OUR community is now dealing with many, many issues all being deliberated all at once.
We are dealing with development in downtown San Pedro that is not selling, projects that have fallen behind their projected completion dates, a project that had to find new ownership and some other local issues like:
A proposed new cruise ship terminal in the outer harbor area of San Pedro.
A proposal for a 75,000 square foot conference center to bolster the businesses in downtown and at the port.
Two proposed LAUSD senior high schools in San Pedro.
If a conference center and a new cruise ship terminal are built in San Pedro, where are the hotel rooms that folks going to either of these new facilities going to be put?
It would be wonderful for a folks to come to San Pedro for a short stay and spend money in local businesses, but I have been repeatedly told by "experts" and developers that there is a real need for more permanent residential housing in San Pedro. I can't see where guest, staying only a few days and new permanent residents will stay.
If Ponte Vista is built with a higher density than The Gardens, then there will be tremendous infrastructure and traffic issues to deal with, throughout San Pedro. Please remember that Target is coming to Gaffey street and we need to remember what Elise Swanson correctly claimed that traffic for a business like Target is four times higher than for mixed-use, multi-family residences.
If a new cruise ship terminal is built in the outer harbor, I don't think anyone can even begin to imagine what traffic would be like having a terminal for the largest cruise ships in the world several miles away from any freeway, and on a peninsula, to boot.
A conference center might be nice, but San Pedro would probably benefit more economically if a Costco was built in place of any conference center.
A conference center in San Pedro also faces traffic congestion and hotel accommodation issues, just like a new cruise ship terminal will face.
San Pedro has seen at least one hotel go through many ownership changes due to many reasons.
San Pedro is a place you go to and not through. It is on a peninsula and at the end of the road, so to write. It is a great place to live and grow up in, but it is tough to get to, if you don't know where you are going and San Pedro is still thought of as a second class town according to way too many folks at L.A. City Hall.
We have other issues to contend with, too;
Eastview Little League
Field of Dreams
What to do in order to allow Angel's Gate to become greater than it already is.
Knoll Hill
Pacific Avenue Redevelopment Corridor
How to keep businesses afloat in these newly uncertain economic times.
What really to do about the Port and OUR waterfront.
We all have some pretty large land-use and economic issues to deal with, right now!
We have folks telling us that San Pedro NEEDS more housing, but they can't or won't provide reliable information to back up those claims. We have seniors wishing for more housing designed for senior citizens, yet no study has been produced to back up any real need or true wish for such housing in San Pedro.
We have creative folks who wish for San Pedro to be more tourist-friendly, yet there has been many ongoing talks without any real meaningful plans going forward to make this happen.
Now some folks want to create more traffic nightmares by placing a terminal for the largest cruise ships in the world at the end of town and expect that the residents will welcome such a development. Some of these same folks wand a conference center that is not near any decent transportation hub, miles from any airport, at the southern end of the City of Los Angeles, and quite some distance from downtown L.A. and most entertainment and business centers.
Could the economy of San Pedro benefit more from these two new proposals more that what the costs to all of us would be? Most of the employees of a conference center will not make enough in wages to buy any type of housing in San Pedro and this is also probably true of employees of any new cruise ship terminals built in the outer harbor. This means that most workers at those new projects would have to commute out of San Pedro and that spells even more concerning traffic.
OUR community is already going to have to face what will happen to Western Avenue and Gaffey Street with Ponte Vista, Seaport Luxury Homes, Highland Park, and Target. Adding insult to injury would come if any real consideration of a conference center or a new cruise ship terminal so far from any freeway, continues.
Thank you to those considering a new cruise ship terminal and/or a new conference center, but we have quite enough on our plates already. San Pedro and OUR community need to deal with what really is coming before we should entertain these two new thoughts.
I think OUR community may be able to support a big-box retail store and a new supermarket closer to the harbor than Vons is already at. These two ideas would help all of OUR community and be very welcome to the folks who will eventually (hopefully) move into the many, many units now being constructed or considered in downtown San Pedro.
4 comments:
I know I am a little late to reviewing the issues in San Pedro. I currently live in Long Beach, but Pedro is in my blood since my family and many like them came here after the turn of the (20th)century and everyother person became my cousin somehow over the years... When we moved out of Pedro (per my grandmother) to a new house near the drive-in, Western Avenue was peaceful with many new businesses and housing developments with a different flavor (modern? surburbia?) than downtown Pedro or Weymouth Corners. I wonder if there was any concerns about development then? I heard that the banks did not want give a loan to Mr. Lochmann for his dairy because the property was not considered valuable enough!?!
well, Pedro is still dear to me in almost any form and I hope for the committees and this blog to guide the development city-wide with emphasis on conscientious thinking and value on the people impacted. Even without the re-zoning - condo like homes can be snaked in, along with LAUSD schools and so on. Putting a strain on the traffic, resources and community. Remember, the rest of the Navy housing was torn down for the Terragona? housing tract and Ralphs Center at one time. And I still wonder why the Air Force could not use the re-rooved/re-habed Navy housing instead of building on Fort Mac & 25th Street? We all love to have a little view, wonderful weather and charater Pedro provides. That may have triggered the need for housing - a high demand!?! I could KEEP on talking about housing markets, developement and the changes that have taken place attempting to cystalize that feeling one gets while growing up but I know that is now happening to my kids with a different environment and my grandkids will have something else... I hope it will be pleasant and with good fore-thought.
Thank you cousin Mark,
You have a wonderful insight about San Pedro, but I am a bit confused about how your grandmother moved you out of San Pedro and into a new home "near the drive-in." If you moved into one of the homes built in The Highlands or Westmont, you moved from San Pedro to San Pedro. It may have been "in the sticks" at one time, but it was and still is in San Pedro.
You are another great example of someone who will always have San Pedro in their heart, even though they do not live in San Pedro any longer.
You remember Channel Heights when it was still government housing and you also remember Mr. Walter Lochmann and his wonderful dairy.
Please go right ahead and write about San Pedro, your memories, and what you would like to see in your home town.
While remembering petting the cows at the dairy and catching crawdads at Averill Park, we still need to look at where San Pedro may be heading and consider if where OUR community may be going, is in the right direction.
It may be easy to take someone out of San Pedro, but it is impossible, I feel, to take San Pedro out of anyone.
MW
hey, i'm curious what your thoughts are about the development boom in Long Beach?
I don't have really strong opinions on the development boom in Long Beach because I feel it is somewhere that is so close, yet so very far from San Pedro.
Long Beach has Ocean Blvd, Pine, and Broadway, lots of one-way streets downtown, a newer entertainment area where the Pike used to be, a convention center and arena, and we cannot forget the Walmart downtown.
Long Beach has quite a few restaurants close to all the new development, well within walking distance of many of the new units.
A supervisor at the company I work for just bought a studio condo smack dab in downtown Long Beach.
I wish all the best for development in an area where a main drag, Ocean Blvd. has about as good of access to a freeway as the folks living on parts of Gaffey have to the 110.
I do think the infrastructure of Long Beach can handle the boom downtown better than San Pedro can having its largest proposed development not only not in downtown San Pedro, but also not having a more direct access to any freeway.
In the greater L.A. area, Long Beach may get ignored more than San Pedro, but they are a city unto their own, with a different property tax base and a different salex tax base which allows more of the sales tax revenue raised in Long Beach, to be spent for things in Long Beach.
MW
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