The Aquarium of the Pacific, the Queen Mary and the Long Beach Convention Center are going to have to be enough for Long Beach’s waterfront development dreams, at least for now.
Citing the financial difficulties that have plagued the movie-theater industry, Developers Diversified Realty Corp. wants to significantly scale back its plans for Queensway Bay, an 18-acre entertainment complex that was to be a key component of Long Beach’s effort to turn the waterfront into a major destination.
The developer now wants to go forward with the project in phases, without a theater anchor. The initial development as now envisioned would be a 4-acre center on the waterfront side of Shoreline Drive, with restaurants as primary tenants.
The previous 18-acre project had been designed to have a combination of dining, retail and entertainment uses, including a parking structure financed with city bonds and a stadium-seating theater complex with an IMAX screen.
Ultimate build-out plans have changed little, and DDR would go forward with the rest of its project once the theater industry has settled down, a company spokesman said.
DDR is in talks with tenants that had previously signed leases to determine which will fit into the smaller project, and hopes to break ground by the end of the year, with the first restaurants opening next summer.
“The whole thing has to be re-thought, and it has to be done quickly,” said Calvin Hollis, managing principal at Keyser Marston Associates Inc., which is advising the city on the project.
The downsizing comes as little surprise. After Edwards Theaters Circuit Inc. filed for bankruptcy protection and pulled out, the project was delayed until DDR brought on L.A.-based Resort Theaters of America to replace Edwards. But the week that the much-publicized Queensway Bay shopping center in Long Beach was set to break ground, word came that Resort’s parent company had declared bankruptcy too.
Since then, DDR officials have pored over Resort’s finances, looking for signs that it could move forward comfortably. They didn’t find any such signs.
Even with retailers such as Cost Plus, Barnes & Noble and California Pizza Kitchen, the project couldn’t pull in the necessary foot traffic without a theater.
“Essentially, we have a great project and a great location, it’s leased up sufficiently to get financing, it does have financing approval, it has entitlements, it has construction drawings on the board,” said Bob Paternoster, the city official in charge of the project. But no theater.
The decision not to go with Resort came as hard news to city officials.
“They looked pretty good to us,” Paternoster said. “They were a small, growing firm.” n
Peinemann is a writer for the Los Angeles Business Journal.
