Recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record, conclude the public hearing, adopt resolution finding the project to be consistent with the Downtown Plan Programmatic Environmental Impact Report and subject to the Downtown Plan Mitigation Monitoring and Reporting Program and denying the appeal from Warren Blesofsky representing Long Beach Citizens for Fair Development; and Uphold the Planning Commission’s decision to approve a Site Plan Review for the construction of a seven-story, 142-unit mixed use residential development at 500 West Broadway in the Downtown Planned Development District (PD-30). (District 2)
You don't want to be. Do you want to do what. We're going to hearing at number one? Okay. Report from Development Services recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record, conclude the public hearing, adopt resolution finding the project to be consistent with the downtown plan, programmatic environmental impact report and subject to the Downtown Plan Mitigation Monitoring and Reporting Program and denying the appeal from warn blue soft ski representing the Long Beach Citizens for Fair Development and uphold the Planning Commission's decision to approve a site plan review for the construction of a seven story 142 unit mixed use residential development at 500 West Broadway and the Downtown Plan Development District District two. Okay, thank you for that. We're going to go ahead and get into this hearing. So just just to go over the order of the hearing, I'm going to first introduce our staff to go over the staff presentation. Then after that, we will have the applicant can make comments for up to 10 minutes. You don't have to use the full 10 minutes, but you'll be able to make comments. And then the appellant there is one appellant and the appellant will also have 10 minutes to make comments. You don't have to use the full 10 minutes, but you're welcome to as well. And then after the appellant goes through the 10 minutes, the applicant gets 3 minutes if they want to do a rebuttal. But again, you don't have to take those 3 minutes and then we'll of course, have the deliberation and public comments and will conclude the hearing. And so with that, let me go ahead and turn this over to staff for the presentation. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Before we get started, if the clerk could administer the oath on this one. Is there anybody in the audience? Could you please stand? Please raise your right hand. You and each of you solemnly state that the testimony you may give in the cause now and pending before this body shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So help you God. Okay. Excellent. I'm going to go ahead and turn this now over to Mr. Modica, who will do the report. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. The staff presentation on this will be provided by Christopher Koonce, our advance planning officer and the Department of Development Services. Good evening, city council members. We are here regarding 500 West Broadway. That's and Council District two. To orient you on the screen, you have a diagram and if you made it to this building, you actually know where this site is as well. It's across from the Deukmejian courthouse. It's the empty parking lot there. The importance of this diagram is to show that the location of this development is in proximity to bikeshare to multiple bike routes, including the segregated bike route on Broadway. It's walking distance to the Metro Blue Line and walking distance to a large amount of employment base here in downtown Long Beach. Here's a aerial photograph of the location we're talking about at Broadway and Magnolia. Again, within our downtown area covered by the downtown plan PD 30. This is just a look at the adjacent properties. And you see there in the center the prominent building, which is the courthouse across the street. So this project is a seven story project. It is an NFL project and currently vacant parking area. It will rise seven stories to add 142 residential units, 191 parking spaces more than is required. It's 84 feet tall from its highest point from the lowest point there on Magnolia. It includes amenities for residents, including pool, spa, fitness, center, deck areas, balconies and community room. But also important, it provides a number of public amenities, including the ground floor, cafe seating area enhancements to the street, as well as visual improvement to the site. This gives you a site plan. So to the north is the section facing Broadway, and that's where you have your active users to promote an active downtown street life. So you have your cafe and retail, your lobby and entrance and leasing area for the future residents, as well as what's called a bike cafe, which the idea there is that we're really promoting biking for residents and visitors and that's not just a place to park your bike, but that's a place where you can also do any appropriate repairs and servicing to your bike that you may need to do. Vehicle access is from Magnolia. As we talked about, there's 191 parking stalls, which is more than is required in a three level garage. Pedestrian access from Broadway there there's landscaping along the sidewalk, which will be installed as a part of this project that does not exist today. So I know we're here this evening due to an appeal, but from the staff table point of view here, this is the exactly the type of project we like to see in our city and that we encourage as your planning staff. It was supported enthusiastically by the Planning Commission. It provides new housing units in close proximity to transit, biking, walking and sources of employment. It's a major investment and expansion in downtown, consistent with the city's housing policy and consistent with exactly what we told the development community and the community at large that we expected with the downtown plan . It was heard by the Planning Commission on May 4th. They voted unanimously to approve it. They did include environmental documentation at that time. Upon receiving the appeal from Mr. Polaski, staff did conduct further environmental analysis which simply confirmed our previous conclusions that the