Long Beach Is Moving From Bad to Boom Times, Mayor Says

While conceding that Long Beach is still plagued by the lingering effects of the recession, Mayor Beverly O’Neill on Tuesday said her city had “turned the corner” and was moving away from its image as a Navy town to one burgeoning with high-tech development and growing tourist appeal.

“We have turned the corner from an economy of the past to one that is focused on the future led by the three Ts: tourism, trade and technology,” O’Neill said during an upbeat State of the City address that brought a sold-out luncheon audience of 1,350 civic and business leaders to their feet.

The rosy view of the city comes at a time when Long Beach continues to struggle with the devastating effects of the recession. Since 1990, Long Beach has lost more than 50,000 jobs as the Navy closed facilities and pulled out of town, and McDonnell Douglas, the city’s largest employer, went through a dramatic downsizing.

In coping with the recession, O’Neill has faced strong criticism from some community groups, particularly over her support of the conversion of the abandoned naval station into a container port.

But the critics weren’t much in evidence Tuesday at what has become one of the city’s biggest civic events, hosted by the Long Beach Area Chamber of Commerce and led by O’Neill, the city’s biggest cheerleader.

“It was vintage Bev,” said City Councilman Jeff Kellogg. “She is the true optimist.”

Last year, the event drew 900. This year, sponsors said they sold 1,400 tickets, even though the room capacity is 1,350.

“The turnout speaks volumes about the economy and the excitement about what’s happening in Long Beach,” said Chamber of Commerce President Randy Gordon.

During her speech, O’Neill mentioned revived neighborhood shopping centers, a waterfront that is being transformed by construction of the Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific, emergence of the city as the busiest container port in the nation and a budding high-tech sector as signs of the city’s turnaround.

Recently, Hughes Communications opened a $100-million, high-tech satellite broadcasting center in Long Beach and the Boeing Corp., which recently took over McDonnell Douglas in a merger, is developing a major satellite venture on part of the Navy property.

O’Neill also outlined ambitious plans to enlarge the Long Beach Airport, long one of the city’s most underutilized assets, from a capacity of 300,000 passengers to 2 million passengers a year.

Within the past two years, O’Neill said public and private investment in the city reached $750 million.

As for the future, O’Neill said the city will develop a new master plan to guide its growth, but she said the plan probably will take years to develop.

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The mayor touched only briefly on problems facing the Long Beach Unified School District, plagued by overcrowding and struggling to overcome poverty and language problems among its 83,701 students. About a third of the students come from families on welfare and a third do not speak English as their primary language.

O’Neill urged those at the luncheon to contribute at least one hour a week to mentoring or reading to children.

The mayor’s reception was a far cry from the hostile reception she received in September from about 1,700 people who showed up for a hearing on the reuse of the naval station.

Some of those critics gathered Monday night for a community meeting at which they outlined their own “state of the city” message. But sponsors, representing several neighborhood groups, got a disappointing turnout of 50 people at an elementary school.