Recommendation to request City Manager to review current licensing and zoning policies for potential micro-brews and brew production; examine best practices for brew policy in other localities including San Diego and Torrance; engage local brew pub and retail community for ideas and input; and report back to the City Council in 90 days.
Item seven Cllr Cary. Seven is communication with the Office of Vice Mayor Robert Garcia, Councilmember Susan Lowenthal and Councilmember James Johnson with the recommendation to request the City Manager to review current licensing, licensing and zoning policies for potential microbrews and brew production estimate. Best Practices for Brew Policy and other localities and engage local brew, pub and retail community for ideas and input and report back to the City Council in 90 days. The Vice Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just a little background. The microbrew industry has become a a small cottage industry that's grown quite successful in areas, particularly in San Diego and others. We actually have three microbreweries in Long Beach. Those are would be Beachwood Barbecue, BBC, as well as Rock Bottom, which are the only three that are currently located here . This has been an industry that is seeing really great growth and its microbreweries are a lot for a lot of us. It's kind of like the wine tasting of of restaurants and places to go to. It's a it's a great business. It's really about tasting different craft brews. And for a lot of people, it's more than just a hobby, but something they really enjoy doing with friends and family and others. What we currently have right now in Long Beach is where I, myself and others have been approached. I know by a couple of different businesses that are looking at production. There have been some questions about where they can and can't locate and how supportive the city is. From what I hear from the current tenants, particularly Beach, where we've been very supportive of them in the past and they've had a very good, good experience with what the item is asking for essentially is for us to look at what best practices are. Both Torrance and San Diego have passed pretty comprehensive policies on microbrewery, and the craft beer industry in San Diego has gone as far as to create really a whole kind of marketing and other types of campaigns to kind of bring some of that business to their city. So I'd be just interested to know what other communities are doing. It's been quite large for visitors and tourists. There's a lot of local economic impact that happens around these types of businesses, and so that's really what the agenda item is about. And with that, I'd like to make the motion. Moving second, Councilmember Lowenthal. Supporter. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'm pleased to be a co-sponsor here and want to thank Vice Mayor Garcia for including me. He's already mentioned Beachwood Barbecue. They have been a wonderful catalyst for the promenade area, really, in helping put Long Beach on the Kraft Brew industry map. And I know that their next business venture is going to energize the craft brew community here in Long Beach and beyond. So we're looking forward to that. With redevelopment gone, our options for incentivizing are reduced. However, I am interested in this growing industry beyond Beechwood, so I'll be curious to see what types of zoning or piece specific changes could support the nano breweries that wish to set up storefronts in urban downtowns like Long Beach, the vice mayor's mentioned Torrance and other communities that have actually been able to put themselves on the map and in very micro brewing ways. I'd be interested in knowing whether there are changes in our permitting that could assist medium sized breweries. Perhaps this might be more of a manufacturing question for the city manager and council to discuss down the road, but I certainly look forward to hearing back with that. I'm happy to second the motion. Mr. Johnson. Well, thank you, Mayor. I want to thank the vice mayor and my colleague, Councilwoman Lowenthal, for bringing this forward. I think it's a great idea. I think if we can encourage more small businesses and also help those who are here to thrive, we should be doing that. And as the vice mayor said, San Diego's already bought quite a bit of dollars, their regional economy with these establishments and also very large sales tax dollars. So with the look for supporting it and look forward to go some of these establishments in the future. Okay. Any public comment on this issue? So please come forward. Identify yourself. Good evening, Mr. Mayor. Members of the City Council. My name is Craig Hogan, president and. CEO of the downtown Long Beach Associates. And we strongly support. The the proposal. Presented by Vice Mayor Garcia and Councilmember Lowenthal and supported by Councilmember Johnson. As mentioned, we do. Have two of those three breweries in our downtown. We are seeing many more. Small craft. Breweries interested in our urban center, as well as the small craft beers being served in our independent locations in our downtown. And I would. Be happy to help. City staff. Further investigate best practices in other cities. I believe San Diego. Is San Diego's goal this year is to have 200 independent breweries, craft breweries in their city, and that's a goal that they're trying to reach at the end of 2014. So I'll be happy to help in any way we can. Thank you very. Much, Mr. Cogen. With your help, include actually tasting the product. Sure. I'll join you on that. Sure. You got it? Yeah. Any other public company? Hello. My name is Gabriel Gordon. I'm the owner of Beachwood Barbeque Brewing. I just wanted to come up and thank the vice mayor and council member