Recommendation to receive and file the Houghton Park Conceptual Plan and consider Categorical Exemption CE 15-155.  (District 9)
Report from Parks, Recreation and Marine Recommendation to receive and file the Howden Park Conceptual Plan District nine. Transformative stuff. Thank you, Mayor. Council members, we have a report by Parks Rec, Marine Director Steven Scott and project manager Meredith Reynolds. Honorable Mayor and members of the City Council. The item before. You tonight is to. Provide a brief report on the Highland Park Conceptual. Plan. This conceptual plan was borne out of the planning process for the Highland Park Community Center, which began a little over a year ago in September of 2014. During the community center planning. Process, feedback was. Received from the community that extended beyond the walls of the proposed community center, illuminating the community's desire to plan for the park. The future of the park as a whole. In response. To that input in June of this year, the Department kicked off this planning. Process for the Highland Park Conceptual Plan. I'm now going to turn over the presentation to Meredith Reynolds. Our park development. Officer will provide a. Brief summary of the community. Outreach process and an overview. Of the elements of the Highland Park conceptual plan. Good evening, Mayor. Members. City Council. The purpose of this planning process was to create a comprehensive conceptual plan inclusive of Howden Park in its entirety, which is a 31 acre site located between Atlantic Avenue, East Harding Street, Myrtle Avenue and Jordan High School. The outcome of this process was a conceptual plan that outlined desired park amenities that are to help guide future investment in the park. This is the first of many steps toward rehabilitation of the park amenities. And to understand the how and park site, we first started with a review of. The different aspects of the park. This included site access and transportation routes, utilities on site and off site, amenities and opportunities and constraints. Following an evaluation of existing site conditions at Halton Park. The first of two community workshops was held on. June 27, 2015 at the Halton Park. Community Center. Over 30 participants attended the first Interactive Community Workshop, which included a presentation of background and site information, a site awareness walking tour where participants recorded. Their site observations at each tour stop in a. Workbook format. Individual and group discussions of tour findings such as issues and opportunities. Safety, security, parking and activation. And a group design charrette to graphically. Express ideas on site. Maps. Individual participant feedback was presented to the larger group, and a group design charrette commenced to graphically express consensus for elements of the proposed conceptual plan. The information received at the first workshop was then evaluated and summarized and presented in a draft conceptual plan at the second Community Workshop held on August 29th, 2015, at the Howden Park Community Center. Many of the attendees from the first workshop also participated in the second. Participants were able to confirm that the project team and accurately reflected the information provided at the first workshop. The general consensus from participants was that the draft conceptual plan reflected the desires of the community expressed through the process. Extensive community outreach was performed for both community workshops, including fliers, social media, online presence. And also activating networks of. Community groups to share information as well as the Imagine Outcome website. The conceptual plan shown here is a result of a community process that arrived at a consensus around the elements listed on the screen in front of you is intended that future rehabilitation projects will be implemented as funding is identified. This concludes my presentation and myself and Steven Scott. Are available for questions. Thank you. Thank you. I turn this over to Councilman Richardson. Thank you, Mayor Garcia. So thank you and Meredith for the presentation and for leading this process. We've come a long way to get here to be able to consider this conceptual plan tonight. So since the 1930s, Highland Park has stood as a central meeting location in the heart of the North Long Beach community. And I just think it's fitting. We've talked about the Queen Mary. We've talked about a lot of things tonight. Well, now we're talking about Highland Park, which is sort of the the heart of heart of North Long Beach, in my opinion. So this heavy, heavily used park is a common fixture, serving as a meeting place center for activities, a safe route for students walking home from Jordan High on the park's north end. Each year, more than 15,000 youth and teens participate in afterschool and fun day programing to fund April programing. This is the first time since the park's been part since the park was developed nearly a century ago that a comprehensive conceptual planning process has taken place to create a cohesive sense of sense of place and a source of pride in the community of North Long Beach. The conceptual planning process balanced, preserving the green space and the history of the history important to the community with rehabilitation needs