Marina Drive is now is we had that like a graded and what we want is water, the actual water coming down underneath there, connecting there and connect back to Marina Pacifica. That provides another way of getting out into the water. The six stories, in fact, I was just looking at this morning. This concept here that you have. In fact, the entire concept with this certainly would be great at PCH. And second, where now the old power plants are on the other side of Studebaker. This thing would fit like a champ in there. There's some environmental issues that obviously we have to take care of, but I think this is a step in the right direction , although in terms of I question the the marketing, the attractiveness. The fact is. We're at a handicap here. Fish tastes very good, but they're for customers they don't buy. So the reason we don't have these retailers here is the just simple lack of numbers. Yes, we do have to go out to Fashion Island or to other places to get that. But we don't have the volume to justify the investment that the major retailers want to invest in here. And that will never happen. Also, we have if we have a permanent place, in my view, for a flea market right now, we're this is sort of the epicenter of flea markets in Long Beach and in California and major retailers. I don't want their name associated with the flea market. Thanks. That's good. I don't mean to put a damper on creativity, but I have five points to make and maybe it was above my head, but I didn't see them totally addressed. The first one being What is the concern for esthetics? I mean, there's no waterfalls, no baroque sculpture, no meditation, lots raging, just buildings. The second point being that allowances are not made for parking as much as they should be. And another point being that hotel rooms, hotels are going to be should be built when the hotels we have now are are underused and are really enough. There are quite a few hotels we have presently. And another point being this, that the creativity you're creating, buildings on spots that don't presently have one, have them. And it doesn't strike me as all that creative, really. Last point I would like to make is the worst traffic problem is going to be exasperated. The intersection of Pacific Coast Highway and Second Street that that traffic is horrendous and you would be augmenting that. So maybe you can address those points. If not. Let us stand. Actually. Good evening. I am Patricia ETIM and I live in District three. We have for over two decades and I would really like to voice my appreciation for your brilliant idea. It was just amazing. So I am sure that many in our district and many around Long Beach would be delighted at this presentation and your absolute thoroughness. So thank you all very much. Thank you. Mr.. I am Francis Henley Dyson Harris and I reside in District one. And I just want to say I'm incomplete on what a gift you have, and it's just absolutely phenomenal and it's exciting. And I and I encourage of course, I build it now the city's going to receive and for this to look at this in the future and it just looks so positive. And I believe it's going to draw people down into that area and people that are leaving, going to other places will come back into that area. But I couldn't sit back there and not tell you that we have to give you half. And thank you so much. Next was. Hi. My name is Donna Coates, Mayor City Council. I admire your intent to get bike riders there, but unless you can lower the hill from Naples over to PCH or make huge wide bike riding lanes down Pacific Coast Highway, I doubt anyone's going to ride bikes there. I ride my bike there. Don't worry about it. He's to me. Hi. I'm Kurt Schneider. You did a great presentation. I like the project a lot. The future st. That's definitely something that you should consider. But instead of just going to Shopkeeper Road, keep going through the wetlands. And by doing so, you'll get rid of some of the congestion and also take care of a big problem our city has. We don't use our wetlands like other communities do as an asset, not a liability. If you go to Huntington Beach, their wetlands are beautiful. You want to go out there with the children and walk through them. And bike ride. Run here. You smell oil. It's nasty. If you bring a street through there and also have a, you know, walking paths along the side, you'll find that money will follow. You'll clean it up. It'll look great. Great way to take care of congestion. I love the idea of activating that area. I can't see the coastal not being in favor of it. And when Mr. Goodhue says that the retailers won't have enough bodies coming in, he doesn't know the math. We are severely under retailed. The only problem we have in Beaumont, Shaw right now is with we have more restaurants and retail because we don't have daytime traffic. We don't have office buildings. We don't have those generators to bring in all the, you know, the normal working hours for people coming in and shopping. But if you did something of this magnitude, you would be able to attract the quality, the Urban Outfitters, the know gap like we have on Second Street and the new concepts. Keep thinking. Keep imagining. Look forward to this project. I hope that everybody's listening in. The city will work well with them. Thank you. Any other comments? Thank you. Councilmember Lowenthal. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I wanted to add my congratulations to the team as well. It's the Ralph and Goldie Lewis Hall is where I spent many years. So I want to congratulate you for being a part of their planning school. And this is a great product. As you can see just from this council meeting, you've inspired a lot of imagination and a lot of discussion. And I hope that down the road that something like this is our potential at Second and PCH. So thank you for reviving that for us and reminding us that we don't have to tolerate the mediocre. I appreciate that. Thank you. Mr. Neal. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just one more question, gentlemen. In regards to your concept, did you consider mobility in. In in the event of public transportation, did you reach out to any public transportation agencies? I love the walkability idea, but as far as getting more public transit there. Was that ever considered? As a resident of Belmont Shore, we did some research and talked to several people who are familiar with several agencies, such as the Water Taxi and adding additional bus stops to near the site. Mr. Johnson. Well, thank you, Mayor. And I enjoyed the presentation. I just want to note that, well, it's good to have a robust conversation in the public. You know, I know anyone here watching to think this is only a public project and it is private land. And ultimately private property owners do have rights. And so I think our role will be to see whatever is proposed and to weigh in with the public. But I just want to note that for the record. Okay, gentlemen, I really appreciate it. Very creative idea. I'm glad you're talking to the owner. And I know that sometimes you may hear comments in here that sound like you're in a parallel universe, but don't let that discourage you. There's a lot of potential of what you have here, and it's something Mr. and Mr. Long and I have talked about. It's it's the right idea. Hopefully you can make it commercially viable. And the owner who's talking to you. That's great. Thanks again. Congratulations on your win. We have a motion and a second one was already done. It's its best motion. And second, cast your votes members. Motion carries eight votes. Yes. All right. Thank you. Will return to item 14 Global Read. Item 14 is communication with the Office Council very soon, along with the recommendation to request city attorney to draft amendment language to the Downtown Dining Entertainment District Ordinance enabling entertainment and activity on rooftop patios. Councilmember Lowenthal Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Councilmember, as you may recall, my commitment a few months ago to return to you with a change to our downtown dining and entertainment district ordinance once we had the opportunity to discuss rooftop entertainment with stakeholders. This request reflects conversations between my office and police, city staff, residents and owners at 144 Pine Avenue, the Corner Restaurant Group, which happens to own the only rooftop patio in the dining and entertainment district. In addition, staff's requested more explicitness with respect to the sunset clause of these conditions once the Dining and Entertainment District Task Force returns with their own set of recommendations. So I'd like to amend the motion, if I might, to include the following language. This amendment to the ordinance shall sunset upon action by the City Council, either on its own or in response to recommendations made by the Downtown Dining and Entertainment District Task Force.