Long Beach Downtown Specific Plan
Long Beach, California
Gruen Associates as the Prime Consultant is updating the City of Long Beach’s Downtown Plan (2012) and converting it to a Specific Plan. The overarching goal of the plan update is to provide a comprehensive-yet-flexible regulatory framework that supports Downtown Long Beach as a dynamic live, work and play environment, and facilitates the sustainable and equitable growth of the City’s most-intensive and fastest-growing area. The plan update provides regulations and strategies related to land use, mobility, design of the built environment, infrastructure, sustainability, historic preservation, and social equity and justice. The Plan addresses post-pandemic economic trends affecting land use and development in downtown districts world-wide. To combat the local and statewide housing shortage, it supports an additional 10,000 residential units in Downtown Long Beach by 2045 and establishes strategies to improve housing affordability. The preparation of the Specific Plan is driven by a robust community engagement process including in-person engagement in addition to virtual meetings and surveys.