Long Beach + A City for the 21st Century: An 11 Step Plan by Doug Otto

By Doug Otto

We live in tough economic times, and we need to adopt an aggressive plan to become the city we have always aspired to be + vibrant, prosperous, and entrepreneurial.

To be a successful city, Long Beach must be a prosperous city. To be a prosperous city, we must make business and job growth our first priority. That means organizational changes, new thinking, and bold new initiatives.

Goal 1: Support our existing businesses.

Business retention is the best return on investment of our economic development dollars. Our existing Long Beach businesses deserve and need our support; we want them to stay and grow in Long Beach. Let's recognize that chasing big retail is not, by itself, an economic development strategy. We need retail to support our sales tax base, but we can't build a prosperous city in the new economy by depending solely on retail.

Goal 2: Focus on new business creation and targeted attractions that make sense.

Bring new 21st century businesses to Long Beach. The 21st century economy is more information and technology driven, and requires firms and regions to be more nimble, agile, and entrepreneurial. We need to emphasize and support new business creation to grow the Long Beach economy and create more jobs for residents.

Goal 3: Prepare our residents for 21st century jobs.

We have the educational infrastructure that cities around the country want: a strong public K-12 system, a progressive community college, and a heralded state university with important graduate systems in business, engineering, and education. We now need to strategically utilize them to prepare our city for the new economy.

Goal 4: Encourage recent graduates to start new businesses right here in Long Beach.

Last year, more than 8,000 students graduated from CSULB and 1,825 graduated from LBCC. We must retain our best and brightest young minds from CSULB and LBCC as they graduate. We can't lose them to Orange County or Los Angeles. This generation wants what Long Beach has: an active lifestyle in an urban environment with a beautiful natural setting. They are our future, and we want them here + to harness their creativity, intelligence, and competence.

Goal 5: Restructure the city's business development organization to promote job and business growth.

We all need to pull our oars in the same direction to restructure our city. That means making business and job growth priority number one. To do that, we need to restructure our city organization to reflect that goal. The city can't be a bureaucratic speed bump to businesses that exist here already or that want to set up shop in Long Beach.

Goal 6: Develop and maintain good, reliable information for effective city services and utilize technology to increase efficiency and outreach.

Data is an abundant resource in the world we live in, and we need to utilize it in a way that helps our residents by enhancing city services while protecting privacy. city government needs to understand crime trends, traffic flow, and city service response times, as well as being able to mine data for other purposes. By using data to predict our city's needs, we become proactive rather than reactive, and therefore more efficient with our resources, including time and dollars. Collaborating with the private sector to become a data-driven city will also help focus our businesses and entrepreneurs to become more efficient and resourceful in their enterprises, helping grow their companies and create more jobs.

We live in a rapidly changing world that is now centered around social media, smartphones, and instant results. Long Beach needs to keep up. By utilizing new technologies to our advantage, we can both reduce costs in city departments and increase the quality of life for our citizens.

Goal 7: Develop the creative economy.

Successful American cities have long recognized that arts and culture are key drivers to secure economic prosperity. We need to make Long Beach a creative capital to attract the high-skilled workforce companies are looking for and to foster an innovative environment around town. The creative economy will create jobs, boost productivity, and improve the quality of life.

Goal 8: Ensure that growth strengthens the quality of life in our community.

It almost seems inevitable that there will be political tension between economic growth and a quality environment. But not only is it possible to have both, in the 21st century, it is impossible to have sustainable economic growth without protecting our environment and our quality of life. Economic growth must strengthen our quality of life. It is our responsibility to keep Long Beach a livable and sustainable city.

Goal 9: Market Long Beach.

We need to tell Long Beach's true story: that Long Beach is a great place to live, raise a family, grow a business, and work. We can't afford to let our great city be defined by those who have never lived in Long Beach; we have to tell our own story and tell it well.

Goal 10: Tackle special projects.

We need to take care of the basics of economic development while focusing on some key efforts that need immediate attention.

Goal 11: Ensure ongoing fiscal discipline.

Long Beach has made admirable strides recently in achieving fiscal responsibility by beginning to rein in pension costs, achieving a balanced budget for this fiscal year (although deficits are projected for the next two fiscal years), and beginning to address the issue of unfunded liabilities. However, none of the bold, innovative recommendations contained in this plan are possible, unless the city and its leadership commit themselves to ongoing fiscal discipline. This is not an easy task, and requires the Mayor and City Council to place the interests of the entire city before the interests of the individual council districts. It also requires the realization that the success of our city requires ongoing responsible development, as outlined in this Plan. Ongoing fiscal discipline must become a touchstone for the future work of our city government and leadership.

