$30M grant goes to revamp Shoreline Drive

Funding for the Gateway Project were secured by former Mayor Robert Garcia, now a congressman

Rep. Robert Garcia, the Long Beach Democrat who recently finished two terms as mayor, has helped secure a $30 million federal grant to support a massive reconfiguration of West Shoreline Drive, which will add green space in the area.

The Shoreline Drive Gateway Project will create about 6 acres of new park space on land that has been blocked by freeway lanes, rendering the area inaccessible to residents for decades. It will detour heavy freeway traffic away from residential roadways and will create a new bike path, according to a recent announcement about the federal funding.

“The new funding is the first step to rebuilding primary entry points to our downtown for the benefit of residents and visitors,” Mayor Rex Richardson said in the announcement. “This transformative project will help us make our local streets safer (and) effectively double the size of Cesar Chavez Park with new usable park space for children and families and create hundreds of new construction-related jobs.”

The $30 million grant Garcia secured for the project came via the Department of Transportation's Reconnecting Communities Pilot program. That program has a $1 billion nest egg, funded by Congress's 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, to support projects dedicated to reconnecting disadvantaged communities to open green space over the next five years.

The grant will cover half of the Shoreline Drive Gateway project, including:

• Demolishing the existing northbound lane of Shoreline Drive.

• Relocating major utilities and installing and rerouting temporary traffic controls.

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• Removing old fences and landscaping.

• Installing new irrigation and power conduits.

• Relocating street lighting. The grant also will partially fund the realigned roadway and new medians at Shoreline Drive, the announcement from Garcia's office said. The latter half of the project, which will cost an additional $30 million to complete, will include roadway work, new traffic signals and added landscaping and medians.

Long Beach is in the process of identifying additional state and federal support for the project, the announcement said.