The holiday season is upon us and once again we must ask ourselves where Long Beach residents will spend most of their money shopping for family and friends. The Belmont Shore business district seems for many to be the hometown favorite, however there’s the Towne Center and City Place with their numerous offerings. The real issue is that as the 5th largest city in the State and 2nd largest in Los Angeles County we still cannot attract the “majors” that cause our residents to spend the bulk of their sales tax dollars outside of our city boundaries and land in places that do nothing to help the economic vitality of Long Beach. The attractions of Fashion Island, South Coast Plaza, Bella Terra, Westminster Mall, Lakewood Center and others are tough to beat.
I suppose we could claim that Long Beach is a much older city than our younger neighbors that attract the shopping crowds. I believe it is time, however, for us to roll up our sleeves and take this business of attracting the big shopping “drawing” cards with a new determination and persistence. As this older city, our problem primarily lies with the lack of space to build the shopping centers that can offer the Nordstroms and Macys of our world the areas they need to build what they consider adequate to attract their particular customer base.
It isn’t the earning power of our families and friends living here. Let’s look at the following – but first I will concede that the average median family income in our city is slightly below $38,000 per household. Our big sister, Los Angeles, is $42,000. Santa Monica, $50,700. Digging a little deeper, we find that in our city, the average median household income in Bixby Knolls is $66,700. Belmont Shore, $60,500. The Eastside $41800. Belmont Heights, $80921.
In my opinion, it’s not the spendable income that’s the problem, it’s our inability to prospectively find areas of our city to develop.
It’s time for our leaders to get serious and assemble the best of best in Long Beach and develop a business site location strategy. Granted the majority of our city is already built out, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t look at areas that would or could be likely future candidates for respectable, desirable, community supported development. Even sites that are now owned by the city should be part of this evaluation process.
I’ve said this before and it’s worth repeating. The great football coach George Allen said the future is now. So how much longer do we want to wait?