[LAMetroGuy]

Residential Boom Feeds
Hope For Retail Stores

By Kurt Helin
Editor

While the restaurants have done well and the movie theater has busy weekends, the Pike at Rainbow Harbor has never had the kind of retail stores that get people to hang around the center after they are done eating or the movie credits have rolled.

That is, until next spring.

Borders Books and Music has announced it will formally open a 21,000-square-foot store in the downtown center in the second quarter of 2006. The long-rumored store will be the first large-scale retail store in the Pike.

Will this be the opening of a new wave of retail coming to downtown?

First District Councilwoman Bonnie Lowenthal said she would like to think so, but the city should probably use new strategies to attract that retail. At a City Council meeting earlier this month, she asked for a report on what strategies the city is using.

“It seems as though the previous strategies didn’t work,” Lowenthal said, noting that Bath & Body Works and Express are leaving at the end of the year. “We need to have strategies that bring in new and appropriate retail.”

Appropriate is part of the key, Lowenthal said. While Borders is a good fit down in the Pike, some of the retail along Pine and through the rest of downtown needs to be something other than the standard chains. Downtown needs stores that are independent and different, she said.

“What is attractive about Pine and the historic lofts downtown is their uniqueness,” Lowenthal said. “So having retail that is not exactly like every other city, that is unique, is important.”

Attracting that retail should be getting easier because of the people filling those lofts.

For years, both city and Downtown Long Beach Associates officials trying to attract retailers downtown ran into the problem of one- and three-mile demographic circles — the majority of people living in those circles did not have the kind of incomes that drew better retailers.

The building boom downtown and the new residents moving into the numerous apartments and condominiums are starting to change those numbers, and with that the city has been seeing more interest from retailers in recent months, the City Council was told.

While attention on how to bring more retail to the whole of downtown continues — and that report will be coming back to the City Council next month — the Pike has other plans.

One of the biggest additions will be the Laugh Factory comedy club, scheduled to open next spring right about the same time as Borders.

Officials with Developers Diversified Realty say that the Pike is now 85% leased and that they have several other retailers expected to sign on the dotted line soon.