5:15pm | A Long Beach grassroots community group that wants affordable housing and local hiring programs to be included in the Downtown Community Plan, which would redevelop a roughly 719-acre area of downtown Long Beach, is holding a prayer vigil and solidarity march on Thursday.

America Aceves, a community organizer with Housing Long Beach, said the vigil and march will begin at 6:30 p.m. on July 14 at Neighborhood United Methodist Church located at 506 Pacific Ave.

Housing Long Beach aims to seek, preserve and increase the supply of affordable housing for Long Beach residents. It contends that the provisions outlined in the proposed Downtown Community Plan will gentrify the city’s downtown core, displacing the area’s current low- and middle-income residents. The group estimates that over time, 24,000 people would be displaced under the plan as is.

The Downtown Plan, as many refer to it, maps out the next 25 years of desired development for the downtown area. It aims to attract businesses with incentives that would fast-track the development process by relaxing a number of restrictions and requirements, including the need to complete project-specific environmental impact reports.

The plan would sharply magnify the population density in that part of town with the addition of thousands of residential units and maximized expansion of commercial property. The plan would also reduce the amount of parking currently available downtown.

According to the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, which is assisting Housing Long Beach as it advocates for affordable housing and other benefits for the large community of low- and moderate-income residents who live downtown, the plan will add 5,000 market-rate residential units,1.5 million square feet of office and civic space, 384,000 square feet of new retail space, 96,000 square feet of new restaurant space and 800 hotel rooms to the applicable downtown area.

Editor’s note: A previous version of this post stated that the housing group is opposed to the plan. Its members, however, are now stating that they do not oppose the plan but  want the plan to include affordable housing and other benefits for those who stand to be displaced as a result of  development.