After Bold Idea #5 – the development of a waterfront airport – the question becomes what happens with the twelve hundred acres of city-owned land that makes up the current airport? Perhaps the most compelling reason to move the airport is the opportunity that the large plot of land would provide for stitching together Long Beach’s urban fabric. To provide perspective, these 1,166 acres of virtually vacant land is nearly the size of the entire Signal Hill and larger than Playa Vista, a master-plan community on the Westside of Los Angeles that is one of the largest infill developments in the nation. With the massive scale of this gap in the city it is little wonder why the Eastside and Bixby Knolls appear so foreign to each other. But with its size, this parcel offers to bind together two large portions of Long Beach while providing important economic, educational and residential opportunities for the city.
Establishing a framework to link together the various communities along the edges of the former airport property will need proper land use development, new open space and infrastructure to be successful. East-west streets like Wardlow Road and Conant Street could continue through the site, while north-south connectors will need to be built between the 405 Freeway and Douglas Park. Long Beach’s open space network can be tied together with the addition of new parks and greenbelts within this new development area. A strong foundation based on a proper street network and open space linkages should be reinforced with land-uses that relate to the existing context of the surrounding communities.
But this massive site is likely the last such opportunity Long Beach will ever have; it should not be squandered on typical infill development like what took place at Playa Vista. Why not dedicate four-hundred acres of the former airport to the state for creation of a Long Beach campus of the University of California? The new campus would provide extra capacity to the UC system in Los Angeles and Orange County while providing a significant economic generator for the region.
The University of California system has needed to expand for decades now as the nine established campuses reach their build-out levels set by a combination of university criteria and host-city pressure. UC Merced, the system’s tenth campus, was founded to respond to the growing population of the Central Valley, but difficulties in student and faculty retention has cast doubt on it providing necessary additional enrollment capacity for the system overall. With UCLA already at its student population cap and UC Irvine rapidly reaching it, a Long Beach campus at the mid-point between the two could fill that future gap.
A new UC Long Beach campus would quickly become a significant part of the city, beyond the proportion of its physical footprint. Between faculty and staff, UCLA employs over twenty-six thousand people with nearly forty thousand graduate and undergraduate students. While UC Irvine receives only seventeen percent of its operating budget from the state, it contributes over four billion dollars to Orange County’s economy and is the county’s largest employer. As is the case with UC Irvine, a UC Long Beach would likely take a few decades to reach the scale that it has such an economic impact. Dramatic budget cuts to the UC and CSU systems are currently jeopardizing higher education in California, but as citizens, scientists and educators work towards recommitting the resources for research and education, why not think big? If the state reaffirms its commitment to their General Plan and the universities continue on their trajectory of global excellence, the state will require an additional UC campus. Long Beach is uniquely situated to provide the space and right location to fit both the University’s and City’s needs.
While there will be there will be long term benefits to these new developments, providing much needed stability to the City, there are relatively short term benefits to this unifying community. Even after turning over four hundred acres to the state, there are eight hundred acres of land whose sale proceeds could reach a billion dollars for a municipal rainy-day account. Development fees and supporting infrastructure could rejuvenate municipal facilities throughout the surrounding area. The revenue does not end there as that land goes on the property tax rolls while potential sales tax from new retail opportunities further bolster city revenues. Anchored by UC Long Beach, this new multi-use community would provide tens of thousands of new jobs and thousands of quality homes while unifying two large portions of the city and contributing to the city and state’s economic revival.