Recommendation to request City Manager to work with Urban Commons, The Wave team and other key stakeholders to determine the cost of a Feasibility Study pertaining to the development of a Gondola System connecting Downtown Long Beach with Queen Mary Island; and Request City Manager to work with Urban Commons to identify key stakeholders to create a multiparty partnership to conduct an initial Feasibility Study pertaining to the development of a potential gondola system connecting Downtown and Queen Mary, and identify potential public and private funding sources to begin the initial feasibility study.
Next, we'll go to item 15 with the clerk. Please read the item. Communication from Councilmember Pierce, Councilwoman Gonzales. Councilwoman Price, Councilmember Richardson. Recommendations are to determine the costs of a feasibility study pertaining to the development. Of a gondola system. Connecting downtown Long Beach with Queen Mary Island, and to create a multi party partnership to conduct an initial. Feasibility study and identify potential public and private funding sources. Yes. County Councilwoman Pierce. If we could wait for everybody to clear. So we can hear. That would be awesome. Okay. I thank you. And I want to say thank you to the city. I wanted to say thank you to the mayor for putting together the Queen Mary Development Task Force. Several years ago, I was a 12 person task force that really worked to vision what we might do at the Queen Mary and what urban commons might do during their their lease there. One of the concepts that came up was doing an aerial tram and to some it seems like pie in the sky. If we're going to be punny tonight. I'll go there. We know that dreaming big is something that's really important. And we know that this is a creative idea that other cities like San Diego, L.A., are really exploring and taking seriously. I've had many conversations with urban commons, with other stakeholders, with the port that say that they are interested in seeing if this is feasible. And I know we already have a feasibility study. That was a very quick one, a phase one. And what this item would do is basically have our city staff work with all the stakeholders to identify funds to go forward with the second feasibility study. And so I want to say thank you to Tom Modica for working with us on this item and making sure that, again, this isn't a commitment that the city is going to spend city dollars on this, but this is about visioning and doing this prep work that really allows urban commons to come in and develop something that works for the city, works with our waterfront and works with our residents. And so I want to thank all the stakeholders that have participated so far and thank my council colleagues for signing on to this item. I think it's fun to dream a little bit and see what we can get to. So I'm curious to hear from public comment. I know we have some people here in the audience and then hear from our council colleagues. Fine. Thank you. Councilwoman Lena Gonzalez. We can bring the public up. Okay, fine. However, the public comment on this item, which you please come up. First off, I. Appreciate that we have an opportunity of being in front of eventually in front of the mayor, the honorable mayor and members of the city council. Um. It has been a long time coming. My name is Alex Bellemare. My address is 6242 Napoli Court, Long Beach. And I am. President of the statewide developers and the initiator of the wave, which is the aerial tram. Which, by the way, began at the. Last. Portion of 1990. So that'll give you some idea how length shows. Everything is a matter of timing. Now as a little bit of the history. The way back. When we were approved by the council, the town council, to proceed with our project and everything was going fine. Except it evolved our financial our finances. That is, on a country level. Turned into a very, very deep recession. And at that point in time, the city. Was no longer. In a position financially for them to have. Their staff. Work with us, and we had to put the project on the shelf. Subsequent to that, we began working with the the Queen Mary people. And others to the extent where we raised funds, substantial front funds, that would have taken us well into the project and just about ready to go. And the Queen Mary, as you painfully remember. Had financial problems. So once again, we had to. Put the project on the on the. Agenda or I'm sorry, on the on on hold. It is painful, but fortunately it caused this. Project to be delayed. Until now and with the financial finances nationally. And and our. Thanks to all of your work here. The city of Long. Beach and many other factors. And we are at this point ready to take advantage of the other time. You might say that the third the third time. Is. Really the charm. Now. Because of my age, which is like 84 at this point, I realized that my steam. Has pretty well evaporated. To the extent where I need. To have, uh, someone to fill in. The. Leadership role. And carry most of the, of the, the challenge here. And that individual is standing next to me. Clay Sandwich I believe that most of you know Clay. He is an incredible business person, a tremendous. Communicator, and a kind of. A guy that once he puts his teeth in something, he will not let it go. So with that and what let me first say to our council lady here, thank you so much. I'm going to turn that over to the co-developer clay. Sandwich at this point in time. Thank you all very much. Thank you, Alex. Mayor. Mr. Mayor, where you are? City Council. Thank you very much. I'd just like to take a very brief moment to identify my team. That's a world class team that we've assembled to really take this project and really look at it. Alex has been on