The second of the three “7th Street Visioning” workshops is this Saturday, July 26th, from 10:00a to 12:00p

After taking into consideration all of the great feedback that was offered at the first of the three 7th Street Visioning workshops which took place on Sat, Jun 14th, at Our Savior Lutheran Church, Roger Sherman and Matthew Littell, urban planners from RSAUD and UTILE, respectively, are ready to reveal some preliminary ideas for consideration by the community for an eventual unified, coherent, and meaningful development document regarding East 7th Street (between Redondo and Alamitos Avenues) that can be used by the city to give it a leg up when applying for grants to MTA and other funding sources, which are needed to make significant infrastructure improvements to the street. Roger and Matthew and their respective teams are doing far more than simply producing a document to sit on someone’s shelf, however; they are working closely with Councilwoman/Vice Mayor Suja Lowenthal’s office, who is funding this effort, RPNA and other neighborhood associations that border or cross 7th Street, as well as local business owners, to inform city staff of the community’s priorities for the street. Moreover, the process is designed to enable all of the parties who are invested in street’s future to come together in a cooperative measure to think about long-term goals not just short-term fixes. It’s a great opportunity and its outcome will be all the better for your participation.

This Saturday’s meeting takes place at Franklin Middle School, which is located at 540 Cerritos Ave, from 10:00a to noon. If you’ll be driving, parking is available in the school’s lot, which can be entered off 7th St, just east of Cerritos Ave.

There is also expected to be a modest implementation of some aspect of the vision that’s laid out in the final plan (that is, a pilot project of some kind), which will help demonstrate the value of the overall plan’s long-term vision, usefulness, and value not only to those of us who live, work, and travel on the street, but to agencies whose funding will be critical to bringing the needed resources to execute the plan.  Community input is, of course, essential in making the street work for everyone—residents of the area especially, we believe—so this is a golden opportunity to shape one of the central features of our neighborhood, the one that cuts right through the heart of it, and thus affects us all. So please attend, if you can. The more, the better.

In the event that you cannot attend the planning session, the project has a means to gather your opinion (if you’ve not already provided it this way) via an online survey, which can be reached at www.longbeach.gov/district2/7thstreetvision/

We look forward to seeing everyone Saturday morning!