Major rezoning of Long Beach city core heads to Planning Commission
The first broad overhaul since 1989 would bar new auto shops, drive-throughs, liquor stores and more; it's intended to encourage new housing and businesses.
City officials will vote tonight on the first widespread rezoning of Central Long Beach in 35 years, and the proposed changes could remake the area over the next several decades.
The plan has some elements the community will probably cheer. It would largely prohibit new liquor stores, motels, strip clubs and other businesses that are seen as nuisances or magnets for crime.
But some residents worry that if the new investment city leaders are hoping for becomes reality, people and businesses that have been in the area for years could get priced out.
The Planning Commission will discuss and vote on the matter tonight, but the project will require a vote from the City Council to pass.
The “City Core” zoning plan is part of a broader rezoning effort that’s been in the works for several years. The plan covers an area roughly outlined by Magnolia Avenue to the west, Pacific Coast Highway to the north, Ximeno Avenue to the east and 10th Street to the south.
It’s an area that still bears the impacts of redlining – keeping non-white people out of certain neighborhoods – and disinvestment, said Elsa Tung, an urban planning consultant who helped get community members involved in the zoning process.
Because of those past policies, Central Long Beach is “one of the highest poverty areas of the city, and not only high poverty but racially concentrated areas of poverty,” she said. “In that context, it is really critical to get the zoning right.”
A city’s general plan sets broad guidelines for how people want the city to look and to function, and zoning spells out details such as what kind of businesses can go in each neighborhood, how tall buildings can be, and how much parking is required for different uses.
Over the past year and a half, Long Beach staff held public meetings and focus groups on what people wanted to see in their community, and they brought in community-based groups to give residents training in leadership and how to navigate the workings of city government, said Alejandro Sanchez-Lopez, the city’s advance planning officer.
The long-term goal of the city core rezoning is to set up major corridors like Anaheim Street and PCH for the next few decades of development, updating rules for businesses and creating more opportunities to build housing, Sanchez-Lopez said.
Tung said one win for the community is that the updated zoning would prohibit a slew of businesses that, if there are too many of them, can blight a neighborhood: Auto repair shops, gas stations, motels, drive-thru restaurants, and “adult entertainment,” for example.
It won’t do anything about those kinds of businesses that already exist in the area, Tung said, so the city should also consider additional policies to phase them out when they close.
A goal of the rezoning is to attract development of new housing and neighborhood-friendly shops and services. But some residents predict that newcomers will displace the people and businesses who are there now.
If a new project can attract a familiar anchor store such as a grocery, it will draw new residents to nearby housing, and when the area’s median income rises, rents will too, said Senay Kenfe, who lives in Central Long Beach and has been following the rezoning project.
While newer, more affluent residents will leave vacancies elsewhere in the city when they move to the city core, that doesn’t help the lower income folks who get pushed out, he said.
“Nobody who’s making $60,000 or more is exiting an apartment that somebody who’s making $30,000 can afford to live in,” Kenfe said.
The community has already seen this issue play out in the saga of KH Supermarket, a Cambodian grocery that was a neighborhood staple. The market’s supporters fought to keep it from being demolished for a new development, only to see it close in 2021 because the owners couldn’t afford a proposed rent increase.
“The question for a lot of the community groups is, either in this new zoning or in the current policy context, would the situation of KH market being displaced, could that still happen again?” Tung said. “And unfortunately the answer, I think, is yes.”
“The zoning is a really important first step, but there are a lot more protective policies that have to be passed,” Tung said.
To reflect community concerns, city staff drafted nonbinding memos that assess the risk of displacement in different parts of the city core and discuss policies and strategies to counteract it.
With existing residents already being priced out of the area, Sanchez-Lopez said, rezoning alone "is not going to be anywhere close to enough of a solution to the housing crisis.”
Kenfe said if city leaders really want to ensure current city core residents and businesses don’t get pushed aside by new development, they could increase the amount of affordable housing that’s required or pursue community benefit agreements that would, for example, mandate that businesses hire some locals.
Those policy discussions, if city officials want to have them, would come later. Sanchez-Lopez hopes that the residents who learned how the city works and how to be leaders in their community will stay involved and push for the changes they want.
“This is not a finish line but really a milestone point to have greater community agency in local governance,” he said.
The Long Beach Planning Commission meets at 5 p.m. Thursday in the civic chambers at City Hall, 411 W. Ocean Blvd.
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