Lowenthal for bringing this topic up. I would just ask that as you guys go through this process that you talk to the people who have. Kind of been through it and done that. I think Long Beach has, as far as our perspective is concerned, has been an amazing city to open up a brewery in. And it was a very conscious. Effort on our part. And while San. Diego is a little bit out of where I live, and so it was never an option. L.A. was. An option. And there. I guess, overzealous regulation of of the type of business that we. Were in was the absolute number one reason why we did not whatsoever even consider Los Angeles. And so Long Beach had really a great amount of regulation. It was fair. And and we had a just a really wonderful experience. And so anything that we can do to help, we'd be more than glad to and offer our support in any way. Thank you. Thank you. Hi. My name's Blackwell. I'm the head brewer at the Belmont Brewing Company and have been for the last 15 years. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, city council members, for bringing this item up. I love the city. Being the brewer at the Belmont Brewing Company is the greatest job in my life. It's a real job. You know, people sometimes think, oh, you're the brewer. What do you do? You go push a button and all the beer comes out and you get to sit around and drink all day. No, my day today started at 4 a.m.. Well, 330, my alarm went off, you know, and I rode my bike down Vista Boulevard. Thank you very much for Vista and for being a bike friendly city. I went to the Belmont Brewing Company. I brewed 200 gallons of beer today. After that, I went for a nice swim in the new pool. Thank you so much. It's beautiful. After that, I took the city bus to Beachwood Barbecue and I walked down the beautiful promenade. It's fabulous. It's fabulous. And these entrepreneurs that have put these businesses on that street should be thanked and the city should be thanked for fixing that promenade up to be so nice and so beautiful. I love the city, the Belmont Brewing Company. I don't know how many of you remember that was a blighted area. That was a blighted area before David Hanson bought that property and turned it into that nice place. And we got a nice little restaurant row there with Gypsy's Diner. And so I want to you I just want to encourage you to. Promote all business in the city, not just breweries, but promote all good, all business in the city and be open to entrepreneurs and tell your staff to please be forthcoming with information and helpful with new businesses that want to locate in the city. Breweries are great for our city. Just be careful not to overregulate them and be welcoming to them. Thank you very much for your time. Cheers. Thank you. Any further comment? Did you bring samples? Yeah. I wouldn't use it in, but use it in about an hour out there. Maybe they took it when they checked me on the way in. Yeah. Everyone in the city council. Thank thank you guys for taking up the subject today. I'd like to let you know, Mr. Mayor, I do sample quite often. I've come to you today. You need to introduce yourself. Oh, of course. My name is Thomas Ricardo. I'm the head brewer at Rock Bottom Brewery, just around the corner there. I'm new to the city. I've only been here for about a year and a half now, but I've seen good things in the city. And I actually came from San Diego, which is why I wanted to come today and talk to you a little bit about this and recommend approving this as a movement. Essentially, crack beer is a great foundation for businesses of all types. The most unique business I've heard recently coming out of San Diego was a Revolutionary War museum that serves exclusively craft beer and wants to become a craft beer destination. And I think that example is really important because it actually shows the foundation, the backbone that craft beer builds on businesses in San Diego. Almost anything is viable. If craft beer is your base, people will show up for it. People are getting excited about it and it's only growing. I'd also like to point out how well the LBA did with their first beer festival, the Promenade Beer Festival, that brought a lot of attention to downtown. They did a really great job and the promenade was shown off to, you know, hundreds of people because of that. Yeah. And that's that's pretty much it. La la is a very untapped resource. And Long Beach is sort of the shining light outside of Torrance right now for that. So we'd like to continue that support and we thank you for what you've done so far. Thank you. Go, Giants Vice Mayor Garcia. Thank you. Well, first, I want to thank I want to thank all of you for coming out. And you're I mean, you guys are the pioneers of this movement in Long Beach. I think it's it's good to know, you know, what's happened in San Diego and and a few other places. And right now, San Diego is certainly becoming like the Napa of of of the whole craft beer movement. And people literally are going out and spending time there just to visit these different breweries and spending lots of dollars throughout this throughout the county of San Diego. And it's been happened also incredibly fast, at least the last you know, the last growth has been incredibly fast. So I think Long Beach with with our weather and our location and the three great breweries that we have already in place is a great foundation for this type of of industry. So I just think, you know, thank all of you for the work you do. These are also these these places provide good jobs. These are really good jobs that are careers and look forward to getting back the report and how we can facilitate more of this. My members have motion in the second cast your votes on item seven. Motion carries nine votes. Thank you. I to make clear.