project does not result in any environmental harm and is consistent with the program environmental document that was prepared when the downtown plan was adopted just over five years ago. So as we talked about when PD 30 was adopted back in 2012, there was a program, environmental document, which means we actually went to the expense and complication of analyzing what the environmental impacts of not just one project, but the entire buildout of downtown over time would be. That's what the secret guidelines and the state law advises you to do. You're then advised to not do redundant review so you don't start over again when that project that you previously anticipated comes forward, as happened in that case. In this case. And for that reason the environmental review tiered off of our utilize the PD 30 IIR. There is no significant impacts that were not previously identified. The project is actually smaller than what's allowed in this section of PD 30 where someone could do it two 140 foot building. But as I mentioned, this is an 80 foot range and is a important contributor to that site. So that is staff's brief presentation. We're available to answer any questions, and thank you for your consideration. Thank you. So for this hearing, we are going to allocate 10 minutes to the applicant for applicant comments and then we'll have another 10 minutes for appellant comments and then we'll allow another three or 5 minutes for a rebuttal from the applicant. So is the applicant present? All right, come on forward and you have 10 minutes. Take us away. Hi, I'm Tyson. Sales here from Ensemble Investments on behalf of the applicant, and I'd like to thank staff for their hard work. And prep and. Presentation and preparation for this hearing tonight and city. Council. For their consideration. And we're here. To answer any. Questions. And we have our team and experts here if there are any technical questions that council members would like to ask. But we believe that the written record can speak for itself and we agree with staff's presentation. So I'll hold my comments and interest everyone's time. Thank you. So you want to. So you're deferring your time or you're done. You're good. Okay. Thank you. How about the appellant? Please come forward and you have 2 minutes. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Vice Mayor. Thank you, City Council. I'd like to reserve 3 minutes of my time. It's only fair that if there's a rebuttal that I would get to respond to the rebuttal. Up to the city attorney. So. Mr. Vice Mayor, generally we don't allow someone in this. Particular position to reserve. Their time. The reason the applicant gets a rebuttal is the applicant actually has the burden of proof here to establish under city council that this project merits going forward. And that's why they get the last word. Understood. Mr. Vice Mayor, that's not how Mayor Garcia has previously run these. I'm going to always let there be a rebuttal time. Well, thank you. Considering that the applicant. You only spoke for about 2 minutes, I think this is fair. So I'm going to just defer to the city attorney's advice. So you have 2 minutes and we'll start your 10 minutes with you. Thank you. Warmed Lisowski. Long Beach Citizens for Fair Development. The reason that we are bringing this appeal is under California Environmental Quality Act. And I understand that staff has instructed that there is a downtown plan, also known as a programmatic air. But there are many exceptions to a programmatic air. And staff was referring to the tearing of square tearing can be used and is being used in the situation. But when there are certain substantial, even mitigated effects that does not allow further environmental review to be completely avoided. So this project sits directly across the street from the George to Deukmejian courthouse, which is 63 feet tall, and this proposed project is 84 feet tall. So it's a full two stories higher than the courthouse, and it also sits to the south of the courthouse. And I don't know if you've been in the courthouse in the main lobby, but there's a great amount of light that comes in. It's a vast improvement over the original courthouse, and this building is going to tower over it. When you look at all of the renderings that staff has created and that the developer have created, none of those renderings show the courthouse and the development in relation to each other. So really what you're going to have is this seven story building really kind of dwarfing that beautiful new courthouse that we have. Another issue is they're proposing to only use the existing curb cut. There's only one curb cut on Magnolia Street and Broadway, Ocean. And seventh and seventh are the six are the only major entryways from the 710 Freeway into downtown Long Beach. And so, you know, this downtown plan, this council envisions this beautiful pedestrian interaction between the courthouse, the Civic Center and these other downtown Long Beach areas. This is going to this should be a major vital pedestrian intersection. Putting a seven story building there is going to significantly reduce the visibility for both pedestrians and vehicular traffic and the parking these these right turn only parking strategies. We all know when we leave parking lots in downtown, there might be a sign that says Don't turn right, but most people turn the way that's more convenient for them due to the one way nature of the. Of the. Of most of the streets in downtown. I apologize for boring the city council, so I'll try to try to make it interesting and short here. So the downtown plan was the programmatic air was adopted and in the draft air it stated that further environmental review might be necessary to examine whether there are project specific significant effects which are peculiar to the project or its site. Our position is that this is a peculiar project site being on this intersection right near the new civic center, right across the street from Deukmejian courthouse, as well as the major entryway that Broadway is from the freeway. This creates a situation in which this is a unique or peculiar project site. Also the program E.R. promised that further environmental review would