Acres of Books Under Development Pressure
I'm crossing the bridge on this one, since I know many of us consider the rickety stacks at acres of books to be holy ground. Acres has always been that place where I can rely on to find that obscure sci-fi paperback that's beyond out of print.
Apparently the City of Long Beach is angling to employ eminent domain to force Acres to get the hell out of the way of Broadway Block, a still vaguely designed development that would supposedly feature some serious art assets (studios, galleries, etc...). The District Weekly has the full story and I'd suggest it as reading for everyone - now that most of the abandoned or barren properties in Downtown Pedro have been snapped up and developed, it's only a matter of time before the words "Eminent Domain" echo from the rooftops in San Pedro. There's already been light talk about onsolidating lots to create a "superblock" where development can occur in a big way and unimpeded by say, pesky landowners and their tenants.
Props to curbed.la for pointing this out.
Apparently the City of Long Beach is angling to employ eminent domain to force Acres to get the hell out of the way of Broadway Block, a still vaguely designed development that would supposedly feature some serious art assets (studios, galleries, etc...). The District Weekly has the full story and I'd suggest it as reading for everyone - now that most of the abandoned or barren properties in Downtown Pedro have been snapped up and developed, it's only a matter of time before the words "Eminent Domain" echo from the rooftops in San Pedro. There's already been light talk about onsolidating lots to create a "superblock" where development can occur in a big way and unimpeded by say, pesky landowners and their tenants.
Props to curbed.la for pointing this out.
Labels: Acres of Books, development, Long Beach
7 Comments:
Serious art assets. Yeah, right. Sounds like they're dangling the promise of those galleries in order to get the DTLB artist community to buy into the destruction of Acres Of Books--which, in case anybody has forgotten, is a serious art asset. What these people in Long Beach city government fail to understand is that places like Acres Of Books are what draw people, artists and the merely artsy alike, to move into neighborhoods in the first place.
Grrr. I just had to get that off my chest.
What makes this extra double-plus infuriating and frustrating is that last November there was a California ballot initiative to eliminate the ludicrous practice of using eminent domain for private development. But the people who wrote the proposition tried to sneak in a laundry list of ultra-right-wing libertarian deregulation (while advertising it solely as an anti-eminent domain initiative); and after this was exposed, the proposition went from having a healthy lead in pre-election polls to being soundly (and rightly) rejected on election day. Had the authors of the ballot initiative simply stuck to the eminent domain issue, the proposition would have easily passed, and neither Acres Of Books nor anybody in San Pedro would now need to worry about their land being taken from them for yuppie condos, megamalls, or office buildings.
Don't forget the last time that the City of Long Beach "supported artists." That legendary bait-and-switch still flavours the character of the Long Beach art scene.
God, what BS. Unbelievable. If the city of Long Beach had the first clue about urban planning, they'd find a way to work Acres of Books into the developing urban fabric. Then again, if they had the first clue about urban planning, Cityplace and the new Pike wouldn't exist, so I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for them to suddenly develop the aforementioned clue.
It's already started in San Pedro, my friends. The developer who is putting in a condo tower on 8th and Centre got his zoning change from residential (R 1.5) to commercial by claiming the parcel was a "transition zone." Now City Planning is saying (as we did before the development was approved) that zoning should be consistent over the whole block, so now they are considering taking this residential block and converting it to C-2 (commercial - no height restrictions).
I'd consider re-zoning a block and consolidating lots for the purpose of doing a single, city backed development to be totally different things. One could lead to the other, but that's not how we'd see a block-sized project done.
Of course the proposed Palos Verdes Urban Village would be on a consolidated lot, but I somehow see that as different.
And anyway, neither of those things are the same as eminent domain. ED is when land is seized (for a "fair market price") by the government from a property owner who does not want to sell. While this is defensible in some cases, like if the purpose is to build a fire station or a library or a park (the traditional uses of eminent domain), over the last few decades it has come to be used to take land from private owners and hand it right over to other (usually politically-connected) private concerns to build money-making projects like malls and office buildings. It's the latter use that is outrageous, and that could have been stopped by Proposition 90 last year, had the authors not decided to be dishonest and sneak other extreme provisions into the language of the proposition.
For you optimists out there, all is not lost: there are still efforts being made in California to do away with the rampant abuse of eminent domain once and for all. Will it work? Will it be too late for Acres Of Books? We'll see.
The Castle Coalition is working hard to fight ED abuse. Check them out at http://www.castlecoalition.org
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