City officials weigh the look and future of a Bixby Knolls shopping center

THE PROPOSED BUILDING

Many people in Long Beach blame the Redevelopment Agency (RDA) for knocking down one stylish, historic building after another. But for a few minutes during an April 21 RDA board meeting, it seemed like the agency was in the historic preservation business—and, slightly later, like Eighth District Councilwoman Rae Gabelich was warming up the bulldozer.

That was a weird five minutes, literally, and by the time RDA board member John Thomas said, “There’s a new day in the RDA: to be more sensitive and look at reuses,” it was over, and he was talking about the Acres of Books sale—next on the agenda.

The RDA board first began to sound like the city’s Cultural Heritage Commission when it talked of replacing the former Roberts department store building in the 4400 block of Atlantic Avenue with a Marshalls franchise. Built when Glenn Ford was a movie star, and now owned by the Gaska family of Los Angeles, the empty Roberts has seen more cobwebs than a Halloween costume shop, which is what it’s been the last few Octobers. It anchors the retail center; its glass-walled ground floor and stuccoed upstairs recall a tanned girl with beautiful vacant eyes—and a large forehead.

The store is a monument to the giddy years after World War II, when our parents, or their parents, first had money again—and by some accounts, the Gaskas have been as resistant to redevelopment as the British were to certain German architects during the war.

The city and Gabelich have been eager to finish transforming a half-done shopping center—with a newish Starbucks and Orchard Supply Hardware, and an oldish ex-department store—from half-1950s/half-1990s to, well, all 1990s. But the RDA board didn’t like the look of the proposed shopping center.

“I think that we deserve better. I think the community deserves better,” said RDA board Vice Chairman William Baker. He wanted to ensure that the shopping center’s makeover with an Early Nothing kind of modern architecture (a little stucco here, some flagstone and decorative tiles there) includes all of it.

“All of the back property is what I would call a blighted property,” Baker said later of the massive shopping area behind Roberts, which extends eastward past California Avenue. “It needs to be revitalized and let people know these businesses are there.”

“I really, honestly, felt that the architect should have been here today,” RDA board Chairman Thomas Fields said at the meeting. Craig Beck, director of the city of Long Beach’s Department of Development Services, agreed.

“I think we share some of your concerns relative to architecture,” Beck said. “We’re very concerned about the look and feel of that shopping center, especially on Atlantic Avenue. That shopping center is on one of our major corrridors.”

Then the board voted unanimously to continue the design review process—and its architecture discussion—at a later date, its May 5 meeting. Gabelich said the delay could derail the whole project.

“My two predecessors were not successful in coming to an agreement on that property. I started working on this with the Gaskas three-and-a-half years ago when I first came on the council,” Gabelich said later in a telephone interview. “Everybody has come to the table and given a bit. When I heard what happened this morning, I was very upset. I will tell you, we are on a time crunch, and it is possible that we could lose the Marshalls. They said ‘Yes’ two-and-a-half years ago.”

We don’t want to lose Marshalls. Or do we not want to lose the Roberts?

“It’s an outstanding example of mid-century modern architecture,” said E. Thor Carlson, a Cultural Heritage Commissioner who visited the RDA meeting with warm words about the former department store building. “I think it’s unfortunate to tear down an architectural gem that we already have and replace it with this.”

Afterwards, Carlson made the ultimate leap in architectural styles, suggesting that Acres of Books, which sold its 1924 Streamline Moderne home to the city for $2.8 million that very morning, would perhaps be the ultimate tenant for the Roberts—if only the RDA would leave the store and its capacious basement standing.

(Said Fields: “The Roberts was pretty much a hazard,” using past-tense as if it was already gone.)

“I’ve never even considered Acres of Books for that site because we’ve had Marshalls signed for that site for two-and-a-half years,” Gabelich said. “But I am looking at another site that I think would be great [for them] and that’s the Expo furniture building. It’s not great architecture, but it is a great facility.”

Which is exactly what you could say about the Marshalls plan.

Tags: acres of books, bixby knolls, Long Beach, Marshalls, redevelopment