of existing amenities, with new amenities needed to serve the population who use the park. The result of this conceptual planning process ensures Highland Park is well positioned for improvements when funding and grant opportunities arise. Our community is excited to begin to begin implementing aspects of this of this plan. I'll just list out a few great things about this plan. There's new parking areas, entry monument signs, a new electronic reader board, fitness stations, hydration state stations, seating areas, a community garden, outdoor basketball courts, additional soccer, upgraded soccer fields, improved picnic shelters, improvements to our baseball diamond preservations of our trees and our green space, additional lighting and user focused bike paths. So by the end of the year, we'll see the installation of our fitness plan and our hydration stations, which are both paid for by District nine one time funds. And the North Long Beach Heal Zone, Kaiser Permanente funded initiative in the ninth District. So I want so I'll just take this moment to just invite folks to join us as we launch this plan while we cut the ribbon on the fitness zone one week from today, December 24th and 9 a.m. at Horton Park, 63 on Myrtle Avenue. So that said, excuse me, November. So that said, I make I move to receive and file the Highland Park conceptual plan and consider a categorical exemption. S.E. 15. Dash 155. Thank you. Councilman Austin. Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I want to take this opportunity to congratulate Councilmember Richardson, the many residents who took part in the planning of this process. I know I took I was a privilege to be early, be at some of the early meetings and see some of the conceptual ideas come come to fruition in this plan . We don't get funding without vision and without having a plan. And so it's great to have a master plan for Highland Park. It is a North Lawn Beach resource. It's the only regional park, I believe, in the north part of our city. We spent the last couple of weeks talking about the need for green space, active green space. I think this is certainly in line with that vision and we'll continue to work together to make this this this plan come to fruition, hopefully sooner than later. Thanks. Councilman Tauranga. Thank you. The buildings that are there, I know that they house some some programs there. I know that the health department has a family preservation project. And within those buildings, there was also some services provided through the work program there. Healthy Babies, I think was also fun that was working out of there. Is your plan to upgrade the the internal offices in those buildings? Honorable Mayor, members of the City Council. The facilities that you're speaking of are were not included as part of the conceptual plan. This was more for. The park specific. Activities. That being the amenities. Related to recreational programing. Such as soccer field, baseball fields. But that facility was not included in the plan. Perhaps, Councilmember Richardson, or perhaps you might want to add sometime in the future, look at some upgrades for some of those buildings, because I've been in those offices and they could definitely use some some upgrades. The ninth District field office is in there for many, many years. In that building, we're very familiar with it. It just received some improvements, some paint jobs and things like that. The focus here was about optimizing the park and we'll continue those conversations. Thank you. Councilman Andrews. Yes. Thank you, Mayor. I just want to, first of all, congratulate Councilman Richardson. You know, I just see what you guys are doing is just wonderful, especially out there, you know, in the ninth District, you know, I was there in the parade and get a chance just to watch some of the improvements that you have taken to make your nightstick, you know, just look great. And I just want to commend you on that hard work and also for Parks and Rec for getting behind this project here. Congratulations. Thank you. Public comment, please, on the item. And Cantrell and I. I see they've taken the picture off. I had some questions about what is being done with the soccer field. I see it mentioned that there was going to be a. Rehabilitation of it. Is that how upgraded? And I'm wondering how this is going to be upgraded. Most of our soccer, all of our soccer fields that I'm aware of in the parks have just been. Any place. There's not trees, there's open space, and they've used the grass that's there. And we found out that that really doesn't work with soccer fields. Like the baseball fields, they have to be installed. With a sand. Layered for drainage and because of gophers, there should be galvanized wire put down to keep the gophers out. And then a special kind of turf that will keep that will last with a lot of play. And there is natural grass turf that stands up to play. And I'm hoping that when you. Doing this, redoing this soccer field at Helton that you will consider putting in a soccer field that's going to serve the children that are playing on it. