SteelCraft, a new food-focused shopping center in Bixby Knolls where repurposed shipping containers take the place of buildings, continues a commercial revival of the area long in the making.

Although a grand opening is set for the first weekend of February, the uncommon development has already started to shape up as a place of business. Steelhead Coffee began serving coffee from its container last week, and Smog City Brewery has opened its taps.

Other businesses will follow quickly this month. DeSano Pizza Bakery, from Santa Monica, is set to open Friday. In mid-January there will be openings of Waffle Love, from Utah, specializing in Belgian waffles; Tajima Ramen House from San Diego; and Fresh Shave, serving Hawaiian shave ice. The end of the month should see the openings of Lovesome Chocolate and a gourmet hamburger restaurant still to be named.

The official grand opening of SteelCraft will be on Super Bowl weekend, Feb. 3-5.

Turning the boxes into kitchens is a task that has required considerable modification since workers put them into place in August.

The DeSano Pizza Bakery container, for example, boasts a wood-fired pizza oven. And all require the basic features one needs to run a commercial kitchen — insulation, plumbing, electricity, gas and a sewer connection.

“Think of it as a food truck, and we took the wheels off,” said Mark Turpin, president of Turpin Design Group, the company in charge of transforming the shipping containers into kitchen spaces.

Center co-owner Kim Gros, who is spearheading the SteelCraft project, doesn’t have a professional background in retail development or the restaurant industry. Her background is actually in human resources, and the Bixby Knolls resident said her love of food and Long Beach itself motivated her decision to create SteelCraft.

“We’re a port city, so why not use what the port uses to bring the uniqueness to your table,” Gros asked.

SteelCraft’s arrival continues an economic resurgence that, aside from the Great Recession, has been in progress for much of the new century.

Bixby blossoms

Bixby’s boom began in the years following World War II, with veterans and defense workers and their families snapping up existing houses and creating a demand for new neighborhoods. The town’s boundaries expanded and thousands of residents found themselves living farther away from the shops and department stores of downtown Long Beach.

The northern expansion created neighborhoods in Los Cerritos, California Heights and Bixby Knolls, among others.

The Bixby Knolls commercial district, chiefly along the 4000 block of uptown’s Atlantic Avenue, was an immediate hit among neighbors, with its more modern design, sparkling new department stores and 30 acres of free parking just steps away from the stores.

Breathless news stories from the early 1950s had marveled at the new Bixby Knolls Shopping Center that “involved more than $1,000,000 in building costs alone.”

Many of the stores were part of chains that made Bixby Knolls their first location in Long Beach, including the New York-based W.T. Grant, a five-and-dime store evolving into a “junior department store;” Oklahoma City’s C.R. Anthony “popular priced” department store; and the L.A.-based Vons grocery store. Other stores joined in, including the long-popular Robert’s department store (which opened at the Grant’s location in the 1960s); Brownie’s Toy Store; Horace Green & Sons hardware store; and Western Auto.

But Bixby Knolls was more than just a shopping area. The entire stretch was given over to all manner of activities to make a trek downtown unnecessary for any reason. By the mid-1950s, Atlantic Avenue’s uptown blocks featured two movie theaters, the elegant Crest and the perfectly serviceable Towne; classy steak houses like The Chandelier, baseball great Bob Lemon’s Ricart’s and the ever-popular Welch’s; an abundance of cocktail lounges with organ and piano music for dancing; and nightclubs like The Limit, which featured such performers as Linda Ronstadt, Ike & Tina Turner and Jackie Wilson.

For two decades, Bixby Knolls was one of the coolest parts of Long Beach, having wrested away much of what had been good about downtown.

The fall on Atlantic

But in the 1970s, with an aging population beginning to eschew the nighttime offerings and retailers becoming outdated if not downright dowdy, Bixby Knolls began a slide into mediocrity. The Crest and Towne ended their 30-year runs in 1977 and 1978, The Limit closed in 1971, and the restaurants closed or were retooled one after another.

The mammoth and novel Lakewood Center mall, which opened in 1951 and drew customers from every part of Long Beach, was one crippling blow, as was the advent of discount clothing stores and the new wave of retailers like Target. The traditional big stores were falling everywhere in Long Beach: Buffums, Desmond’s Dooley’s Hardware, Famous, Kress and Walkers.

In Bixby Knolls, Anthony closed in 1990 after 39 years, and Robert’s ended its 28-year run in 1995.

For years the merchants that remained continued to serve the neighborhood, but they was unable to lure people from other parts of town.

The fall wasn’t unique to Bixby Knolls. It was happening all over the country. The trick was in the rebound.

Making a comeback

The year 2000 is sometimes pointed to as a turning point for Bixby Knolls. Trader Joe’s opened a grocery there in November 2000 and the thriving market proved Bixby Knolls was a smart investment.

Charged with improving the neighborhood’s business climate, the Bixby Knolls Business Improvement Association, headed by its executive director Blair Cohn, established regular activities in the district, including the First Fridays music-art-shopping street fair, the Bixby Knolls Literary Society and Bixby Knolls Strollers, the last of which Cohn said has served as a way to show off some eight and a half years of progress attracting new businesses to the neighborhood.

Among recent arrivals to Bixby Knolls, Long Beach restaurateur Luis Navarro opened his second Lola’s Mexican Cuisine eatery on Atlantic Avenue this spring. Navarro opened the first Lola’s, as well as another restaurant, The Social List, on the Retro Row stretch of Fourth Street.

“Our impression was that it was a great neighborhood that’s in transition,” Navarro said.

From Navarro’s perspective, younger families moving into Bixby Knolls are changing the area’s demographics, but he also sees longer-term residents embracing the new-school businesses as they open.

Smog City’s owners plan to continue Bixby Knolls’ beer trend by offering 15 to 24 different brews at a time as well as a selection of beer cocktails, co-owner Laurie Porter said.

“I think it’s going to be an incredible symbiotic relationship between a lot of craft vendors,” she said.

Steelhead Coffee already has a business in the nearby California Heights neighborhood, and doing business in a center built from old shipping containers was something owner John Aguirre wanted to try.

“We were first approached by Kim Gros. We brought this (proximity) up. ‘It’s only a mile away,’” Aguirre said. “However, we thought it was an opportunity to invest in our neighborhood, as well as be a part of something that’s different.”

SteelCraft, still something of a work in progress, is located at the southeast corner of Bixby Road and Long Beach Boulevard. Bixby Knolls’ restaurants and shops are concentrated along Atlantic Avenue, whereas Long Beach Boulevard was developed for offices and medical buildings. Gros, however, sees SteelCraft’s site as a potential gathering spot for families.

“We want it to be kid-friendly,” she said. “We want to be a space where you just enjoy your time.”