Photo by Brian Addison.
The lengthy project that is the rebuilding of the Civic Center continues as Mayor Robert Garcia announced today that a series of in-depth focus meetings will provide the public the chance to place their own input into the arduous process.
In an “effort to embrace a greater level of transparency and provide additional opportunities for public education and input,” the series of meetings will be held in various parts of Long Beach.
“Starting on September 16, we will be holding the first study session on the Civic Center,” Garcia told the Post. “There will be a series of study sessions will be held in Long Beach, with the first in East Long Beach, the second in Downtown, and so forth. We will go over financing, design—everything. Each of these sessions will be special Council meetings dedicated entirely to the new Civic Center.”
Last October, following years of discussions and revisionist meetings amongst architects and historians, the City Council moved forward on completely rebuilding the Civic Center by initiating the Request for Proposal (RFP) process. This followed the Request for Qualifications (RFQ) process, which had ten teams submit their qualifications; that cohort was then whittled down to two. The public-private project, spanning almost 16 acres, has a larger scope than what had been previously discussed in 2007 after studies concluded that the current City Hall structure held significant seismic deficiencies.
Supporters of the initiative have argued that the Brutalist structure—designed by Long Beach architect Don Gibbs with the assistance of famed post-and-beam architect Edward Killingsworth—is largely unwelcoming on multiple levels. For one, aesthetically speaking, Brutalism is antithetical to the idea of a civic center; in other words, the style of the structure is seen as unwelcoming, and discouraging to civic engagement. Secondly, and on a far more worrisome level, Vice Mayor Suja Lowenthal and Garcia—who have largely led the charge to rebuild the Civic Center entirely—have stated that the aforementioned seismic and infrastructure concerns with the building would be devastating in the event of a Northridge-like earthquake.
Even more, Lowenthal has noted that the structure is not only exorbitantly more expensive to retrofit in current dollars–sitting at around $170M compared to the projected $82M back in 2007, which fell by the wayside due to the Recession–but functionally obsolete since it lacks the proper space to hold the city’s employees. The city currently pays $2.13M every year alone for off-site leases to house additional employees.
Image courtesy of the City of Long Beach.
Lowenthal has called the Civic Center “the public living room” of Long Beach and has always been forward with her assertion that rebuilding the Civic Center as a whole is the way to go.
“Quite frankly,” Lowenthal said when RFQ was released last year, “our Civic Center design lacks human scale, is difficult to access and does little to assert the importance and value of the public realm. This project is worth considering because a new Civic Center would emphasize a mixed-use, walkable environment that is more compatible with the existing urban fabric and small block development of the Downtown core.”
But this doesn’t mean the RFQ/RFP was met entirely with cheers.
Naysayers have argued that an entire rebuild is far too costly and time consuming, particularly given that the structure could be revisioned and retrofitted rather than demolished. Furthermore, beyond sustainability, historians and preservationists across the city want to maintain the structure for the sake of posterity.
Once these study sessions conclude, according to Garcia, the Council will then decide whether or not to move forward with the new Civic Center and which of the two teams vying for the project will be chosen.
“The team selected will then begin a six- to nine-month long community review process that will begin most likely next year, with a meeting in each of the nine districts,” Garcia said. “Throughout that process, we will also release thousands of pages of documents—proposals and what not—so that the process becomes even more transparent.”
Ultimately, the hope for the supporters of the project is that the Civic Center will become more civic-like.
“This is the time we need to re-envision this public space,” Lowenthal told the Post. “This is the center of democracy for the entire city. I feel that wherever I’ve traveled, if there is a great city, it is because there’s a great downtown: everyone owns it, transit works there, housing works there, all this confluence of activity works—and that includes a working civic center, which we lack.”
Additional reporting by Brittany Woolsey.
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