Recommendation to adopt Specifications No. RFP EP16-004 for the purchase and development opportunity at Broadway and Long Beach Boulevard (125-133 North Long Beach Boulevard and 234-248 East Broadway), Assessor Parcel Numbers 7280-025-903, -917, -922, -923 (Subject Property); Declare the City-owned Subject Property as surplus; Authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute any and all necessary documents including a Purchase and Sale Agreement with Raintree-Evergreen, LLC, a Delaware limited liability company, for the sale of the Subject Property in the amount of $7,300,000; and Accept Categorical Exemption CE 16-148. (District 2)
Came Item 18. Clark, if you could please read the item. Report from Economic and Property Development and Development Services Recommendation to adopt specifications for the Purchase and Development Opportunity at Broadway and Long Beach Boulevard. Declare the property a surplus and authorize the city manager to execute all necessary documents with Raintree Evergreen for the sale of the property in the amount of 7.3 million District two. Thank you. Members I've moved to approve the item are actually seconded to approve the item. Councilman Gonzalez. Oh. Okay. I appreciate that. So let's do that again. Okay. There we go. It's been moved and seconded. Is there any member of the public that wish to address the Council on item 18? And before I take that, I'm sorry, let me ask for a staff report really briefly. Would you just take a seat in the front and then I'll call you back up? Vice Mayor Council Members. As mandated by the State of California, we continue to work to dispose of our former redevelopment agency properties through our successor agency. We have one of the final projects in the pipeline is going to be for you tonight in the downtown. And our economic development and property services manager Mike Conry will walk us through it. Vice Mayor Lowenthal, members of the City Council, the property located at the southwest corner of Broadway and Long Beach Boulevard, is a vacant lot, containing 44,249 square feet and is being temporarily used as a parking lot. The property is former redevelopment property and is categorized as future development of the city's long range property management plan that was approved by the state in March of 2015. Future development properties are disposed through a request for proposals process with a selection based on best value to the city rather than the highest purchase price. An RFP was issued and four proposals were received. A selection panel consisting of representatives from the Departments of Development, Services and Economic and Property Development and the city's real estate and economics consultant Kaiser Master reviewed the four proposals. While all proposals provided excellent opportunity for the city, the panel unanimously selected Raintree Evergreen as its preferred proposer to recommend to City Council. Raintree proposes to develop modern luxury apartments with co-working, flexible space, retail space and an outdoor public plaza, creating a high degree of activity on the street level and providing residents with a place to live, workshop and connect. The proposal offered the highest price for the property and the highest estimated development cost and the highest density. Raintree has also agreed to provide ten parking spaces for exclusive use by the adjoining psychic temple. On May 24th, City Council authorize the sale of property located at Broadway in the Promenade to Raintree Evergreen for a similar high density mixed use development. If City Council approves this item tonight, this would be the second property to be developed by Raintree in the downtown. Raintree submitted proposals for both Broadway properties and the Promenade and at Long Beach Boulevard. And their concept was to offer a cohesive and synergistic project, creating a dual campus like setting conducive to the downtown. Staff believes that this co-branding approach has merit and the proposed development offers the best value to the city. Purchase and Sale Agreement has been prepared with certain entitlement and development performance milestones that are detailed in the staff report. It is anticipated that entitlement required 12 months with the close of escrow, not later than 18 months, and construction is anticipated to take up to 24 months to complete. As these timelines are, estimates staff request some flexibility for unanticipated delays. It is also important to state for the record, that council's action this evening is for the sale of property and does not approve a development on the site and without staff requests that City Council adopt specifications number of Pep 16 Dash 004 for the purchase and development of property located at the southwest corner of Broadway and Long Beach Boulevard. Authorize City Manager to execute all documents necessary for sale of the property in the amount of 7.3 million except categorical exemption. S.E. 16 DASH 148 And this concludes my report. That was a fast report, Mr. Conway. You get faster and faster. So I know we have a couple of speakers and would you like to come forward? High Long Beach transportation and parking solution, which is also called Tips objects to this project on the basis that the city has failed to conduct any environmental review for the project under secret. The city claims that the project is exempt from secret