Recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record, conclude the public hearing, and adopt Mitigated Negative Declaration MND-06-17; Declare ordinance amending Parts 11 and 17 of the Use District Map (Zone Change ZCHG17-007) read the first time and laid over to the next regular meeting of the City Council for final reading;
So we have the next the next two items are two hearings. So, Madam Clerk, hearing item number one. Hearing item one is from a report from Development Services recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record conclusion, conclude the public hearing and adopt mitigated negative declaration. Mendi oh 617 Declare ordinance amending parts 11 and 17 of the use district map. Read the first time and lead over to the next regular meeting for final reading. Declare Ordinance Amending the Long Beach Business Center Planet Development Districts. Read the first time and lead over to the next regular meeting and approve site plan review and a tentative parcel map for three new light industrial buildings located at 2300 Redondo Avenue, 3200 East BURNETT Street and 3600 East BURNETT Street in the Institutional Zone Archives District five. We can hear the acoustics are really good in here, so there's a lot of folks having conversations out up there. Those all need to go outside. And if I can please have the fire marshal in the back, or we can just get someone from the staff. Please have the doors closed upstairs, please. Because we can hear all those conversations. Okay. Great. Thank you. Again, this is a hearing, so we just please need everyone's attention and respect as we move forward this hearing process. And so with that, thank you, Madam Cook. Do you want to you have to read the last sentence or are we okay there? Okay. Excellent. With that, I'm going to I'm going to turn this over to our assistant city manager. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Members of the council. We'll have a staff report from Carrie Tai, our current planning officer. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor Garcia and members of the City Council. The project before you is a request for approval of a light industrial project at the site of the former U.S. Postal Service processing and distribution center at 2300 Redondo Avenue. The there's an aerial on the on the screen. You can see that. So the the. Building that's currently on the site is a 326,000 square foot processing and distribution center that's been used by the U.S. Postal Service. This facility is now closed and it was part of the Postal Service's system wide restructuring process. And so subsequent to the closure, the property was deeded to a private developer by the Postal Service. They went through a sort of a RFP process to select the suitable developer for the site. And then in terms of what surrounds the site there to the southeast is an art to neighborhood. I mean, it's largely developed with single family homes, but it's zoned R2. There's a in just an industrial campus and to the northeast, as well as the site of the new retail post office, which is going to be behind the distribution building there. And it's going to be off of Grand. There are industrial and institutional uses to the north and industrial and retail uses across Redondo in the city of Signal Hill. Directly to the south of the site is the California National Guard facility. The site for that's for development is just over 19 acres. It's actually a 20 a few and it's just over 20, if you include the part that's been split off to be for the new retail store. And the zoning is a combination of industrial and institutional to the north, be it's institutional to the south, and then it's residential to the east, and then a signal hill to the west, also zoned industrial. Now, part of tonight's request has to do with the zone change because the current zoning of the site is institutional, which is which would not allow for a light industrial kind of a development. And so the proposed zoning is what's called PDS seven. It is one of the city's zoning documents, and it's called the Long Beach Business Park. It currently exists to the northeast of the site and therefore the zone change would extend the PD seven boundary to the Southwest to include the subject site. So the developer proposes to build three new light industrial buildings, which would total 425,000 square feet. And that's what requires the approval of the site plan review. The subdivision is proposed to create an individual lot for each building, and that would allow for separate ownership of the buildings should that financial option become necessary. And I did talk about the zone change from institutional to PD seven. The zoning code amendment would be to alter the existing text of PD seven to create a new sub area. And actually, that might be better. If I can illustrate that. Right now, PD seven is is divided into three sub areas and the inclusion of the institutional site would be a fourth sub area and that necessitates the zoning code amendment. And lastly, for environmental review, the project did go through an initial study and resulted in a mitigated negative declaration, which I'll talk about a bit after I describe the site plan. So the project, as mentioned, is designed with three industrial buildings. The largest is to the south, and this site plan is oriented with north to the left. So the largest building is to the south and the two slightly smaller ones to the north. So the uses proposed for the buildings would be clean, light, industrial manufacturing, processing, research and development and local fulfillment type uses. There are truck courts for the buildings there, slightly of a U-shape, and that would allow for loading docks. The truck courts are 135 feet deep, which would allow for a sort of local fulfillment. But they are not as deep as, let's say, the typical logistics, heavy duty logistics uses that you would find in a larger facility. And that's important because the setting in which this is proposed is a lighter industrial nature, not intended to be any kind of a heavy trucking or heavy, heavy industrial use. The proposed buildings are of the architectural style you see on the screen, and they are a very high quality, modern, clean look with defined entries and and generally clean edges. The buildings are designed to be comprehensive with each other and they all match. So I'm going to go through the elevations. And there is a sort of an aerial rendering so you can see what the whole site looks like from Redondo. I did talk about the zone change a bit. And so I'm just going to summarize by saying the zone change would allow for a light industrial development on what is zoned institutional today. And this is the sub area map that I talked about. So sub area four is the subject site and it's to the southeast corner. The slide on the screen just summarizes basically the the zone change the like I said sub area for will pertain to the subject site that also includes development standards and use restrictions as part of the PD seven to govern the site from now into the future. I do want to mention one development one development feature, which is a 12 foot wall that separates the future site from the residential development