Looking out across the Downtown Long Beach waterfront as the Grand Prix racetrack is broken down each year gives one perspective on humanity’s capacity to alter geography. Those extra-wide streets and expansive parking lots that provide the perfect venue for one of the greatest urban races in the world did not exist a half-century ago. Just after the Second World War, the race would have required ocean-going vessels, not the drift cars and open-wheeled racers utilizing today’s racetrack.

Almost all of the land south of Seaside Way in present-day Downtown Long Beach was artificially created by dumping sediment, dirt, debris and whatever else solid could be found in the vicinity. Without this newly-made land, the Convention Center, Event Arena, Terrace Theater, Pike, Aquarium of the Pacific and California State University Chancellor’s Office Building would have to sit on top of what would likely represent the largest flotilla in recorded history. Over the past century, a series of infill projects south of Downtown has continued to push the waterfront further into the Pacific Ocean for the benefit of maritime uses, entertainment and tourism.

This process began with the creation of the old Municipal Auditorium, located roughly where the Terrace Theater now stands. Over five acres of landfill also included a public park around the theater and the semi-circular Rainbow Pier that connected to Pine Avenue and Linden Avenue (both of which retain their connections to the waterfront). Eventually, the waterfront within the pier was filled in as well.

The expansion of the waterfront continued with the extension of the I-710 Freeway downtown in the form of Shoreline Drive. The remaining area was initially made up entirely of parking lots intermixed with splashes of generic green space. Gradually wide streets, marinas, hotels, restaurants and shops filled in the area, though plenty of convenient parking, vacuous streets and unused park space remained. All of which provided the ideal setting for adding a racetrack.

While today’s Downtown waterfront was rising from the sea, the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles were extending their respective complexes from the natural shore of San Pedro Harbor. Terminal Island (once called Snake Island) was relatively small and unstable before land reclamation (see maps provided by the Port of Long Beach website). Dredging the San Pedro Harbor for the benefit of larger cargo ships created a plentiful amount of material that was used to extend Terminal Island toward the breakwater. Some of this new land area was used for shipping and military facilities (including a naval base, shipyard, an airfield).

While destroyers and battleships have been replaced with container ships and the Sea Launch platform, the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles continued to expand through acquisition of land and landfill. The Port of Long Beach expanded through the creation of Piers F, G and J extending out from the mainland of Long Beach like a crab with lopsided claws. Port of Los Angeles’s massive, 500 acre Pier 400, an island in itself, did not exist twenty years ago. Even today new land is being created from the sea, as the Port of Long Beach’s Middle Harbor project consolidates a number of terminals for an over 300 acre “super complex.”

As the Army Corps of Engineers tamed the Los Angeles River with concrete channels, the combination of waterfront extension and breakwater construction negatively impacted the ecosystem of this unique south-facing California Coastal environment. With greater understanding of the damage resulting from land reclamation, more recent port terminal projects have required investment in restoring the local ecosystems, (for instance, Golden Shores downtown and Bolsa Chica in Huntington Beach).

There can be no denying the ecological damage: wetlands have been paved over, coral reefs removed, and undersea life lost due to land reclamation in the San Pedro Harbor area over the past century. While some planning documents reveal grand ambitions for continued development of the waterfront for entertainment and port terminal projects, the momentum for expansion seems to have slowed. Considering current efforts to continue expanding capacity and improve efficiencies within the port complex building further out to sea and acquiring land into surrounding communities are the two options. Both have their impacts, the question which is greater.

For instance, there is a proposal for building a new near-dock rail facility (and expanding a second, existing facility) adjacent to the homes and schools of West Long Beach. The proposed Southern California International Gateway to be operated by Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway (BNSF), would be located next to a half dozen schools and thousands of residents. The Port of Los Angeles has recently certified an Environmental Impact Report for this project, but the City of Long Beach as well as community and environmental justice advocates have appealed this decision.

Their position is that if the port needs to grow, they should do so within the port complex. In the case of the proposed Southern California International Gateway, if the area cannot be found in the Ports of Long Beach or Los Angeles, it could be created through land reclamation. The location could thus be closer to the port terminals and would also have less impact on residents and students in the surrounding communities of Wilmington and West Long Beach.

Given the potential difficulty of finding a mile-long, quarter-mile-wide parcel of land in built-out communities, the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles could take a page from past and current developments to locate these new near-dock facilities within the port complex, through newly created land. Perhaps extending Long Beach’s Pier T and Los Angeles’s Pier 400 on Terminal Island [as predicted in the History of 1990 map] can create the necessary area for a more appropriately, centrally located near-dock railyard. If the ports need to grow, creative engineers have succeeded through land reclamation in the past and can do so again today.

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