because it has a Class 12 exemption for the project which pertains to the sale of the surplus property. However, the project is not so narrowly defined. The staff report prepared. The city prepared by the city specifically states that the project includes the development of modern luxury apartments work, work, flexible space, electric vehicle charging station space and electric vehicle charging stations and retail space. The project is not simply the sale of surplus property and therefore the Class 12 exemption does not apply. The city must conduct a secure review at the earliest possible opportunity and deferring seek review until after the purchase and sale agreement has been approved would amount to piece mealing which is prohibited under section. Further, even if the 12th class 12th exemption were applicable, there are unusual circumstances here that render it unavailable. Namely, the project is not simply the sale of surplus property, but the proposal to build a large, multi-purpose building as described in the separate staff report. This is not a simple real estate transaction, which is what the Class 12 exemption was designed for. There are numerous environment issues that must be considered. TAPS is particularly concerned that the environmental impacts that derive from loss of parking, from the loss of public parking due to the creation of new density with inadequate parking. As you know, downtown Long Beach is already severely impaired. With parking impaired, and this will exacerbate the problem by resulting in traffic and air pollution. We urge you to conduct a square review now and reject the proposed purchase and sale agreement. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Would you state your name? I don't think I. Sorry. I'm Debbie Tobias. Wonderful. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Warren Lisowski. Oh, excuse me, second district resident. Just to follow up on what the previous speaker was saying, maybe to break it down a little more simple terms. We all know the council is not going to respond to any type of public input or commentary. We can pretty much predict this will be a eight to nothing unanimous vote per the staff's recommendation. That's pretty typical around here. But what the. Previous speaker was saying was that city of Long Beach and their staff reports there's a law called Secure. It's a California Environmental Quality Act. And what the city has been doing as they've been disposing of these former redevelopment agencies properties is using what's called categorical exemptions. Now, if you go ahead and look at Sequoia's website and do any research on the law, you'll find out that each of the exemptions has exemptions to them. And so the city is using their staff reports, signing one page exemptions and pushing them through to sell these properties. There's some problems with the way they're doing it. Just to follow up on what Debbie was saying about the project, it's interesting how Mike Conway will say that we are only approving the sale of the property, not the project being developed on it. Well, sir, if you're not if you're not approving the project, why is there pictures of the project in the sale contract? I mean, it's pretty obvious that you guys have already approved this or are going to approve this high density project near the promenade. The same developer has another high density project on the promenade, and whether it's parking or quality of life, by designating these properties surplus, the council would like to use the Class 12 exemption. And so we were long wondered why the council was using designating these properties as. As surplus property. And now the answer is because they want to use the the Class 12 exemption. As W was saying, there's problems with the Class 12 exemption and there are also exemptions to the exemptions. So we're going to go ahead and file a lawsuit against this property as well. And when you go ahead and post the sequel exemption category exemption tomorrow, we can go ahead down to the recorder's office, take a picture of it, and we'll be filing another lawsuit against this development as well. The way that the city of Long Beach is disposing of the RDA properties is unfair to both the taxpayers. It's a noncompetitive bidding system. Just saying that you've got 3200 people looked at the RFP and four bids were put in on it. There's something wrong with the way the city of Long Beach is selling these properties and you've you'd like to quickly just kind of brush them under the rug with one page categorical exemptions. But we're going to bring a little light to this and we're going to use the power of the courts to do so. So I'm sure you guys don't have any questions or don't want to address this now and go ahead and enjoy your vote and we'll just settle in court. Thanks so much. So, Mr. Conway, I'll ask you a few questions. But just to remind members of the audience that have followed this council for perhaps the last several years, nearly a decade, we spent about five, six, almost seven years on updating the downtown plan and in doing so conducted an ER as part of it. And so the density that is approved for the downtown might not have been what certainly it was ten years ago, but that is why the downtown plan was updated. All the projects that have come before us for the second District comport with what that plan provides, and that process