  INTRODUCTION

We live in tough economic times, and we need to adopt an aggressive plan to become the city we have always aspired to be + vibrant, prosperous, and entrepreneurial.

To be a successful city, Long Beach must be a prosperous city. To be a prosperous city, we must make business and job growth our first priority. That means organizational changes, new thinking, and bold new initiatives.

The plan begins with an overall vision of a new Long Beach, including:

• Safe streets
• Great schools
• Thriving neighborhoods
• Prosperity throughout the city
• Ongoing fiscal discipline

I propose a citywide effort to identify our vision and the creation of a plan to attain it. This effort cannot be City Hall-centric, but must be community-based with strong leadership. My eleven-point plan will change our economic outlook for many years to come. It will position Long Beach for success in the short, medium, and long terms. It is grounded in reality, based on proven principles, and achievable.   Goal 1: Support our existing businesses.

Business retention is the best return on investment of our economic development dollars. Our existing Long Beach businesses deserve and need our support; we want them to stay and grow in Long Beach. Let's recognize that chasing big retail is not, by itself, an economic development strategy. We need retail to support our sales tax base, but we can't build a prosperous city in the new economy by depending solely on retail.

Action steps:

• Make permitting fast, easy, and comprehensible. We are in the service business, and ensuring that our business customers receive excellent service is key to a business-friendly environment.

• Provide an accessible system of support services to help 21st century businesses, like logistics and health care, navigate city processes. We need to support our small businesses on principal corridors, such as Atlantic Ave., Anaheim St., Long Beach Blvd., and many others. We want these thriving corridors in every neighborhood.

• Create an online business assistance portal that owners can use to find business assistance and new funding sources (such as SBA loans).

• Offer incentives and training to existing businesses that want to grow and expand by waiving or back-loading fees and using land use techniques, such as increased density in appropriate zones.

• Leverage existing business assistance resources, such as training through the Small Business Development Centers (SBDCs) and the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Program at LBCC.

• Preserve and expand the industrial sector, which is an important part of our tax and employment base.

Bring new 21st century businesses to Long Beach. The 21st century economy is more information and technology driven, and requires firms and regions to be more nimble, agile, and entrepreneurial. We need to emphasize and support new business creation to grow the Long Beach economy and create more jobs for residents.

Action steps:

• Assemble teams of stakeholders to identify the steps we need to take to encourage new business creation, particularly in existing Long Beach clusters, such as health care, transportation, and logistics. Identify key opportunities, effective incentives, and existing roadblocks to new business creation.

• Provide sensible and fiscally responsible incentives to locate these businesses here.

• Focus on target attractions in technology and innovation sectors, particularly in existing Long Beach clusters, like health care, logistics, and the aviation industries.

• Market the assets of Long Beach to early stage and start-up firms in these clusters, such as the Port, our strategic location, our great education system, our medical corridors, and our workforce.

We have the educational infrastructure that cities around the country want: a strong public K-12 system, a progressive community college, and a heralded state university with important graduate systems in business, engineering, and education. We now need to strategically utilize them to prepare our city for the new economy.

Action steps:

• Continue and grow the Long Beach College Promise to create more prepared college-bound youth.

• Support CSULB efforts to become a "Hybrid Model" university, i.e., one that combines both research and teaching, so it becomes an "app University" to develop business application ideas.

• Work with LBUSD to provide more career preparation and job training programs for high school and college students by furthering linked learning, internships, and alliances between the LBUSD and the LBCC to better prepare students to enter the workforce.

• Teach and encourage entrepreneurship starting in high school through alliances with the business community.

• Support a strong relationship between business and education, including a comprehensive internship program for students at LBUSD, LBCC, and CSULB.

• Focus on educating youth for the jobs of the future by involving businesses more in education through internships and classroom participation.

Last year, more than 8,000 students graduated from CSULB and 1,825 graduated from LBCC. We must retain our best and brightest young minds from CSULB and LBCC as they graduate. We can't lose them to Orange County or Los Angeles. This generation wants what Long Beach has: an active lifestyle in an urban environment with a beautiful natural setting. They are our future, and we want them here + to harness their creativity, intelligence, and competence.

Action steps:

• Provide business incentives, mentoring, and resources to help young entrepreneurs establish their businesses here.

• Support efforts to make Long Beach a destination for millennials: a vibrant urban center in a beautiful natural setting.

• Visit business classes at LBCC and CSULB to better inform students of opportunities or incentives to start or grow businesses in Long Beach.

