Speaker 2: Item number 19 communications for Mayor Robert Garcia recommendation to direct city manager to study and report back to council within 90 days with recommendations for improving and enhancing the signage at major entrances to the city.
Speaker 0: Okay. Can we get a motion, please? Vice Mayor Lowenthal and Councilman Ringo. So I'm going to make a few comments and I'll turn this over to anyone from a council. This is a clearly I think that something one that we've all talked about at the city. We had our retreat right after everyone came on board. One of the items that we talked about was how to really create a, you know, either gateway, signage, landscaping or a combination of those to really create some really great welcoming signs and landscaping for the city of Long Beach. But personally, I think if you go around the city and look, we have done a really nice job of building some great parks, we've done a great job of doing some great development. But our entrance way still need a lot of work and a lot of love. If you look at entrances in particular, like the 605405 seventh Street exit entrance and exit into Long Beach, if you look at the Artesia Boulevard, you look at the entrance coming in from Lakewood, from downtown off the 710. These are all major entrance points. And not only our residents, but thousands and thousands of visitors come through every single day. And so I think it's important for us to put our best foot forward. It's important for the city to have signage that is reflective of who we are and as professional and welcoming as we'd like to see here in our community. And so I've heard this from many of the people on the council about what this will allow us to do is I'm going to be asking the city manager who to come back to council with the report. The report will include a few things. One is the report will kind of take the council through a little history of what the city has done in the past with signage. There was a couple efforts to do to redo signage in the past. Some were successful, others weren't. So I'd like for the council to hear the whole background and then also give us some ideas as far as cost and implementation on how a signage process would work, because I am certainly interested in including this as part of my budget recommendations, at least an initial phase of this as we move forward to this next year. So I like the Council to have as much information on this as possible, and I think that there are enough important entrance ways where we can make a really big impact and create something really special for the city of Long Beach. And so with that, I know there's a motion amateur in this over to the maker of the motion, and then we'll go into public comment. Vice Mayor Lowenthal.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and thank you for bringing this forward. I wanted to just share on behalf of Councilmember Richardson, who wasn't able to be here this evening, but he did want to have some comments made on his behalf. He appreciates this and believes that it will go a long way with our efforts on the Council of Governments. In terms of the Artesia Boulevard masterplan, if we included the east and west entrances to the city on Artesia Boulevard into the request, it would also acknowledge that North Long Beach is not only part of our city but an important gateway via the 91 freeway. And so I'm sure that that's a consideration that this item will take and.
Speaker 4: Actually.
Speaker 3: It doesn't outline.
Speaker 0: Where. It doesn't outline. I just give a few examples. But I think management would come back and present ideas for the.
Speaker 3: So if that could be entered into the record for staff, that that is Councilmember Richardson's request.
Speaker 0: Thank you, Vice Mayor. Councilwoman Price.
Speaker 5: Thank you. I am completely supportive of this item and this effort. I will say that in the third district specifically, one of the biggest issues that we hear repeatedly is about our entrances. We have some, as do several of my colleagues in their districts, but some very high profile entrances. And we did a few years back, we put a welcome to Long Beach sign at the island village entrance at Island Village Drive and Second Street. And it really improved the entire area and landscape as people entered into the city of Long Beach. I think anything that we can do to enhance the entryways into the city and to identify for people that they've actually entered our city would be welcome. And I would be I'm very anxious to have the session and hear about the history because I know that this is an issue that's come up many times. And I know that even back in 2011, it looks like my predecessor was in touch with our state leaders and trying to figure out why the entrance ways were not updated when certain Caltrans projects were completed in our district. And so I think it's important that we maintain a some consistency throughout the city in terms of our entry way. So thank you, Mr. Mayor, for putting this on the agenda tonight.
Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilwoman Mongo.
Speaker 6: I do echo the comments of my colleagues and thank the mayor for putting this forward. And when we discussed this at the retreat, it really identified that we as a council united to ensure that people know when they're in Long Beach, whether you're getting off a plane at the airport or driving in from Lakewood, Los Alamitos, Rossmore or any of our other surrounding cities. You need to know when you're in Long Beach, because there are lots of other communities and businesses nearby that deem that they are Long Beach, but they're not a business might be in a city such as a neighboring city and say that they are business of Long Beach, but the sales tax revenue for that business goes to that other city. And so while we aren't able to force them to take our name off of it, at least when people come in and out of our city, they will know that they are spending their money in the city that they love. So I'm in great support of this, both for the marketing aspects and for residents to be able to know when they're supporting their own tax base.