be done and that this planning, the planning commission, as well as this body, continue to approve projects inappropriately using negative declarations or exemptions from seek that are not appropriate. So. Here's some of the. Some of the unique things about this site are the esthetics. I've already spoken about the courthouse being an award winning, glass walled building. That's part of the pride of our Superior Court district here in Long Beach. I've also talked about the traffic, about the ingress egress on Magnolia, and that the Broadway corridor is a vital part of vehicular entry to Long Beach from the 710 Freeway. The population and housing? Yes. The downtown plan calls for high density housing, but every week we read about pedestrian deaths in our city. And you can only imagine that these pedestrian deaths are caused by gridlock and driver frustration. We've all driven down Seventh Street before. We've all driven down Broadway. These are narrow streets. If there's a bus in front of you and there's pedestrian stops, many cars lurch out and these lead to pedestrian deaths. We've all driven down Pine Avenue before, and I've been told by parking staff that they are specifically instructed not to ticket commercial vehicles. So tell me about the intersection of Broadway and Pine. Where you've got an unsafe, an uncontrolled pedestrian crossing and you've got multiple commercial trucks parked in the middle of the street. And it's just one of these days before a child or a pedestrian gets into an accident and gets hit by a car that they can't see around. So these overly dense parking, these these are the reasons that this project deserves an environmental review. The environmental documentation that the city and the developer have chosen to use is an exemption. It's not even an initial study. There's no negative declaration. There's no mitigation. It's just simply an exemption. And the Class 32 exemption that's being used in this case. States that if there's a reasonable possibility that there's a significant effect on the environment due to unusual circumstances, then the categorical exemption cannot apply. So once again, we find that staff and developers work together to back in to these environmental reviews. And when I say back in, I mean I get the result that you want, which is we don't need an air. And then let's figure out how to make every single line of our report match so that there's no environmental review needed. So we've got the unusual circumstances. I'm going to use my last 3 minutes since Mr. Vice Mayor said I can't use it later. Let's talk about guest parking. The downtown specific plan changed the parking ratio for from one per unit plus to a quarter of a space. For guest parking. I don't know if anyone on the council and Mr. Vice Mayor have used any of those combined guests and commercial parking. But they fill up quickly. They fill up fast. And there's nothing there's nothing that keeps long term guests from occupying those spaces that are supposed to be commercial. I don't know if you've ever been to Pet and Pooch, I believe it's called or the Stav bar on the promenade and you try to pull into the alley there. There's only one egress, ingress, egress on a small alley. The name escapes me. Liberty Court, possibly. And. And very often all those guest spaces, those commercial spaces are taken by long term guests or residents of those buildings. So we do not feel that these dual use guest and commercial use spaces are appropriate. If you're going to have commercial on the first floor, then you should have the appropriate number of spaces for commercial as well as for the guest spaces. Those should be unique parking spaces for each of those two groups, not overlapping as they now are being approved very often both commercial as well as. So. So once again, what we're asking for and we will continue to ask for is that when there's a programmatic E.R. that's been passed, that this body and the planning commission insist that the developers follow the California Environmental Act, the reason that environmental reviews there or is to create a period in which citizen citizen input can be made. The problem with using these negative declarations or exemptions is that there's we're only limited to 3 minutes of public input when there's an E.R. The law gives many opportunities for the public to interject. And so by using this inappropriate exemption, you're depriving the residents, the citizens of Long Beach protection under the Environmental Quality Act. Thank you for your time with the applicant. Like the rebuttal. Good evening, Damon. Mama like us from Armbrister, Goldsmith and Dell back on behalf of the applicant. Just like to so. Just a moment. Let's set the clock to 3 minutes and if you need an additional two, well, we can go up to five, so 3 minutes. I'll make it short. I'll try to keep it within the three. Thank you. I'm just a couple of points to address that the appellant has raised and I'm sure staff will address them as well. First off, upon further review of the appellant's appeal, staff determined that we no longer needed to pursue a categorical exemption under sequel, but rather as allowed for under the school guidelines. We were able to do environmental analysis under the programmatic air for the downtown plan. And despite appellants claims, additional environmental analysis was done specific to Sequoia. That went. Through all of the issues. That are raised, all 18 impact issues that are raised under Sequoia to determine whether or not there was something. Unique or peculiar to. This project. And the record contained ample evidence of that, not only including environmental analysis by our Sequoia expert, but also technical experts as well. There's a shade and shadow study, for example, that looked at the courthouse and the near sensitive receptors and determined that there would in fact be no shade shadow impacts. As to traffic. And ingress egress. That was also subject to a very thorough traffic study. And again, no impacts were determined. Nothing unusual, even if we were to be under a categorical exemption, was there. And there's nothing peculiar about this quickly under population and housing, as was