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Thank you, Mayor Garcia and. Our council members, for taking the time. To listen to us talk about this great program. I want to give a shout out to Rex besides just being just a great idea. And much needed in our district. Since we're the densest sixth district and probably the district with the least amount of green space per resident. This upgrade is long overdue and it's really exciting to see. But most importantly, I think that's the process that Rex and Shauna and the ninth District staff has been has presented to us to include the district members and the residents. To come in to be a part of it is probably the most exciting thing of all. I mean, we're talking about civically engaging people who have either dropped out and didn't think no one ever cared about them or giving them a chance to learn how the civic process processes. It's been fabulous. It's been really exciting to have architects, big name architects with big contracts come in and listen to you and implement small ideas into big plans. So I'm really happy about the process that has taken on. I'm so glad that you guys are paying some. Attention to North Long Beach because we love it. And we're actually starting to feel like you like us. So thank you so much. Thank you, Speaker, please. Good evening. Honorable there. Council members and staff. My name is Dan Pressburger. I'm the president of the De Force Neighborhood Association. I'm just speaking to the issue. This is a great time for us. It's a lot of excitement for us. Happy to have this happen. Thank you, Rex. Thank you, Al. And I don't think there's needs to be much more said. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening to Mayor Garcia and the council members, especially Councilman Richardson in Austin, helped in part play a major role in providing open space and meeting. And meeting the recreation needs in North Long Beach. The facilities are used by many groups. Including seniors. Our youth and uplifting youth and teen programs. Many different community groups. The park also served as the location for most of the cultural and civic events held in the ninth District. And. This plan was developed, this plan. Many of the citizens in Long Beach spent time in developing this plan. This is we really look forward to the improvement because the park as I say, the park is very well used and we look forward to it. Thank you. My name is Otis Hogan and I am I am the chairman of the co-chair of the Highland Park Neighborhood Association and a member of the Human Relations Commission. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Howdy. Hey, I'm going to keep this very brief. First of all, I want to compliment everybody here for this. This park. I mean, it's been long overdue. Fantastic ideas. All these concepts in place is fantastic. The way this thing looks like it's. Uh, working out just great. Um, the question that I have is same as what end control we're saying is that there's a concern over the soccer fields, and we're trying to have we're having some trouble. I'm from District five, not from District nine. One of the problems that we're having is we don't know what documents were driving the artificial turf versus grass. It seems like there's a controversy, but there's not a controversy. And so this is kind of what I am going to ask for, is that are we going to have artificial is the plan to have artificial fields over there or is it grass? And what is driving document that that that will be pushing that or will that be something to be decided at a later time? We're having a lot of trouble struggling with this, with this at least a lot of the residents in different districts at this time. And it looks like there's also a big struggle among the city of some sort to to decide that this and we are also having apparently last week there was a problem with an issue where there were a. A developer was saying that the city was telling him that that they needed to have artificial turf, at least build artificial turf. And I'm just kind of wondering where this is coming from. The memo that I saw that was created by the Parks and Recreation before Steve Scott was there by a guy named George, actually was dated, I think, June 15th of this year. And it recommended artificial turf of the, you know, more expensive. I think it was the chrome, not chrome, but it was like a coconut filled thing. And then we know, even though it hasn't been put on the table, there was a chrome rubber, you know, thing. And then I mean, there's been a lot of things going on. But the basic rationale for the. Using artificial turf was. That it was a water issue. And then we have Ms.. Mungo here saying that, oh, water is not an issue. So we have the city in conflict. And I'm just kind of wondering, where are we at in that point now? What do we what do we work? And if somebody could help enlighten me, I'd appreciate that. That's all I have. Thank you, sir. See no other public comment on the Hutton Park masterplan here. Members, please go and cast your vote. There is a motion and a second. Motion carries. Great. Congratulations to the community. And now we have to fund it. And so now that's the next big challenge. And and we're all actively working on that as well. And so we know that's a big deal to the community. So thank you. Next item. Report from police recommendation to receive and file the application of Aroma de Roma Centro for an original application of an ABC license at 444 West Ocean Boulevard, Suite 110 District two.