to the back. And there is an alley there as well. As mentioned, an initial study was prepared for the project in accordance with the California Environmental Quality Act. The initial study found that with mitigation measures, the project will not have any significant impacts to the environment. The there are a variety of mitigation measures that the project will be required to follow throughout its life. And in conclusion, I would like to just point out that there is a couple of different actions related to the the city's city council action tonight. The Planning Commission did hear this item and forwarded a recommendation of approval. So that concludes staff's presentation and we can answer any questions you have. The applicant is also in the audience. Thank you very much. And so with that, we're going to go ahead and go into the public comment period, and then we will come back to the city council for any deliberations on this item. So with that, if there is public comment on this hearing, please come forward. Now would be the time. Is that no public comment? Yes, please. Please come forward. No. It's okay. Take your time. Take your time. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and city council. I am actually for this project. I live three blocks east of the new location, and actually they're already better neighbors. Pacific Industrial is already better neighbors than the USPS has been, so we appreciate them. They've gotten a lot of the bad rap from the USPS when they took down a wall, when they tried to use I saw it up on the board there that there was a driveway to nowhere and they tried to use that and make 23rd Street a thoroughfare for their retail location. So I work for Pacific Industrial. The neighbors are for Pacific Industrial. Thank you so much. Have a good night. Thank you very much. Is Pacific Industrial? Here to make comments? Yes, it. Good evening, Mayor. And council members and staff don't have much to say other than, you know, I think the staff did a great job explaining the project. I'm here to answer any questions, but being a local based company here in Long Beach, I can't tell you how excited we are to kick off this project. It's been a long, long process getting United States Postal Service off the property. They don't move at lightning speed. And they've we've had we've we've encountered a lot of obstacles along the way, working with the neighbors, you know, dealing with a very large government agency. But we've, we've, we've gotten there. They've relocated as of. Monday, correct? Charlie Yeah. So USPS is open. Has moved into the new retail facility as of Monday. So that's great news. It gives us the path to go forward as long as everything else goes smoothly tonight. So other than that, that's all I have. Thank you very much. I'm seeing no other public comment on this. I'm going to bring this back to the city council and. Oh, Mr. Goodhue, just very quickly, a highly intelligent project it certainly should have go through. I've been following it since day one. Thank you. Thank you, Amazon. This back over to councilman mongo. It has been a long, long process. I want to thank Neil and Pacific Edge. There was a lot of competition in the process for the postal service and the Postal Service chose you and we, my office, the neighbors, we're all so pleased that you've been so great to work with. The driveway to nowhere that she mentioned. Is something that the federal government thought that they would take advantage of our neighborhoods. And my council office was pleased. To scrape. Together some money really quickly and make sure that that was not going to be possible by changing over that configuration so that they would not be able to do things that they had promised and committed to our neighbors that they would not do. So I'm just so thankful that we have a guarantee now that we will not be using just a pony while with the USPS, but we will have a full size wall. It's important to the community, it's important to my neighbors, it's important to all of us. And so I want to appreciate the neighbors that are here today and also the developer. And this is a fantastic project. This is the way that government works. This is when government works, how it works, even if it was a little slow, but not from our city staff. Thank you. City staff for for you. Pestering and pushing the U.S. Postal Service. As much as you could. Thank you for. And before I move on, I know if our fire marshal is dealing with this, but we can't have folks on the side. So I apologize if there's a couple open seats. So please, if you're on the side, you need to grab a seat or please exit the chambers. So there's a couple of seats over here in the front, please, if we can fill those, I would appreciate that. So all the folks are here on the side. Please fill seats or exit the chambers. Thank you very much. Okay. We do have some seats on this side, too. Thank you, Counselor Supernova. I think you just want to say I support this project. This is an art craft manner neighborhood, and that's divided between the fourth and fifth districts. So some of the neighbors reach out to me, but continue to do that. FORDHAM Over to Stacy Mungo. But thanks again, staff. You took good care of this situation, so please be on standby in case something else comes up. Thank you. Councilman Ringo. The great project that I'm interested in knowing is the new post office is going to remain the Steve Bourne post office. That's what it was named before. Do we have to go to a name change new project. I think staff don't answer that. I don't. I yes. It's not our. Understanding that. Any development the U.S. Postal Services do not have to come to the city for any action development permit, plan, review of any type, including a name change. It's completely within the purview of the federal government and no local involvement is there is no local involvement in the in their operations. Thank you very much. There is a motion and a second on this hearing to receive the supporting documentation into the record and conclude the hearing. Just before we do that, I just do want it to just about Pacific Industrial. I want to thank you for the conversations we've had about the project. I particularly want to just thank you for elevating the the the look of the project, the landscaping, just to ensure that we're going to end up with a real quality, you know, light manufacturing on site, creative use, all those type of industries that provide good jobs to Long Beach. And so we appreciate your work. And this is going to be a good project for the city. There's a motion in the second. So members, please go ahead and Castro votes. Motion carries. Thank you very much. We will now move on to for those that just came into the council chambers. We are in the middle of our hearings, so we have one more hearing. Then we will go into the regular agenda. And for those that are here, the first two items that we're hearing on the regular agenda. Are going to be item 13, which is to do with medians and item 27, which is to do with Women's History Month. Those were the ones that were requested to move up. So those will be first and then we will go on with the regular agenda. Next up is hearing item number number three.