this for over 15 years. I've been involved with it for about six. But we have assembled a world class team representing WSP is Cliff Hankey here in the audience. WSP is a global firm representing about 30,030 7000 employees. I've got our Moros. Our project advisor is a former executive director or acting executive director and retired from Port of Long Beach. I've got Robert ATA Lino, who is not here with us tonight. We also have Dapo Meyer Gary event, who is the largest gondola manufacturer in the world and probably has more ropeway tramway systems installed in in the world than anybody. So we do have a world class team that can really evaluate what the right options are for connecting the downtown to the to the waterfront. And I just want to say thank you to the mayor and the City Council for consideration of requesting staff to assist in identifying funding for the feasibility study and benefit cost analysis of the aerial tram people people mover system. Our tram folks look forward to working with all stakeholders in establishing the basis and feasibility of an aerial tram system. So thank you all very much for your time tonight. Thank you. Thank you very much. Mrs. Gonzalez likes like this. I think this is great. And I think, Councilmember Pearce, for bringing this forward with Alex and with everyone, because I really do think that this is the prime time in downtown being the other half of downtown to really. Start exploring these great ideas and really providing different avenues for transportation. I've heard my residents talk about this quite a bit, and I know that Austin, Brooklyn, Chicago are also exploring various ideas. And so where we have to tell ourselves that we're a small city, but we're actually a really big city, and so we should absolutely think big as well. And I would only include and I know this was a very loose request to study, but I would also include any commissioners specific to our economic development, which I'm sure that they will be included, but everyone should be at the table to be able to explore how great this could be potentially for our city . And I think urban comments as well for coming to the table and being a part of this. Thank you. Thank you, Congressman Austin. Oh, thank you. Um, you know, I love when we can dream and this is when I heard about this, this idea that was one that was very intriguing to me and one that is very intriguing to me because I've been to many cities, many downtowns that actually have amenities. And I think this would definitely add to the character of our downtown. Specifically, the item is requesting that the stakeholders or the city manager work with stakeholders to determine the fees cost of a feasibility study. And to my city manager, I had a question regarding where and how such a feasibility study would be funded if you have an idea if there is a fund available to do so. Thank you, Mr. Austin, and members of the Council. So there is already some work underway and Councilmember Pearce alluded to it. So Urban Commons is in the middle of putting together their development proposal for the 54 acres across the bay and as part of their master development they are looking at all possibilities for getting people over to the site as part of their Sequoia. So they are already looking at this. They have started some technical feasibility work just to see is it technically feasible. And what they've let us know is they want you know, that next step would really be kind of feasibility of of neo of a system. Where would it go? Who could maybe be included? And they wanted to take a break and say there's some other partners that might want to participate in in making that a broader study. So it really is urban commons is the lead. It would be their study. And we will pull together people to see who might be interested in helping to fund some of this. We expect it to be maybe about 100,000 in the beginning, but will determine that. And if the city were to participate, it might be some transportation dollars in a very low amount. But we haven't made that determination yet too. We all going get together great. Well, that helps clarify one of the questions that that a constituent posed to me a little earlier, like, well, how do we pay for such a feasibility study? And I was curious, is the talent fund available to do this type of study? Potentially, it could be Prop eight transit, it could be some tidelands. Again, it's a pretty minor dollar amount at this point. If this were to become a full on city project, we a project wouldn't be a city project to be you see, obviously we would be looking for grants in metro and those larger amounts of dollars to support. Okay. So it doesn't sound like this is a general fund burden and there might be some some other opportunities, is that correct? I would not imagine that we would ask for a general fund for this. No. Great. Well, but that said, I'm happy to support this moving forward. Thank you, Councilwoman Mongeau. I appreciate my budget oversight committee vice chair or member and their questions. They answered exactly what my questions were. