November 1, 2022
Honorable Long Beach Mayor and City Council
Civic Chambers
411 W. Ocean Boulevard
Long Beach, CA 90802
Subject: Item 43 on the 11/01/2022 Agenda Regarding to “Incentivizing Adaptive Reuse of Vacant Office Buildings Downtown”
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Dear Honorable Mayor Robert Garcia, Vice Mayor Richardson, Councilmember Cindy Allen and Councilmember Mary Zendejas and staff,
On behalf of the thousands of members of AACSC and as a non-profit organization based out of downtown, we want to express our support of city council item 22-1313 to better utilize the commercial vacancies to their highest and best use.
In this post COVID era, property owners have not been able to financially recuperate from the long two years of receiving non-payment of rent and many have struggled to fill their vacant properties. This struggle is evident since in downtown Long Beach about 2/3rds of our offices sit vacant. This has driven down foot traffic for the businesses that are open and can lead to lower property tax revenues in the future.
The most efficient way to address this issue is to convert the vacant office building lots into new mixed-income housing developments and creative office space. The city should consider addressing zoning changes to facilitate conversions, tax incentives to convert vacant office space into housing along with tax and fee holidays to attract new businesses downtown.
“As a business owner in downtown Long Beach, we need a revitalization of our streets and businesses. When people are working in offices, restaurants, grocery stores and all businesses thrive because they see increased traffic and patronage. After a long pandemic period, I look forward to helping to craft legislation that brings people back into our downtown corridors.” Elaine Hutchison, Board President of Apartment Association, California Southern Cities
We look forward to working with Downtown Long Beach Alliance to help craft the best legislation to address the vacancies in downtown Long Beach. We urge you to act and approve the recommendation to reuse vacant office buildings downtown. Thank you for taking our views into consideration.
Sincerely,
Elaine Hutchison
President
Apartment Association, California Southern Cities