Recommendation to adopt Specifications No. RFP CM16-028 for Professional Engineering Design Services for the Colorado Lagoon Open Channel Restoration Phase 2A Project (Project); award a contract to Anchor QEA, LLC, of Huntington Beach, CA, in the amount of $300,000, for preliminary design services, for a period of three years, with the option to renew for three additional one-year periods; authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute all documents necessary to enter into the contract, including any necessary amendments thereto; Authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute a Memorandum of Understanding with the Harbor Department and grant first rights of refusal to compensatory mitigation credits generated by the Project to the Harbor Department, in exchange for the Harbor Department’s continued contribution to the Project; Accept a Harbor Department contribution of $350,000 for preliminary engineering design services for the Project; and Increase appropriations in the Tidelands Operations Fund (TF 401) by $350,000 in the City Manager Department (CM) by $350,000, offse
Report from City Manager A recommendation to award a contract to Anchor QCA for Professional Engineering Design Services for the Colorado Lagoon Open Channel Restoration Phase two A project in the amount of $300,000 execute in MSU with the Harbor Department and grant first rights of refusal to come compensatory mitigation credits generated by the project to the Harbor Department and accept a Harbor Department contribution of $350,000 for preliminary engineering design services for the project district three. Thank you. Their staff report? Yes. Vice Mayor Councilmembers with a brief staff report from Eric Lopez, our Tidelands bureau manager. Thank you, honorable mayor and members of the city. Keep me just for a moment, folks. If you could just quiet down on the way out so we can conduct our our meeting, the business of our meeting. Thank you. Continue. Vice Mayor, Members of the City Council. On June 30th, 2016, the Board of Harbor Commissioners approved. A memorandum of understanding. With the City for their continued participation in the Colorado Lagoon. Phase two A Open Channel Project. The Division of the Open Channel Restoration Project is to improve tidal, flat, flushing and natural habitat and to create new habitat in the open channel footprint. Approval of the MCU would result in an additional 350,000 financial contribution. That is, in addition to an existing $250,000 that is currently budgeted and would allow staff to move. Forward with the project. That includes house staff. Thank you, sir. Councilmember Price. Thank you. Well, I want to thank Eric Lopez and the folks on his team and the city managers team who have been working on this project. This is a priority project for the city, I believe, and especially for the third district. It's a fantastic project and we're very excited about getting this underway. The Colorado Lagoon, it's an incredible asset for the third district and the city as a whole. So including this investment in a beautiful and unique location that is a valuable ecologically as well as for families to enjoy recreationally. The Open Channel project will help improve the environment for marine life, making it a more impressive habitat and creating a more natural vegetated channel further improving title exchange in that body of water. The Port of Long Beach has been a great partner in helping fund this project, and I'm grateful for their role in making this possible. The Colorado Lagoon is regularly rated as at an A by Heal the Bay, which is a huge improvement from years past, and the water quality continues to get better. I encourage everyone to come out and enjoy this great lagoon and I look forward to future improvements as we move forward with this phase of the project. And again, I can't thank staff enough for not only becoming subject matter experts and working on this project, but also for working so closely with the community and engaging in a process that's very open, transparent and open to input from members of the community who feel very strongly without them, this project would not be happening. So thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman Price, is there any public comment on this item? I go and state your name, please. Good evening. My name is Dave Paparazzi. I'm a resident of the third district. I live at 445 Los Altos Avenue. And I currently serve on the board of Directors of Friends of Colorado Lagoon. We want to thank the Council for your support throughout this process. We especially want to be thankful to Councilmember. Price for her. Leadership and support in making this a priority of her administration. We also want to thank the harbor commissioners and the Port of Long Beach for their support. They've been a partner. For many years. We're coming on 15 years now. We've been working on restoring the Colorado Lagoon along the way. We also have established an educated and devoted community that fully supports this restoration, and they are excited about the future of the lagoon. And that's something that we couldn't have said just. Five or ten years ago. Through this partnership. We've made great progress addressing the sources of pollution, removing contaminate contaminated sediment, expanding the intertidal zones of the lagoon and revegetated with negative with native plants. Residents from all districts of the city of Long Beach use Colorado Lagoon to swim, to picnic, to relax, and to get close to nature. Since it began, this restoration has dramatically improved water quality, as measured by the Health Department and reported by Heal the Bay each year. I think we all rest easier now when we see hundreds of kids swimming in the lagoon and some adult swimming in the lagoon as well, thanks to that improved water quality. But our work's not done. The Regional Water Board has set challenging targets for the Colorado Lagoon and in order to meet those, like those TMD Isles, the experts all agree that the opening of an open waterway between the Lagoon and Alamitos Bay is required in order to restore full title circulation. Tonight, staff is seeking approval to begin value engineering and design work for this waterway. It's been a long time in coming. We, the Friends of Colorado Lagoon, fully support this and urge you to approve this. Thank you. And I'll just close by saying if any of the council members would care to come down to the lagoon for a visit, or if we can be answer any questions in any way, please contact us. We can be reached at Friends at Colorado Lagoon, dawg. Thank you very much. Thank you, sir. Next speaker, please. Very good. Are you fully supportive of this project? And it's important to understand that. Let me share the genesis of how this concept came about. It's not only important to the third district and to the city, but to Southern California and actually nationwide. The concept of the open channel flowed from, I believe it was the 1990 that excuse me, the 2005 Olympic bid when the USOC came to Long Beach and it selected the Long Beach Marine Stadium as the rowing venue for the pending Olympics, which eventually ended up in London. We all knew that it was a it was going to be a very, very tough, you know, tough bid because 84 had just, you know, it's very close behind us and so forth. But the committee came armed with NASA's satellite photos that showed what could be done by opening that up and the concept, in addition to the tidal flow and so forth, the concept was to allow to provide and the channel can be created wide enough not for any racing, but running room after race and entry room from the staging area that would be in Colorado run and on its land areas for the boats after the regatta. In addition to that, it provides people that want to go in and kayak and tour the lagoon 365 days a year. They can do that. The it also will provide an additional over water. So there will be a clear, unfettered 1000 meters within the Marine Stadium, which will not require interfacing with the cross-channel through from the back waters so far. So it's a it's a tremendous project. The port is picking up the the cost from the mitigation, and that's the goal. The port needs that because they are our largest economic engine. So it's a win win situation all around. I'm going to suggest and I mentioned this before, that on every project, every project, no matter where it is in the city. That the project have a the contractors have a public contact so people can keep track of and provide them input if necessary. I'm not qualified to. I know the general specs required, but I'm not qualified. There are other people are and I want to make sure they have a contact and knowledge. Thank you, Mr. Good Counsel. Thank you. Thank you. Seeing no more public comment. Will the council cast their votes? That's why I just wanted to clarify one thing, that the just because if people are watching, they might get confused where this is just an item regarding the cost of the design. It's actually not funding the open channel project. That would be many, many, many millions of dollars more. This is just the design. So I just want to clarify that. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Price. Let's go ahead and cast their votes.