involved a tremendous amount of community outreach and for those that were not able to participate or chose not to. It is unfortunate, but it is a disrespect to those individuals who spent countless hours with this city for several years participating in updating the downtown plan. And I value that and cherish that and thank them for their time. Therefore, I am very confident in the way that we are approaching our disposition of surplus funds. If we were to follow what the State had advised us to do when redevelopment was disbanded, we would be putting up all our properties for fire sale. So what would then happen is it would go to the highest bidder, not necessarily what is in the best interest of community development or what is in the best interest of an actual plan for an area. So I'm not only thankful for the process that we are approaching, but I am actually very proud of it. Mr. Conway, would you share with us about the er confusion that the members of the audience may have? I'd be happy to give that a try. Vice Mayor Again, what council is doing this evening is selecting a developer, essentially a purchaser of property. You're not approving a project. There are concepts by which the panel made a decision on whom to select to purchase the property. The concepts as presented in staff's estimate estimation is consistent with the downtown plan, but that is something that would be determined through the secret process once an actual development proposal is submitted to the city for review. And when that occurs, they'll be a full scale review consistent with square guidelines and hopefully consistent with the downtown plan. Thank you. There's been a motion and a second, and I want to thank you, Mr. Good. Here. Please come forward. Very good. You. Clarke has the address. Noticeably absent at this? Of course. Is a review and position by our city auditor on his very face. If you have nothing to hide. It seems to me that on any piece of property that we're dealing with, the city auditor should be entitled to weigh in. And perhaps the biggest piece of evidence of why this should not go forward is contained and codified well set forth in the new business section. Item 37, which goes to the issue of how woefully inadequate trained is our city staff on such matters. I call your attention to item 37, where it says the city essentially is needing developing a training program for project managers, both employees and consultants for managing projects, preparing scope of work, reviewing the proposals, develop a training program on contract administration best practices, establish policies, procedures for overseeing, overseeing standardized city contracts. Developing a policy to ensure our project managers are certified and certifications are current. What you're saying here and somebody is to be certainly given credit for recognizing how woefully inadequate the city staff is, as many people have pointed out over the past years. That's one of the reasons we're in the process and in the situation we find ourselves now. So I would suggest that the very first thing is request a review from the city auditor unless you have something to hide. If you don't have something to hide, then you should step. You should request the report from the auditor. She has nothing to gain, nothing to lose. And she has. She's biased. Would bring a bias unbiased review and I think combined with item the idea implicit in 37. Any reason community of mind would find the issue before you today is one that you're ill prepared. To move forward on an intelligent basis. Yes, you could move forward using the disease. And in the end, it is thinking. But if that is what you want as your legacy, I think the voters need to know that. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Goodyear. And I'd like to thank the staff for the work that they've done on putting this report together as well as the item for tonight. And I know Mr. Ruddock is not here but has spent a tremendous amount of time on redevelop this year. Sorry. That's not where you normally sit. We have our assigned seating. She has spent probably. 14 years. 13 years on making sure that the promenade is reintroduced to this city. As a splendid piece of development, but really more of a neighborhood. I think we look at certain projects as just development, but what we've done is created a neighborhood and the promenade today. For those of us who have lived here, at least since the nineties, looks far different from what it was in the nineties. And I want to thank the staff for that. BLOCK by block, piece by piece, there is a cohesion to that space that isn't just retail and it isn't just residential, but it's truly mixed use with the walkability that a promenade should be. A lot of areas around the country are referred to as the promenade, but very few allow us that walkability among a. Set of retail options and neighborhood options. And so this is the last parcel to complete that Promenade project, and I'm very pleased with it. And I want to look at the staff that's here today and also speak to those that are not here. Thank you for your commitment to redeveloping the promenade. It didn't take one or two years. It took over ten years. And I want to thank you for that. With that colleagues, I am very much in support of moving forward with this item today. Members cast your vote. Motion carries. Thank you. Item. 1/2. 39.