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New harbor front plan faces critics and fans
by Jason Dietrich
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Redondo Beach wants your input on the "Heart of the City" plan at the final community workshop 9 a.m. to noon Saturday, Oct. 7 at the Redondo Beach Main Library, 303 N. Pacific Coast Highway. A meeting of King Harbor boaters and city officials to discuss the effect of proposed changes to the harbor is scheduled for 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 4, at King Harbor Yacht Club. Contact King Harbor Yacht Club at 276-2459. |
Next weekend, the city of Redondo Beach will hold the last in a series workshops to go over conceptual plans for a new waterfront "heart of the city."
Traffic, harbor design and parking consultants will present results of their studies, and urban planners from the firm of Freedman, Tung and Bottomley will give a global view of the project to city staff and community members, Saturday, Oct. 7, starting at 9 a.m. at the Redondo Beach Main Library.
The plan deals with a combination of reworking city-owned land in the harbor area and new development on a 24-acre swath of land opened up by the planned downsizing of the AES power plant.
Plans call for the development of a commercial corridor along Harbor Drive, anchored by a public market on one end and a movie theater on the other. Officials also propose the reestablishment of view corridors from Pacific Coast Highway to the ocean and the redevelopment of Catalina Avenue.
"The City of Redondo Beach has the opportunity to create the kind of much-loved waterfront downtown that is well used by the people that live nearby," said urban planner Michael Freedman who's working on the project.
The project was spurred by the planned downsizing of the AES generating plant. AES already has torn down three of its oldest generating units and part of another. More than $1 million has been placed in escrow to help clean up the land that could be developed.
Future plans for the plant area could involve the removal of two additional generating facilities, and the installation of more efficient, much smaller combustion turbine generating equipment.
C. J. Thompson, AES plant general manager, said that AES officials were uncertain whether they want to risk investing in new equipment in California right away because of the state's volatile electrical market.
Electrical deregulation, government price-setting and the rising price of natural gas make building new generating facilities a dicey proposition.
"We still haven't come up with a firm plan. We're looking at opportunities to expand, but its still years away," said Thompson.
The city's agreement with AES expires at the end of this year. Even though all bets are off after that, once the city has gotten a better idea of its own plan, a development agreement with AES is on the horizon, said Redondo Beach Mayor Greg Hill.
After the Saturday workshop, planners will submit their concepts to the city council. City staff will then start working to develop a specific plan that will get down to the nuts and bolts of the project in preparation for an extensive review of its environmental impact.
"This is really just a jumping off point," said Hill.
"After that we're going to be entering a very formal process where any written comments will be answered in writing," Hill said. "By the middle of next year we should have some semblance of a plan."
The plan will have to pass through several city commissions as well as the city council on its way to approval. It'll also have to pass the scrutiny of other governmental agencies on the state and county level.
The responsibility of ushering the project through has been handed to former Parks and Recreation Director Sue Armstrong, who recently accepted the position of assistant city manager. Armstrong put off plans to retire after 25 years with the city when she was asked to carry the ball on special projects like "Heart of the City" and the reconfiguration of Aviation Park. She's been involved with the planning of both endeavors from the start and says she has no regrets about putting off her retirement to take a greater part in them.
"Redesigning our harbor is something the whole community can get behind," Armstrong said.
One of the biggest challenges she'll face is figuring out how to pay for the necessary infrastructure improvements. While finances are one of the highest hurdles the project will face, said Hill, money from state and federal sources as well as the private sector seems to be available, even for projects of this magnitude.
"This is the largest project in the local coastal cities in quite a while," Hill said. "There's a long process still ahead of us."
Part of that process will be making peace with those who feel left out of the plan. King Harbor boaters especially aren't sure they like some of the proposed changes. They're concerned that increased traffic and restructuring parking facilities could ultimately make the parking situation worse.
A two-acre expansion of Mole B, the projection across from the International Boardwalk where the Harbor Patrol offices are now located, has drawn fire from boaters who say it would make navigating the harbor more difficult. A proposed bridge from Mole B to the pier area also drew mixed reaction from International Boardwalk merchants who were concerned that it could divert traffic away from their businesses.
To address boater's concerns, King Harbor Yacht Club Commodore Bill Webster organized a meeting set for Wednesday, Oct. 4 with Hill and City Manager Lou Garcia.
"Although we're not opposed to redeveloping the harbor, we see nothing in the plan that really benefits the boater. The development plan has to be symbiotic for the boaters and the other users," Webster said. "But a parasitic plan came out of the last meeting."
Harbor design specialists have met with Redondo boaters and the fruits of those meetings will be incorporated into the final designs, said Freedman.
Hill, who hadn't seen the boater's list of complaints, said their concerns sounded reasonable and that the city would do its best create a plan that would benefit everyone in the area. ER