2:05pm | Just over six years ago, in January 2004, the Salvation Army received a $1.5 billion grant from the estate of McDonald’s restaurant heiress Joan Kroc to build 30 community centers across the country modeled after the $87 million Kroc Center she had built in San Diego.
  
Cities across the country sought the funding and two years later, on May 1, 2006 the Salvation Army chose Long Beach as one of the locations the organization planned to build a new Kroc Center.
  
The deal was simple and the same for all applicants–the Salvation Army would provide the construction costs and an equal endowment to keep the center open in perpetuity. Kroc, however, stipulated in her bequest that each community would also need to offer up a certain percentage of the total amount of the project as a form of community buy-in.
  
In the case of Long Beach, the estimated total cost of the project, at the time, was around $140 million–$80 million for construction and $60 million in an endowment–with the Long Beach community tasked with providing $20 million. These numbers were later scaled down slightly and as of this year the city was being asked to come up with $15 million.
  
However, as you may know, on Tuesday the Salvation Army sent a tersely worded and unambiguous letter to City Hall explaining that the Salvation Army had “decided not to move forward on our Long Beach, California Kroc Center.” The letter goes on to describe the project as no longer financially viable–citing the lack of community funds raised and a near doubling of site acquisition and development costs.
  
The letter concludes by stating that the Salvation Army spent a total of $4.6 million trying to develop the Long Beach Kroc Center, but, “as of May 1, 2010, The Salvation Army Kroc Center in Long Beach is no longer under development and has been officially canceled.”
  
By Thursday, all mention of the Long Beach Kroc Center had been removed from the Salvation Army’s national and regional websites and it was no longer included in the Salvation Army list of Kroc Center sites.
  
But let’s go back for a moment to May of 2006, when Long Beach was announced as a Kroc Center site. Also named that day as future Kroc Center sites were five other locations: Phoenix, Arizona; San Francisco, California; Honolulu, Hawaii; Coeur d’Alene, Idaho; and, Salem, Oregon.
  
In nearly every case, most of these other applicants had already been hard at work.
  
The day the decisions were announced in 2006 Coeur d’Alene, Idaho had already raised $1.7 million of the $5 million they needed as community buy-in. Salem, Oregon had already raised $3 million (ultimately raising $10 million from 1,700 donors). San Francisco raised all the needed community funds so quickly that the Kroc Center in the Bay Area opened 24 months later in early 2009. The Idaho and Oregon centers opened the same year.
  
In addition, the Arizona and Hawaii centers also appear to be on track, with both projected to open in 2011.
  
Since 2006, the Hawaii project has raised more than $21 million in community funds, including a single $4.5 million donation from the estate of “Hawaii Five-O” star Jack Lord. In Phoenix, fundraisers have gathered $10 million in community donations to date, with $3.7 million yet to be raised.
  
What about Long Beach?
  
Well as of last month, other than a handful of small donations, the city had identified $7 million in Redevelopment Agency funds that might have been applied to the Kroc Center project. Several federal government sources were also identified as possibly contributing to the project. Native-son Snoop Dog also pledged a record and concert with proceeds to go to the center. Though neither has happened, the offer was estimated to be worth up to $5 million.
  
However, keep in mind though that these funding sources were only identified or announced in the last 12 months. In the three years following Long Beach’s application for and selection as a Kroc Center site in 2006 there is no record of any major fund raising having been accomplished. A professional fundraiser for the project was not officially hired until February of this year and the City Council only approved a “Red Team,” like that previously mobilized to save the C-17 assembly line, on April 20.
  
Now while City Hall did complete and approve the required environmental documents to move forward with the project, no small feat in itself, it appears that the fund raising aspect of the deal was left to a later date despite the Salvation Army making it clear from the beginning that the community buy-in was a critical component of the whole project.
  
And City Hall even had warnings of what might happen if they did not raise the community funds.
  
At least three proposed Kroc Centers were all canceled due to an inability to raise the community funds–a project in St. Paul fell through in 2007 and projects in Massena, New York, and Detroit were shelved in 2009. In addition, a proposed center in Philadelphia, which is now back on track, nearly met its demise when fund raising dried up during the height of the world-wide economic collapse in 2008.
  
And while Long Beach City Hall seems confident that there is nothing in the Salvation Army letter canceling the project that can not be overcome, the Salvation Army told the lbpost.com yesterday that reconsideration is simply not in the cards.
  
“We’re willing to meet and hear their concerns and ideas,” said Salvation Army spokesperson Major Cindy Foley, “but we have let [City Hall] know that we’re not asking for them to give us a proposal for an appeal.”
  
And can we blame them?
  
The Salvation Army stated long ago what was really important–a community that needed the center and was willing to pitch in to make it happen.
  
Well, Long Beach had the need but apparently our leadership did not have the will.
   
Like so many other dreamed-of-but-never-followed-through-on projects in Long Beach–gee, Tesla Motors comes to mind–it appears that the dream of a Long Beach Kroc Center was cut short by a serious lack of priorities and a healthy dose of simply too little, too late.