Development Strategy

Major Owners by Phase Within the WIP (PDF, 80 K, 1 page)

Source: EPS, JWD Architecture and Engineering Group, Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency, Accurate as of 2/7/2003

To attract significant investment to the WIP, it is recommended that the following general parameters guide the CRA's development actions:

• Seek development of light industrial and manufacturing product appropriate for diverse users and settings. Parcels should be combined, as practical, to accommodate an array of specialized manufacturing, light industrial/flex, cold storage, and other port-related uses such as logistics firms. Product should incorporate common walls, and be divisible to 10,000 square feet where possible.
  
  
• Target key corridors and entrance areas for improvement as a way of improving the site's market appeal and showing physical evidence of CRA redevelopment progress. This can be done by acquiring small areas of land at key entrances to the site and developing landscape concepts that identify the entrance to the site. Enhancing key corridors can be accomplished through a thematic street tree and underplanting program that is irrigated and maintained. Fencing planted with rapidly growing vines can be incorporated into rights-of-way to temporarily screen blight conditions and marginal structures.
  
  
• Attempt to pair more easily developed parcels with more difficult areas that are contaminated, have fragmented ownership, or have other development constraints. This will cross-subsidize development of difficult areas, and it will improve the market appeal of readily developed parcels.
  
  
• Target areas with good soils for the development of buildings. Even if these areas have difficult parcelization and ownership patterns, they are more economically developed than areas requiring piles due to liquefaction threat.
  
  
• Cluster properties into 'packages' that will incorporate the scale necessary to support minimum debt issuance thresholds, qualify for substantial grant funds, and attract major private sector development interests.
  
  
• Improve the East-West and North-South axes of the park. The planning and development of these areas will catalyze high-value development of the park's major land assets, particularly those located in the Northwest Quadrant.
  
  
• Defer development of lands in the Southwest Quadrant, unless there is a strategic need to improve them. This area has significant liquefaction issues and likely requires expensive subsurface foundation systems such as stone columns or piles. The development of the other areas of the park, combined the long-term prospect of Port-related relocations able to pay the development premiums likely required for the area, will facilitate intensive development of this area over the long-term. The area's development will be assisted by appreciation within the WIP and the continued dwindling regional land supply.
  
  
• Solicit property owner participation in the redevelopment process. The WIP harbors several property owners that are very accomplished industrial developer/brokers. In some cases, outside developers should be paired with existing property owners. If property owners are disinterested, the CRA should assertively proceed with one or more RFQ/RFP processes, select one or more qualified developers for exclusive negotiations, and structure contractual agreements providing for timely development and a sharing of costs.
  
  
• Relocate displaced manufacturing operations into newly developed industrial space. This would be tantamount to pre-leased or pre-sold buildings, improving the availability of construction financing.
  
  
• Designate interim locations for truck parking and union training operations in the Southwest Quadrant . the area most susceptible to liquefaction threat. These operations do not necessarily require environmental remediation or high-quality soils, command very high residual land values (around $20 per square foot), and provide for effective marketing by requiring site clearance. The CRA should incentivize parcelization and paving of key sites with the provision that land will be needed within a 5 to 10-year time frame for more intensive development.
  
  
• Designate a permanent location for a modern salvage facility (off-site if possible, on-site as a back-up option); grant funds should be obtained and specifically targeted to this project; if on-site, relocate only viable, higher value salvage operations to this area (7-acres maximum). The relocation strategy for salvage yards should allow existing salvage operations inventory to dwindle over a period of 90 days. Remaining inventory will be surplus/low value and less expensive to purchase for disposal.
  
  
• Pursue negotiations with oil companies active in the area to modify facilities (e.g., adopt slant-drilling techniques from key areas set-aside within the WIP) to accommodate development, so that major resource losses do not affect redevelopment feasibility.

Source: Wilmington Industrial Park Economic Adjustment Strategy, Final Report, February 12, 2003, pgs. 80-81