We all need to pull our oars in the same direction to restructure our city. That means making business and job growth priority number 1. To do that, we need to restructure our city organization to reflect that goal. The city can't be a bureaucratic speed bump to businesses that exist here already or that want to set up shop in Long Beach.

Action steps:

• Create an Economic Development Department and move certain core functions currently dispersed throughout city departments to maximize their impact. We need to bring together:

• Workforce Development
• Business Outreach and Industry Support
• Business Improvement Districts
• Small Business Assistance
• Property and Asset Management
• Federal Grant Programs, such as Community Development Block Grants and Workforce Investment Act Grants
• Housing Development
• Major Project Facilitation, including Ombudsman Services

• Create a new city-sponsored, non-profit entity with private sector drive and ideas, coupled with public sector responsibility that can take the lead to promote economic prosperity. Some current city functions would be transferred here, but accountability would remain at the public level. Those functions could include:

• Business Improvement Districts. BIDs would include Bixby Knolls, 4th Street, Anaheim, Belmont Shore, Magnolia, and Downtown.
• Filming and Special Events. Revenue from filming and special events would support the new entity.
• Business Loan Programs. The city's business loan programs would be better handled by a more private sector-oriented entity.
• Marketing. A dedicated effort to tell the new Long Beach story.
• Economic Data and Economic Impact Analysis. Target specific areas of city actions and review them for their individual economic impact.
• Property Disposition. The new entity would be responsible for marketing and extracting the best financial deals for excess city and former RDA property.
• Cultural Affairs. The new entity would spearhead efforts to ignite the creative economy in the city.
• Special Projects. There are certain specific initiatives, outlined later in the plan, which we need to start on right now because time is of the essence, e.g., a biomedical corridor, growing the creative economy, development around the Queen Mary, and the reuse of the Boeing C-17 building at the airport.

Data is an abundant resource in the world we live in, and we need to utilize it in a way that helps our residents by enhancing city services while protecting privacy. City government needs to understand crime trends, traffic flow, and city service response times, as well as being able to mine data for other purposes. By using data to predict our city's needs, we become proactive rather than reactive, and therefore more efficient with our resources, including time and dollars. Collaborating with the private sector to become a data-driven city will also help focus our businesses and entrepreneurs to become more efficient and resourceful in their enterprises, helping grow their companies and create more jobs.

We live in a rapidly changing world that is now centered around social media, smartphones, and instant results. Long Beach needs to keep up. By utilizing new technologies to our advantage, we can both reduce costs in city departments and increase the quality of life for our citizens.

Action steps:

• Integrate new data services with our current systems and processes to better plan and allocate traditional resources.

• Create measurable goals so we can track our accomplishments and areas for improvement.

• Work with the private sector to develop best methods of analysis and come up with cohesive means of solving problems together.

• Enhance the "GO Long Beach" app, so it remains a free, modern, and easy-to-use resource for businesses and residents.

• Continue to deputize residents to report quality of life issues, such as potholes, downed trees, and other issues with the app, and allow the city to use it to communicate news and emergency updates.

• Improve technology and processes so that city vendors are paid within 30 days.

• Put all applications online to streamline permit, zoning, and other processes.

• Use GIS applications to track code enforcement.

Successful American cities have long recognized that arts and culture are key drivers to secure economic prosperity. We need to make Long Beach a creative capital to attract the high-skilled workforce companies are looking for and to foster an innovative environment around town. The creative economy will create jobs, boost productivity, and improve our quality of life.

Action steps:

• Establish a cultural trust fund to aggregate arts and culture funding into one pool to maximize impact.

• Establish a one percent art development fee on new developments to support art organizations throughout the city, similar to efforts in Seattle, Portland, Santa Monica, Sacramento, Pasadena, Los Angeles, San Jose, and Los Angeles County.

• Establish an Arts and Culture Commission that meets quarterly to provide support and guidance to the city in its efforts to grow arts, culture, and the creative economy.

It almost seems inevitable that there will be political tension between economic growth and a quality environment. But not only is it possible to have both, in the 21st century, it is impossible to have sustainable economic growth without protecting our environment and our quality of life. Economic growth must strengthen our quality of life. It is our responsibility to keep Long Beach a livable and sustainable city.

Action steps:

• Develop an Economic Element of the General Plan that is fully integrated with the other key elements of the Plan, including mobility, housing, and open space to protect our environment.

• Lead a regional effort with neighboring and upstream jurisdictions and key environmental and conservation groups to protect our beaches and recreation areas.

• Measure, evaluate, and support new projects based on their economic and environmental impact.

• Invest in infrastructure improvements that protect our environment and quality of life.