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Pearce, you want to go at this again? Councilman Parrish. Councilwoman Price all the time. We look so much alike. And it's the p, the Persians. Okay, um, so this is a great idea. I want to thank Clay and Alex. They did brief me on this a few months ago, and I think it's definitely an idea worth exploring. And I look forward to the opportunity to learn more about it and discuss the feasibility. I do think it's a really good effort when we're talking about mobility and the difficulty in going over to the Queen Mary and some of the congestion that we experience and we will continue to experience as hopefully the Queen Mary thrives with programing and that entire area over there is rehabilitated and thrive. So I look forward to this. I think, Councilmember Pearce, for bringing this item forward and I look forward to hearing the results. Thank you, Councilman Richardson. Thanks, Vice Mayor. So, like, I like the idea. I think it's going to be essential if, you know, Queen Mary is going to be developed. We're going to have to figure out how to get people over that over that harbor. Whatever it is, we're going to have to figure that out because it's difficult to get over there. And, you know, and it myself, you know, I've used that the water taxi, both the water taxi and the Aqua Link, I've used them both and they're really cool. But I feel like they like the experience of getting on a boat is really what what folks use that for. And I think, you know, having something like a gondola, people are going to ride it for the experience of riding a gondola. Right. And it's going to actually transport people. And I think it's really cool that, you know, they're thinking the same thing in Dodger Stadium from from Union Station. So I think timing is timing is important. I was in Seattle I was in Seattle this weekend on the Space Needle. And they have an area where they talk about the history. I think what's really interesting is it accounts for every little step along the way. So it says right here, June 2nd, 1961, they number 47 of the project. Seattle Building Superintendent asks City Council for permits permits to allow the needle's construction. So all these little when we think big we may not know how far is going to go, but all these little roles that we play, they all, you know, contribute to the identity of our city. You know, you think of Saint Louis, you think of the arch. You think of, you know, Seattle. You think of the Space Needle in Long Beach is going to be the Queen Mary in the port of Long Beach. And so the more investment we can make into gondolas and things like that, I think are great. So I'm happy to be in support of this design. And thank you, Councilwoman Pierce. Thank you. Councilman Pierce. Two things. One is I wanted to just recognize and thank the people that sent letters in IBEW, Leo's Building Trades, Urban Commons and John Thomas from our Queen Mary Task Force today. So we received those. I did have a question for Mr. Modica on timing. I know we've been talking about this for a little while. Just if you could clarify what the next step would be. So if this were to go forward. Which it seems like it is, we would be working with urban commons to pull together the stakeholders. So really, you know, this is their project. They are in the middle of their entitlement process for that site and they need, you know, to submit a plan for mobility of which they right now they believe the gondola would be part of it or a different alternative that would do a similar function. So we would pull them together and have them help identify some of the stakeholders. You've identified some of them here and then start talking about, you know, what the cost could be, whether there's an appetite for investing. And then we imagine coming back with a report and we'll let you know what we would recommend for for a city contribution and if there was one, and how we would pay for that. Thank you and thank all my council colleagues for their support. Thank you. I just want to I'm glad I made it before the item was was ending. But I want to just say that I completely support the study and the concept of the gondola connection. And, Mr. BOLLYKY, you've been at this for a very long time. I remember the first time we sat down and you told me about your your vision for connecting the downtown and in different ways. And this was, I think, even before I was on the city council. And I just want to just say that I think your persistence and your ability to look to look towards the future is really served this project well in the team. You have a great group of folks working with you, and so I'm very supportive of the feasibility study. I have been supportive of this concept as it's been, you know, kind of been back and forth in different iterations over the years. But I think it's a it's a great way of connecting the the pieces of Long Beach that need greater connection and greater transit opportunities. This was mentioned, I heard over the Speaker in the back. Mr. MODICA You had mentioned Metro and I want to just re-emphasize that once we get past the feasibility stage and hopefully get to an actual project that we can look to or agencies like Metro for significant partnership. Metro right now is looking at investing in a aerial gondola system that could connect Dodger Stadium, you know, to other parts of of the ravine. It's looked at looking at possibly a gondola system that would connect the Hollywood sign down to two visitors. So there's a lot of conversation around different types of transit. And in my view, this isn't just an innovative project. This is a transit project. And any way that we can invest in public transit and bring in partners that are doing that work I think is really important. And so I look forward to the conversation and I look forward to bringing this project forward to the Metro Board when when we're ready to do so. And so. Thank you to Councilmember Pearce and everyone that supportive of this. And I look forward to to continuing to support it. And with that I think they did public comment already members going and cast your votes. Motion carries. Thank you. We have public comment. Let me. We have. Two categories of folks. Let me start with with is is Latoya marshall here and Trymaine Deanna Ellis. And then Larry Goodhew will be next. Actually, Mr. Good to be there first and then you'll be the third.