Long Beach's Second+PCH, Your Newest Seaside Village

The developers of second+pch have big dreams for the 11 acre space on the southeast corner of Second Street and the Pacific Coast Highway in Long Beach, currently home to the rundown SeaPort Marina Hotel. RCLCo and Ratkovich Properties want to create an eastern gateway to Long Beach, a "Seaside Village" that is "uniquely Long Beach," and inspired by Mediterranean towns with cobblestone streets and open-air cafes. Their current plans are for a 100 room boutique hotel; 95 hotel-branded condos; 235 residential lofts, condos, and/or townhouses; 192,000 square feet of retail; 20,000 square feet of dining space; a Coastal Science Center affiliated with CSU Long Beach's College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics; a 99 seat theater that will be the home of CSULB's Cal Rep; and a cycling and tri-athlete center. The architects are Long Beach-based Studio 111 and LA-based Rios Clementi Hale Studios, and Joie de Vivre Hotels will partner on the hotel.

The plans include one 12 story tower (it will hold residences), which has been moved from an earlier placement on the intersection to the south side of the development on the PCH. The rest of the buildings are two to six stories. The District Weekly reported in July that those heights and the residences will require the city to exempt the project from the Southeast Area Development Improvement Plan. The Coastal Commission will also have to approve the plan.

David Malmuth, Managing Director at RCLCo and lead developer on the project, tells Curbed they hope to have a draft environmental impact report circulating by the beginning of the year and Planning Commission approval by April or May. They'll hold a meeting next week to present the latest plan and gather comments for the site plan review and EIR. Malmuth says community feedback has been important to the process (it's responsible for the tower movement), and that the team has had more than 75 meetings with locals over the past year and a half. Traffic has been the biggest concern, and he's frank that "a project this size is going to have impact." He says their study found they'll be able to mitigate impact at most or all intersections, although the city will also need to do its own analysis.
· second+pch [Official Site]
· 2ND+PCH PROJECT WILL SEEK PERMISSION TO IGNORE ZONING LAWS [District Weekly]
· Meeting To Discuss Redevelopment Proposal Details [Gazettes.com]