That’s it.

A quartet of town hall meetings that amounted to give ’em hell sessions for outraged Long Beachers to voice their objections to proposals that could eventually allow developers to add more and taller buildings along the city’s major corridors are over. City Hall’s planning leaders have promised that public input will be taken into account to redraw draft maps showing where more intense development patterns may be allowed, but for now, it’s somewhat uncertain how substantial those changes will be and when they will be released for a new round of public review.

However many people there are in Long Beach who may like what city planners have to offer, few took advantage to speak up in public relative to those in the opposition. Residents who had their turn at an open microphone to speak — or in some cases, to shout — tended to hail from Long Beach’s suburban and affluent eastside neighborhoods. The seeming consensus, as things sounded during the fourth and final session in Bixby Knolls, is that planners’ intentions are the height of folly.

“Please don’t think we are dense, and please don’t be dense about our city,” a punning speaker said during that meeting, which took place Wednesday night at Scherer Park.

That speaker used the term “density” as a synonym for “stupid.” Planners and developers, however, use the term “density” to refer to the idea that finding room for more dwelling units and people in a city is good for a local economy and quality of life.

“We have a need for housing throughout all economic spectrums,” said Linda Tatum, city government’s planning bureau manager told Wednesday’s audience.

Planners also have the objective of fostering economic conditions that may foster local hiring so Long Beachers can work closer to where they live, given that a year-old Beacon Economics analysis showed that more than three-quarters of residents commute outside the city.

“We’d like to see that number turned around,” Tatum said. “We’d like to see more jobs.”

The housing question

The plans at issue are contained within City Hall’s draft Land Use Element, which would be a component of the city’s general plan if eventually adopted by the City Council. The policies outlined in a Land Use Element are not as precise as zoning regulations, but do outline what kinds of development can be allowed in a given area. The city’s current Land Use Element dates back to 1989, and its last revision happened in 1997.

Much of the recent controversies have revolved around proposals for Long Beach’s corridors, major streets like Bellflower Boulevard, Pacific Coast Highway or Long Beach Boulevard. One example is the proposal to permit four- and five-story construction in the area where Stearns Street crosses Bellflower Boulevard in the Los Altos area. A common sentiment among those who attended this past Wednesday’s meeting is that it’s impossible for city planners to claim the draft plan won’t alter the character of the city’s suburban areas if more intensive development patterns are encouraged along the streets around the perimeters of those neighborhoods.

Robert Fox, executive director of the Council of Neighborhood Organizations, is among those who are organizing opposition to the current draft of the plan. He said Wednesday that he and other neighborhood group members plan to draw up their proposals as a counter-offer to what City Hall has published.

“We think it’s better to have an alternate plan,” he said.

Although City Hall planners point to the problems of overcrowded households and a need for additional housing stock as a rationale for more density, Fox expressed doubts that the city’s land use proposals will be able to alleviate the housing crisis.

Specifically, he mentioned proposals for taller structures in Alamitos Beach. Draft maps show four- and seven-story buildings along Broadway, and Fox said that sort of idea is the kind of thing that leads to million-dollar condos, not moderately-priced residences. Fox asserted, however, the possibility of designing alternative proposals that wouldn’t lead to conditions forcing Long Beachers to leave town.

“What I don’t want to do is displace people,” Fox said.

Southern California Associated Governments, a regional planning agency with responsibilities that include projecting future housing needs, has forecasted that Long Beach will need to build more than 7,000 new housing units during the 2014-21 period. As of the end of last year, the city was still 5,900 units short.

What’s more, a special city panel that Mayor Robert Garcia had assembled to examine issues related to the cost and availability affordable and workforce housing, reported in May that some 47 percent of Long Beach households, whether renting or owning, spend more than 30 percent of their incomes to keep a roof over their heads.

The report, which cited U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department data from 2009-13, also reported 24 percent of Long Beach households spend more than half of their incomes on housing.

“Recent housing production has improved, but still has not met the goal of sufficient new supply to significantly expand choice and affordability,” Amy Bodek, the city’s Development Services Director, wrote in an early June memo to other City Hall officials that addressed the ongoing work to update the city’s land use element.

Bodek’s memo’s pointed to data within the housing panel’s report to make her case that Long Beach needs more housing production. She also maintained that the city’s aging housing stock — 72 percent of which went up before 1970 — means many residential structures will need replacement. She wrote that land costs, disability access requirements and changing consumer tastes are among factors that argue in favor of the kind of vertical, dense developments proposed within the draft land use element.

Nonetheless, Fox and others are skeptical that planners’ visions of people moving into tall buildings and foregoing personal vehicles in favor of walking, bicycling or hopping onto public transit will come to pass. Fox, who said he’s be happy to drive an electric vehicle, doesn’t see a decline of personal vehicle ownership as being a good thing.

“When you take away the ability of people to transport themselves, you destroy democracy,” he said. “No longer will people be able to come to City Council and voice your opinions.”

The Federal Reserve System reported in June 2016 that Americans between the ages of 16 to 34 purchase personal vehicles at lower rates than older people, but also concluded that if the data is controlled for income, employment and household characteristics, the numbers are not sufficient to prove that Millennials will opt out of vehicle ownership over the long term.

The economic development angle

Meeting attendees at Scherer Park, as well as those who attended an earlier meeting at Whaley Park in East Long Beach, cheered when city officials broached the prospect of no new housing being constructed if the City Council rejects proposed land use element. The idea of a halt to new housing, however, was presented in the context of that notion being a misconceived one.

And not everyone who attended the Scherer Park meeting applauded, or is altogether opposed to new construction. Bixby Knolls resident Stephanie Magnien Rockwell was one of at least two people who used her turn at the microphone to speak in favor of additional construction, saying she was tired of people she knows moving to Texas as a result of the higher costs of living in California.

Rockwell also said in an interview that density may help Bixby Knolls business owners find new customers, and that the vocal opponents of the land use proposals who attended public meetings may not be representative of the entire city.

“I think there are a lot of points in the plan that I support,” she said.

Planning staffers began the work of revising the draft maps on Thursday, the day after the final meeting, city advance planning officer Christopher Koontz said.

Koontz acknowledged that planners will adjust proposed height limits, particularly in proposals for east Long Beach.

“I totally expect that the heights will come down in the next iteration,” he said.

That said, Koontz also emphasized that planners are of the view that permitting taller buildings where a mix of residential and commercial uses could be allowed could improve the economic climate on major corridors like Pacific Coast Highway, Atlantic Avenue or Artesia Boulevard.

A landlord owning a property that’s home to an underperforming business, say a low-end motel, would have more incentive to tear down a bad hotel and build something new if the city’s code allows for a more lucrative land use, Koontz said.

City staffers’ next task in revising the draft land use element is to write-up a “we heard you” document outlining public input, Koontz said. Their objective is to have a new version ready for the Planning Commission’s review by year’s end.