Long Beach knows it can never escape its past — so the city is set to build on it.

Strolling down Ocean Boulevard, it’s possible to see the whole of Long Beach’s history, and what it’s all been leading toward. Cranes sprout skyscrapers, the newest additions to a storied street dotted with generations of elders: the city’s first high-rise at the 1923 Cooper Arms building, the 1965 mid-century modern International Tower and the 1991 Landmark Square office building, to name a few.

Each of these witnessed a different Long Beach era: Its early 20th century heyday as an oceanside destination, when The Pike stood as the city’s beating heart — with its arcades, bath house and wooden roller coasters; its 1950s and ’60s chapter as “Iowa by the sea,” when an influx of Midwesterners headed west in search of opportunity — and found it in the oil- and Navy-dependent city; and its decline in the ’90s, after the breakwater killed the surf and the Navy made its exit, leaving the city without much of an identity to call its own.

Now, Long Beach is rebounding. Mayor Robert Garcia has been touting $3.5 billion in new developments pouring into the city. The rapid rise of the downtown has already transformed the city’s skyline, with more changes, and ever-taller buildings, coming soon. The view from the street level, staring up at the floors upon floors of construction, can be dizzying.

Keeping track of it all, for many, seems a Herculean task.

So the Press-Telegram on Sunday, April 7, launched an interactive map of the recently completed, approved and proposed major developments going up throughout the city. The map’s ultimate goal is to become a comprehensive way to understand just how much the city is growing. The Press-Telegram will update the map as projects wrap up or new proposals get introduced. The map will also become a tool with which to further report on how the city is changing — and what those changes could mean for the roughly 500,000 people who call Long Beach home.

“There is no question that the economy is the strongest it has been in a very long time,” Garcia said in a Friday, April 5, interview. “This doesn’t mean that all the jobs are great and we don’t have folks that are struggling — all of that is real. But the overall picture is strong.”

What led us here

While the city may very well be in a renaissance of sorts, the dozens of new buildings aren’t springing up from an ash heap. Their lineage can be traced back to an urgent question, left hanging when the Navy closed its Long Beach station in 1994, followed by its shipyard in 1997: What should the city become?

While the Navy had provided an economic engine for the city, it didn’t ward off less desirable trades, such as sex work and drug trafficking. Where luxury apartments now stand, across the street from the Police Department headquarters at Broadway and Chestnut Avenue, was once the perfect spot to find a plethora of bail bondsmen. Storefronts on the block in the late ’80s bore the names of Norm, Joey and Andy, a trio of men who were more than happy to help prisoners find their temporary freedom — for a price.

The Navy’s departure came as then-Mayor Beverly O’Neill, elected in 1994, served her first term. The way she saw it, she had both the opportunity and the responsibility to chart a new path.

“There was just a great need for study,” O’Neill said during a recent interview, “and working with the Navy in Washington on the land — on what was being left, what was being taken and what we were going to do to survive.”

O’Neill said she felt her task was to transition Long Beach “from being a Navy town to an ocean town.”

Naval properties were turned over to the Port of Long Beach, while new waterfront projects — such as the Aquarium of the Pacific, which opened in 1998 — were introduced.

Jim Hankla, who served as the city manager from 1987 through 1998 — but kicked off his city career with a 1960 internship — said the work he and O’Neill did during those years was critical in building the infrastructure that would allow the growth Long Beach is seeing today.

“We were able to put a lot of the skeleton together,” Hankla said, “and that skeleton is now getting the meat on the bones.”

How the boom has benefited Long Beach

That meat, by the Press-Telegram’s count – as of April 7 – consists of more than 7,000 new housing units, 1,000 new hotel rooms and 4-million square feet of new commercial, industrial and municipal space either completed or in the pipeline since 2017.

For Garcia, those numbers are proof the city’s on the right track.

“Certainly, development is the strongest that it’s been here in Long Beach in decades,” he said, “and we’re excited about it.”

Along with a significant drop in crime from the the Navy days, Garcia pointed to a roaring tourism industry — and the jobs that industry brings with it — as a beneficial side effect of all the recent investment in Long Beach. After all, he said, the addition of those more than 1,000 hotel rooms was completely market-driven.

“There’s clearly a demand for our hotels,” he said, “and it’s happening citywide, not just in the downtown.”

The way both O’Neill and Hankla see it, they couldn’t be prouder of the city Long Beach is becoming.

“I don’t think that there is any city in the United States,” O’Neill said, “that is developing and looking toward the future as well as Long Beach is.”

Why some residents are critical

But not all residents see it that way.

Josh Butler, executive director of the advocacy group Housing Long Beach, said only a sliver of the city’s population has seen the benefits of all this development.

“I think Long Beach has seen a lot of positive changes,” he said. “I wish that we had done more to bring more people along to experience those changes in a positive way.

“Too many people have experienced those changes in a negative way,” he added, “by being forced out of their homes, and forced out of their neighborhoods, and forced out of the city.”

While Long Beach certainly has kicked housing developments into high gear, affordable housing represents about 750 of the more than 7,000 units being built. There are more than twice as many hotel rooms in the pipeline. Rents, meanwhile, continue climbing.

Because cities can’t dictate what type of housing get built on private land, there’s only so much Long Beach can do to spur more affordable housing. But, Butler said, one policy Long Beach is developing, set to go before the City Council this summer, could make a difference.

“I think the city certainly needs to implement inclusionary housing as soon as possible,” he said, referring to a policy adopted by many California cities in which all developers must either build some affordable housing or contribute to an affordable housing fund for that city.

“We shouldn’t build one more for-profit development without an inclusionary housing policy in place,” Butler said.

Where Long Beach goes from here

Garcia, for his part, understands the criticism.

“We absolutely recognize that there are still people in our community that really need our help,” he said. “That’s something I think about everyday, as we’re developing and growing: How does Long Beach remain this diverse, beautiful place that we love?”

As far as inclusionary housing is concerned, Garcia said, he is a strong supporter and excited to see the proposal reach the council.

To address the broader goal of sharing the windfall citywide, Garcia said, it’s important to note that new development isn’t just a downtown phenomenon. It’s spreading upward, to new projects like the full-block, dining-centered Uptown Commons in North Long Beach. It’s also reaching all the way east, to the 11-acre retail project 2nd + PCH, on the city’s border with Seal Beach.

As Long Beach marches ahead in this period of the city’s story — one that will be marked by its own Ocean Boulevard additions, with a shiny new Civic Center slated to open in June on the street’s 400 block — Garcia said the key will be to make sure the city remains a viable home for everyone, even as it grows.

“It’s incredibly important, as we do this, to always remember that we’re working everyday to ensure Long Beach is a place for everyone,” Garcia said, “whether you have a young family, or you’re a cook in one of our kitchens, or you’re a housekeeper in one of our hotels, or you’re a young engineer coming out of Cal State Long Beach.”

In accomplishing that, he said, “We don’t get everything right all the time.

“But,” he added, “there’s no question we’re moving in the right direction.”

The right direction, in Garcia’s view, seems to be straight up.

What that means for those standing on Ocean Boulevard, looking skyward — toward the dizzying movement above — remains to be seen.

Editor’s note: The Press-Telegram’s interactive development map will update continually, with each new project that gets approved or comes online. As such, the map, eventually, will no longer reflect the number of projects noted in the story.