Plans for the conversion of a seven-story office building into dormitory space for college students were approved Thursday by the Long Beach Planning Commission.
The construction, at 5150 East Pacific Coast Highway, must be approved by the Long Beach City Council — likely in November — before work can commence. The entire plan includes a student plaza, outdoor fitness park, patios and picnic areas, study rooms and laundromats, as well as a cafeteria and splash pool.
It would offer 149 suites, ranging from single-person flats to six-room apartments, altogether capable of accommodating nearly 600 students.
Against a backdrop of concern over transportation options, the project will include 150 bike parking slots and lockers, as well as 360 parking spaces in the existing underground parking garage. Developers said Thursday they are in talks with Cal State Long Beach to establish a shuttle service to and from campus.
City officials said the project is exempt from 1:1 parking standards since multiple bus stops are within a half-mile of the proposed dormitory.
Housing will be exclusive to students. Due to a dearth in available student housing, the city and Long Beach’s collegiate apparatus are desperately seeking ways to house more people near their respective campuses. The Park Tower project is one mile from the Cal State Long Beach campus and about 2.5 miles from the Long Beach City College Trades, Technology, and Community Learning Campus.
Roughly 76,000 students attend Long Beach’s three colleges — CSULB, LBCC and Pacific Coast University School of Law.
Without any dormitories, LBCC said Friday it is moving forward with plans to build a $95 million, 422-bed dormitory on its Liberal Arts Campus by Fall 2028.
In 2024, the school estimates that one in five of its students experienced some form of homelessness in the previous year. In the first four weeks of the 2025 semester last fall, more than 400 students self-identified as being in a similar situation, with 124 saying they were outright homeless and 45 stating they slept in their vehicle.
An average of six students slept in their cars each night in the college’s parking lot during the spring 2025 semester, as part of the school’s Safe Parking Program.
CSULB, though largely a commuter campus, has three dormitories. The college wasn’t immediately able to say how many students are homeless, but the college says it plans to have that data sometime in 2026.
Without a price range available yet, principal planner Derek Burnham with Burnham Planning and Development said rooms will be “more affordable than renting your own apartment.”
While they approve of the repurposing and acknowledge the lack of student housing, the local Sierra Club raised concerns that the tower’s reflective glass may lead to unnecessary deaths of birds that run into the mirrored building.
“Park Tower is across the street from Recreation Park and the Recreation Park Golf Course with hundreds of trees and other vegetation attractive to birds!” the club wrote. “In fact, on its south side, its seven-story glass wall clearly reflects the trees in the park, making this huge structure a death trap for birds.”
Others opposed the project over its parking availability; the project would include a little more than half of the number of expected beds in the building.
“Our guests would have absolutely nowhere to park, it is already a challenge,” wrote Joey and Shelley Rooney, owners of the nearby Crooked Duck restaurant on PCH.
The two added that some solutions, like parking permits, would “basically put us out of business.”
Commissioners, acknowledging the residential gripes, said this development “isn’t perfect” but is a better-case scenario to remedy something that “should have been built probably seventy years ago.” Officials added that the developer initially approached the owner of the building, which is largely vacant.
“It isn’t perfect, but nothing in this city’s going to be perfect given the constraints that we have in terms of no available land,” said Commission Chair Alvaro Castillo. “It’s good to see something positive is coming out of this building.”