already represented by staff, this project is smaller than what is contemplated under the downtown plan and is fully sufficient with it. And finally, even if one were to look at the categorical exemption and determine whether or not there were unusual circumstances, it's not enough to show that it's appellant's opinion. There's something unusual here. Rather, the test is unusual circumstances leading to a reasonable possibility of a significant impact. And as I mentioned, the record contains a full environmental analysis that shows, in fact, there is no reasonable possibility of significant impact. Thank you. Thank you for your time. So that concludes the hearing. So at this point, we're going to open it up to public comment. Is there any public comment on this hearing? Number one. Thank you. Please come forward. State Stage Name. Mr. Mayor. Mr. Vice Mayor. Members of the City Council coaching with the. Downtown Long Beach Alliance. On behalf of our board. I just want to let you know that we do support this item supporting said city staff's. Recommendation. We have submitted a letter into the public record and this is consistent with PD 30, as mentioned by staff and certainly in alignment. With our strategic plan. So we look forward to your support and your consideration for this project. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Laurie Angell 458 He's quite straight. I think what's missing here probably is a fair evaluation of a plan as it's maybe morphed or changed over time, and to give the individuals that may have changed over time because the planning process can take decades. And so you have individuals that find themselves all of a sudden in a development that they had no input on. And they're astounded by the magnitude of the of the development that's going to occur. And they're not given any opportunity to weigh in. So in terms of fairness for the individuals that actually live there, it really isn't a very considerate process. And I think it's important that people that have moved into neighborhoods have an opportunity to weigh in on projects that are going to impact them, possibly for the rest of their lives. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Very good. On the very face of it. Trying to avoid an environmental impact report, lengthy as they may be. Strange the olfactory senses giving. If you have if you have nothing to hide, let that forward. Let that go forward. Period. The only reason you'd want to curtail it is because you have something you want to hide. And that does not speak well for anybody that would support that. Their brain is not on fire here. Another evening of notifying the public that this is going to happen. If you want this in your neighborhood, let us hear what you have to say. And I know a lot of people that understand this, the sequels far better than I do. It would probably be shocked at what you're doing. Thank you. Thank you. You got it, Mayor. Okay. Any further comment saying on the public comment is close. We'll take it back behind the rail. Councilmember Pearce. Yes. I want to thank staff again for their time on this. I want to thank the developer for not just putting in a proposal for development that met the standards, but you went above and beyond with parking, with environmental concerns. You guys have been a partner that have really tried to step it up and say, this is what a top notch housing development can look like in our city. And so I appreciate that as somebody who was involved in the downtown plan, as an outside community member, I had my own concerns and my own opinions at the time and understanding what the downtown plan goal is. This development meets that goal, and we've had a process at the Planning Commission for people to come and be engaged, and we have a process tonight. And so the fact that we have a few people tonight, you know, it tells me that this is something that community members except I only have one question for our city attorney's staff. I. What is your take on this appeal today? Are we in line with the law? Councilwoman Pierce. Yes. Fantastic. I urge my colleagues to support my supporting of this development. Thank you. Thank you. With what counsel in place like to speak to this. One question for our development services staff, you've had a chance to hear the Opposition to your recommendation. Is there anything that you heard in the course of that presentation that changes your opinion regarding the recommendation on this particular item? No Councilmember Price based on the factual record and the entirety of the analysis that was completed, including the environmental analysis, we're very comfortable with the recommendation and nothing we heard tonight would change that. Thank you very much. Thank you. And I'll just add, you know, there's a number of developments across this city. But, you know, Tyson, your teams have been very forth coming and educating the city council, being very public about it. So I'm really excited about this project. And it was interesting to hear the discussion tonight. Allow me to better understand the process and what the intent of the downtown plan was and to see it realized. So thank you so much, Mayor Garcia. Okay. Just to close, I just want to, of course, congratulate the team that put this project together. This is a will be a huge part of filling in the downtown with quality projects, residential projects. I think the architecture and the look of the project is a quality development is going to be, I think, a great complement to the other projects that are happening in and around the courthouse, including the Civic Center, of course, which is just going to be catty corner and just right down the street from from this project. So I just I want to just thank you guys for investing in this project, but also the other projects that you guys are partnering with across across the community. So I'm very I'm very excited about this this parcel being being developed, and thank you for your interest in it and look forward to a successful project ahead. Thank you, Cam Tyson, the whole team. Members, please go and cast your vote. Motion carries. Okay. Thank you. And we're going to go on to the next hearing.