Planning Commissioners on Thursday approved the design for a 281-unit housing development near the 2ND & PCH shopping center in Southeast Long Beach.
The six-story development at 6700 Pacific Coast Highway will replace the Congressional Place commercial building, which sold last year for $41 million. The project will include 17 studio apartments, 161 one-bedrooms, 85 two-bedrooms and 18 three-bedrooms.
Mixed into the 281 units will be 13 very-low-income units, which allows developers to build taller buildings under state law. The building is projected to be just over 85 feet tall.
The development would serve as an entryway into Long Beach because it’s one of the first parcels of land people see after crossing the bridge from Seal Beach. It’s expected to include retail space along its Studebaker Road entrance in addition to a fitness center.
The building’s Pacific Coast Highway frontage will also feature a mural created by local artists, according to Clement Tsay with the Holland Partner Group, which proposed the project.
Tsay said the Holland Partner Group group responded to community concerns over how the project would affect parking by including a parking space for each room with an additional 47 for the retail space and guest parking. The project is expected to include a minimum of 507 parking spaces.
The parcel in question was included in the city’s Housing Element, a plan for future housing production the city submitted to the state to show where roughly 26,500 housing units could be built by 2029.
In the plan, Long Beach was projected to need about 11,200 very low-income and low-income units by 2029, and this site, in particular, was slated to include up to 95 low-income units, dozens more than the developer now plans on building.
Those lost low-income units could be backfilled through more accessory-dwelling units in other parts of the city, according to Amy Harbin, a city planner working on the project. Harbin told commissioners Thursday that the city estimates there will be 1,015 more ADUs produced than the housing element originally forecast.
Planning Commissioners voted unanimously to approve the project Thursday despite a handful of objections from residents who said the increased lights and traffic would harm wildlife living in nearby wetlands.
Others objected to potentially worse traffic caused by the development and two others proposed nearby. If they’re all built, they would add over 1,300 units to the area.
The Holland Partner Group also developed the Volta on Pine project, and it’s in the middle of building another 271-unit housing project Downtown at the corner of Third Street and Pacific Avenue.