• Deploy the latest technologies, designs, materials, and innovations.

• Work with the City of Los Angeles to protect our West Side from increased air pollution and other environmental hazards.

• Actively work with regional and local groups to develop a sound 710 Freeway plan.

• Ensure the ongoing success of key cultural institutions that contribute to Long Beach's identity.

• Further and improve the River Link Plan for the Los Angeles River.

We need to tell Long Beach's true story: that Long Beach is a great place to live, raise a family, grow a business, and work. We can't afford to let our great city be defined by those who have never lived in Long Beach; we have to tell our own story and tell it well.

Action steps:

• Re-brand Long Beach as a vibrant, growing, creative, and entrepreneurial town.

• Assemble a team within the city-related new entity to market Long Beach regionally and nationally.

• Use social media to mobilize community and neighborhood organizations to tell the Long Beach story: a new city for a new century.

We need to take care of the basics of economic development while focusing on some key efforts that need immediate attention.

Action areas:

• Create a Biomedical Alliance: We need to leverage the enormous talent and economic impact of our health care sector, and that includes Memorial, St. Mary's, Community, and the VA Hospital. We can offer incentives + super expedited permitting, reduced fees, and workforce training + to encourage the growth and attraction of our biomedical/health care sector.

• Develop a Long Beach/Los Angeles Port Center for Excellence: The Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles have established themselves as worldwide leaders in business and environmentally sound practices. International commerce with the oceans as its highways increasingly drive the world's economy. Both ports, in conjunction with CSULB and neighboring universities, the Aquarium of the Pacific, and the international trade infrastructure surrounding the ports need to develop a research and application development center that brings together commerce, technology, and research to provide environmental and business solutions to future issues in international commerce.

• Initiate Innovation and Technology Zones: We need to leverage our location, infrastructure, and capital and develop incentives to create new High-Tech/Innovation Zones, such as an Aerospace Innovation Zone at and around our revitalized airport; and a Design Innovation Zone, leveraging the artistic and architectural design cluster that is in its nascent stage, but growing.

• Re-energize the Queen Mary, Pike at Queensway Bay, and Rainbow Harbor Developments: We had an opportunity to re-think and redevelop the Queen Mary project during the bankruptcy, but today we have the same tired English village as we did 25 years ago. The Pike at Queensway Bay and Rainbow Harbor also fall short of their great potential. We need fresh ideas and insights by inviting a national competition among architects and developers, universities, and think tanks. Let's stop pretending that the only good ideas occur in City Hall.

• Develop A Boeing Reuse Plan: We're late on this one, but better late than never. There may be an opportunity to bid for the Boeing 777X program, if we act immediately. We should establish a red team to aggressively seek this and other aerospace manufacturing uses here in Long Beach. We're going to have to fill a big hole in our employment + we need the best minds on this right now. Our nation faces new threats in the 21st century and Long Beach has the capacity to deliver the new tools and technologies to aid our defense. A first step would be an application to the Department of Defense, Office of Economic Adjustment for a major planning grant.

• Leverage the Impact of the Port: The Port of Long Beach is an economic engine for the city and region. We need to leverage this asset while protecting our environment and the impacted West Long Beach communities. We need to maximize efforts to develop port-related clusters, such as logistics, engineering, and international trade.

Long Beach has made admirable strides recently in achieving fiscal responsibility by beginning to rein in pension costs, achieving a balanced budget for this fiscal year (although deficits are projected for the next two fiscal years), and beginning to address the issue of unfunded liabilities. However, none of the bold, innovative recommendations contained in this plan are possible, unless the city and its leadership commit themselves to ongoing fiscal discipline. This is not an easy task, and requires the Mayor and City Council to place the interests of the entire city before the interests of the individual council districts. It also requires the realization that the success of our city requires ongoing responsible development, as outlined in this plan. Ongoing fiscal discipline must become a touchstone for the future work of our city government and leadership.

Action Steps:

• One-time moneys should not be used to fund ongoing programs, but should be used only for capital expenditures.

• In order to reinforce this discipline, residents must be more closely involved in the budgeting process, even in a decision-making capacity.

• Multi-year budget and long-term financial planning must be undertaken annually and communicated to the City Council and all residents.

• A more easily understandable budget document with a clear performance matrix must be made available to all residents and at least biannual reports of progress against that matrix must be provided.

We have fewer jobs in Long Beach now than we did in 2000. That's a trend that we can't let continue. Our future as a city depends on our making the right decisions now + and the right decision is to make this a prosperous city. More businesses, more jobs, more opportunity + for all of Long Beach. That's our goal and that's our job.