Speaker 0: Thank you. Councilmember Arango.
Speaker 7: Thank you, Mayor, and thank you for bringing this forward. I have some history of some of the senators taking place back in the eighties, believe it or not. And I shared some of that with the city manager West when we we're talking about the agenda. But let's not forget that one of the longest streets in L.A. County, in Orange County is supporter. That turns into Willow, that turns into KTLA. And so let's not forget that in the West Long Beach Park also that we signage is very important there as well. So I used that. I want to remind people that Willow is also a major artery that we need to look at as well.
Speaker 0: Absolutely. Thank you, Councilwoman Gonzales.
Speaker 5: This is timely because actually on the west side, we are looking to add welcome to Long Beach, sign at the tell steel company location. And they have a very nice location right by the Thai freeway. And so this is timely, I think, the mayor, for bringing this forward because it's something that we all can join in on and something that we want to do to rebrand our city. So this is wonderful. Thank you.
Speaker 0: Councilwoman Price.
Speaker 5: Thank you. Just real quick, I forgot to mention one of the things that I think we should really be thinking about moving forward is. An area of concern has been the drought and what kind of landscaping we would do around the signage. And that's something that I think we should be mindful of and also the cost of ongoing maintenance. I think in 2012 we had a small project that cost very small project, small area where we focused on signage and it cost about $30,000. So this can be a very costly endeavor, although it's a really important one in terms of branding the city and attracting visitors, businesses and residents here. I think those are things that we should think about and think innovatively going forward about grant opportunities and such.
Speaker 0: Thank you. And also, you know, Mr. West, just make sure that I want to make sure that when the presentation comes back to council that we do a full audit. So between now and the presentation, there should be information about where. Right now, all the current signage is and then what type of signage is in what location. And in addition to that, we have, I think, maybe two or three vintage signs in the city, what the most famous of which is probably over in the third district as you cross into Naples, which were probably put up in the sixties or so. And so I'd like to you know, those are my personal opinion. I think those are are quite beautiful. And I'd love to see those, those particularly ones be restored. But all the signage, the program, if we can get a detailed, detailed information on that, I think for the council would be very helpful. Any public comment on this item, Mr. Goodhue? Yes.
Speaker 4: I have to get the clerk will pass out. I have two items on this. One, just as a matter of information, waiting in the wings for a number of years has been the California official state landmark sign for the Marine Stadium that's been waiting for the 605405 and 22 to settle down. And we put it there. Something that was just recently came to mind again is and many people might not be aware of it, but our infamous traffic circle was in fact created specifically for the 1932 games. There is summary information there. The Marine Stadium, of course, was triggered the warrants and that were triggered in 1923. The stadium itself was dug dredged out in 1926 in full use as water skiing and other water skiing, rowing and so forth. Prior to it being fashioned, fashioned in 1931 for rowing events and the commission, the city leaders at that time were very forward thinking. They didn't have the ability to Skype to look at satellite photos. So they traveled to Antwerp and to Rome. To check to see what enhancements they could use. And one of the it came they came up with the idea of the traffic circle. And it's if you look at the provenance, it's very interesting to get people down to the areas. They knew that there would be a lot of people from Europe and the traffic circles are all over Europe and South America and so forth. So that's the interesting provenance there. And what was particularly interesting in terms of connection, if you look at this. It starts and it connects to what was then a major the major cross, one of the major cross-country routes. It was 3227 miles that started this traffic circle and connected to Route six, not 66 to 6 and ended up. In Boston at Provincetown. I don't know if the architect was a Boston Red Sox fan or what, but that's where it ended up. So it's got a very interesting history. And I think that should we have an opportunity maybe to showcase that the I talked to the people in the California state landmark paradigm, and they meet in March. They meet again in November. And it would qualify because this was the first, first such paradigm in this in the state of California. So I think that makes an interesting story to tell. I'm not the best person to how to illustrate that. I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot wall because I can't take, you know, art and text are not are not my thing. But I'm sure we've had talent that would be able to take the data that's available and translated into appropriate signage. Thank you.
Speaker 0: Thank you. There's a motion on the floor and a second. Members, please cast your vote.
Speaker 2: Councilman Andrews. Oh, he's not. Motion carries seven zero.
Speaker 0: Thank you. Going to move item 25 up, please.
Recommendation to direct City Manager to study, and report back to Council within 90 days with recommendations for improving and enhancing, the signage at major entrances to the City.