All images taken from secondandpch.com

9:35am | For as long as the city of Long Beach has been around, opportunistic developers have looked into their crystal balls and seen opportunity.

The coastal views, cool ocean breeze and delightfully pleasant weather seem like foolproof tools with which to lure potential shoppers and diners into spending their time and their money in the city. All they need is a place to do it.

Longtime developers David Malmuth and Cliff Ratkovich are the two latest to try their hands at creating a mixed commercial-residential plaza worthy of such lofty expectations. Their sights are set on the heavily-trafficked intersection at 2nd Street and Pacific Coast Highway, an upscale coastal neighborhood that seems to be begging for something grander than the dilapidated Seaport Marina hotel and other underdeveloped businesses on the property.

But residents are weary, their memories ripe with unfulfilled and underwhelming results from developments that promised the world and failed to deliver.

With the second+pch project claiming to deliver 900 permanent jobs (plus 1,300 temporary construction jobs) and around $2.2 million in annual general fund revenue for the City, critics are preparing themselves for disappointment – a city hardened after being scorned too many times before.

In fact, the lofty promises may be what are hurting Malmuth and Ratkovich the most.  Residents have heard impressive numbers thrown at them before, as evidenced by the Pike shopping center downtown that was designed to create a thriving oceanside hub and instead produced a ghost town that has failed to draw customers even in a high tourism area. Some fear that second+pch will become the Pike of east Long Beach.

At the same time, others see an opportunity to capitalize on attractive property that has been underutilized for decades. With the City struggling financially, the second+pch project would ideally attract a new base of customers and provide a major economic boost.

Listening to Malmuth and Ratkovich describe their vision, from their conference room covered floor to ceiling in design renderings and traffic studies, it’s hard not to like what you hear. They describe a community hub, a town square paying homage to the laid-back atmosphere of the coastal lifestyle that gives back to the city in more ways than one. In addition to upscale residential units and attractive shopping, second+pch will also lease space out to the CSULB marine studies department and Cal Repertory Theatre. Each will be charged $1 per year for their leases, an effort to become not only a shopping center but a community partner.

Malmuth and Ratkovich also envision a refreshing town square reminiscent of the piazzas and campanellis of Italy, created by large amounts of open space – five of the site’s eleven acres – and an almost feng shui building design that fosters positive energy, or “a sense of arrival,” as Ratkovich says.

“We envision this as the gateway to the east side,” he says. “Second Street is lacking a true central piazza.”

They also plan to house a world-class cycling facility and places for Duffy electric boats to arrive and dock.

There are other issues with the project as well. Some critics and environmentalists, again hardened by perceived attempts to capitalize on attractive property without environmental regard, object to the proposed height of some buildings in the second+pch development.

Because the property is deemed environmentally sensitive, the Southeast Area Development and Improvement Plan (SEADIP) requirements mandate that no buildings should exceed three stories. The second+pch proposal includes a 5-story commercial building and a 12-story residential building. Malmuth and Ratkovich acknowledge that the buildings exceed the requirements – in fact they make no bones about it, the top five stories of that apartment building can bring in a lot of money – but say that SEADIP rules are outdated and were never intended to still be in place 35 years after they were created.

Already one of the most suffocating intersections on all of Southern California, residents fear that the project will create gridlock. Of course, a major commercial/residential development is going to attract more people and more cars. But Malmuth and Ratkovich contracted Fehr & Peers Transportation Consultants to conduct an independent traffic analysis.

“The reality is there’s been no new development in this district for quite some time,” Ratkovich says. “It’s new development that becomes the economic engine that allows traffic mitigation measures to be employed. So because this project comes along, gets required to mitigate traffic, what [Fehr & Peers] found was the traffic mitigations that we will do – or can do – will significantly improve traffic over its existing conditions, because nothing’s been done for so long.”

Traffic could even improve by 6-8% with the use of lane widening and traffic signal coordination, he says. The recent draft environmental report, however, shows that traffic will increase at each of 25 surrounding intersections studied, although signal synchronization is not factored into the study. Malmuth says that using sensors at busy intersections and coordinating with local traffic engineers will produce new techniques to alleviate congestion.

“Even though we will be generating more traffic, that traffic will flow through these intersections faster and be less wait times than there currently are at many of the intersections,” Ratkovich says.

The project intends to encourage alternative means of travel like biking and busing as much as possible, but can people accept the inevitability of traffic increases? For the promise of a thriving town square, the answer is probably a yes. Still, it’s one of the top issues that developers hear about the project.

Having worked together on many projects over the years, Malmuth and Ratkovich say that these concerns are nothing that they haven’t faced before.

If everything goes as planned, they hope to gain approval from the city’s Planning Commission, then the City Council by July 2010. Then comes a Coastal Commission ruling in July 2011, followed by groundbreaking in January 2012 and the grand opening in July 2014.

That’s if everything goes as planned, of course.

While the final decision may come down to governing bodies like the Long Beach City Council and the Coastal Commission for approval, developers still want to win the support of the surrounding community. Having that on your side makes it much easier to push the project forward, Malmuth says.

A recent poll has he and Ratkovich confident that the community is in support. In polling 400 voters from the 3rd Council District and 400 more throughout Long Beach in general, the poll showed that 62% of residents favored the development (the poll had a typical 5% margin of error), although that study came out before a draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) that raised more questions about the project. It’s unclear how valid that study was when it first was released, but after the DEIR, it’s nearly impossible to tell where the majority lies.

The big question for Long Beach residents – particularly on the city’s east side and in the surrounding upper-class communities – will be whether they can put height requirements, environmental concerns and traffic increases in the back of their minds in favor of potential economic benefits.

For some, it’s an easy decision. The Seaport Marina hotel currently occupying the property is not held in very high regard and an improvement would be welcomed by many.

But for others, it’s too much to ask. And undoubtedly, Malmuth and Ratkovich are asking for trust; something that Long Beach may have run out of in recent years. Unkept promises from the Long Beach Museum of Art and the Aquarium of the Pacific have left taxpayers funding their budgets, dreams for a Kroc Center appear to be dead in the water, Long Beach Studios never materialized and it appears that Tesla will build cars in Downey instead of Long Beach. Without a doubt, though, the fear of creating another Pike is keeping most critics from voicing their support.

“Unrealized potential” could be Long Beach’s official motto. It’s unclear whether those past failures have created everlasting suspicion in residents, or whether it’s the other way around. The proposed second+pch project may be the next promise to make fools out of Long Beach, or it may unfairly suffer because of the failures that came before it.

Of course, it may all work out perfectly well in the end.