TITLE
Recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record, conclude the public hearing, accept Categorical Exemption CE-16-267, and consider appeals from Douglas Otto, Rick Ivey, Naphar Isley, Troy Carmon, and Allan Stevens;
Uphold the Planning Commission's decision to deny a request for a continuance by a third party at the Planning Commission hearing of March 30, 2017; and
Uphold the Planning Commission's decision to approve a Conditional Use Permit for a behavioral health urgent care center located at 3200-3220 Long Beach Boulevard (Application No. 1611-08). (District 7)
DISCUSSION
On March 30, 2017, the Planning Commission considered a request for a Conditional Use Permit (CUP) for a behavioral health urgent care center located at 3200-3220 Long Beach Boulevard. At the beginning of the item, prior to the public hearing, the Planning Commission denied a request by Attorney Douglas Otto for a continuance of the item. Mr. Otto represents a client who disputes the ownership of the property in pending litigation. After denying the request for the continuance, the Planning Commission conducted a public hearing on the CUP request, then approved the CUP. Within the ten-day appeal period, four appeals of the Planning Commission's approval were filed. In summary, the reasons indicated for the appeals included that approval of the CUP and operation of the behavioral health urgent care center will cause negative impacts upon the neighborhood, including congregation of homeless and mentally ill persons in the vicinity, and direct harm to residents by clients of the facility. The appellants also object to the general location of the facility within the neighborhood's area, and its hours of operation. Additionally, Mr. Otto appealed the Planning Commission's decision to deny the requested continuance (Exhibit A - Appeals).
The subject site is located at 3200-3220 Long Beach Boulevard, and is developed with a vacant 14,409-square-foot medical office building. The site is bounded by Long Beach Boulevard on the west, a largely vacant oil extraction property to the north, Elm Avenue and an R-1-N-zoned residential area to the east, and 32nd Street to the south, across which is an R-1-N-zoned residential area on Elm Avenue, and an auto repair business in the SP-1-CDR zone on Long Beach Boulevard (Exhibit B - Vicinity Map). The portion of the project site fronting on Long Beach Boulevard is located in the SP-1-CDR zoning district (Midtown Specific Plan, corridor district), which allows mixed commercial and residential uses, and the rear half of the site fronting on Elm Avenue is located in the CCA zoning district (Community Automobile-Oriented), which allows only commercial uses. The SP-1-CDR zoning on the site requires a CUP for a medical center or urgent care land use.
The applicant proposes to develop a behavioral health urgent care center within the vacant medical office building on the site. The center would consist of two main components: (1) a 24-hour psychiatric urgent care facility, consisting of two separate secure units accommodating a total of twelve adults and six juveniles, and (2) a "Crisis Walk-In Center" (CWIC) open 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., seven days a week (Exhibit C - Plans). The secure units would receive both voluntary and involuntary admissions of patients experiencing acute psychiatric crises, while the CWIC would allow walk-in patients to be evaluated and receive medication on a very short-term basis, until they can be connected to ongoing psychiatric care. Admissions to the acute units would include walk-ins and arrivals by police and ambulance transport. The entire facility will operate on an outpatient basis, with a maximum allowable stay of 23 hours 59 minutes for all patients. However, expected stay times are four to six hours for the acute units, and two to four hours for the walk-in center, based on the operator's experience operating similar facilities in Riverside and San Bernardino Counties. Estimated patient volume is 900 admissions per month, or approximately 30 per day. Total on-site employment to provide 24/7 staffing would be about 47 full-time employees, consisting of approximately 34 clinical staff, and 13 support staff. This includes approximately four to five psychiatrists, six registered nurses (RN), eight licensed vocational nurses (LVN), seven mental health clinicians (MHS II), and nine safety and security staff, with other administrative and clerical staff as well.
The applicant has provided a detailed operational plan and supporting materials describing the operation of the urgent care center (Exhibit D - Supplementary Materials). These describe arrival and entry to the facility, security and screening procedures and precautions, client release procedures, and behavior management for clients. The entrances/exits to the secure units are maintained under the center's staff control. When patients are discharged, the operations plan is designed to assure that patients have a means of transport home, and the center's staff will monitor the discharging patient to ensure they follow through with the planned means of departure. On-site security will also be provided outside the facility and in the parking lot when the facility is open. Conditions of approval (Exhibit E - Conditions of Approval) will memorialize and further address these operational procedures.
The behavioral health urgent care center would be operated by Stars Behavioral Health Group (aka Star View Behavioral Health, or Stars) on contract to the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health. Stars operates ten other locations on behalf of Los Angeles County and has been contracted with the County for over 20 years. Stars currently operates the Star View Community Services Long Beach Center at 100 E. Wardlow Road in Long Beach, which provides a variety of support services to children, adolescents, and "transitional age youth" who, as described by Stars, face emotional, behavioral, and learning challenges and have difficulty succeeding in family or community living environments.
The facility will support local Long Beach hospitals, the Long Beach Police Department, and the Long Beach Unified School District by filling a critical need for a mental health urgent care clinic. The facility will relieve the load on hospital emergency rooms, which generally do not have designated areas for psychiatric patients, and must hold these patients, sometimes for more than 24 hours, until admission to a psychiatric facility can be secured. The facility will decrease the amount of time spent by police officers securing mental health treatment admissions for arrested persons, who would otherwise be required to wait under police escort in an emergency room until admitted to a psychiatric hospital. Police officers and emergency medical responders will be able to bring psychiatric patients with no presenting medical conditions (i.e., injuries or other acute physical conditions) to this facility instead of local emergency rooms. The facility will also serve Long Beach Unified School District, and will be utilized when students require mental health assistance.
While the facility is not intended specifically to serve the homeless population and is not a homeless shelter, it may serve homeless clients who are experiencing a psychiatric crisis, and will connect these persons with appropriate follow-up care through shelters and housing providers, so they will not exit the facility and return directly to living on the street. The operator estimates that approximately 10 percent of patients may be homeless persons, based on the figure of 9 percent reported by the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health at their other behavioral urgent care centers. This figure also matches with Stars' experience in other counties. The facility is not a "medication clinic;" it will only admit patients who meet the criteria of being in a mental health crisis.
In addition to operational procedures, and conditions of approval pertaining to operational issues, the property has been approved for a major remodel of both the building and the parking and landscaping areas. This includes, among other things, construction of a six-foot six-inch-tall block wall along the eastern property line to screen the parking area from the residences across Elm Avenue, as well as to reduce potential noise from the site and increase security. The plans also include repaving and restriping of the parking lot, providing additional landscaping, repairing or replacing cracked, broken, and uplifted sections of sidewalk, curb, and gutter adjacent to the site, and providing on-site lighting and security cameras as recommended by the Long Beach Police Department.
Staff finds that this behavioral health urgent care center has the potential to fill a significant gap in the local mental health safety net, and due to the operator's experience and well-developed operational and security plans, is not likely to cause any negative impacts upon the surrounding areas. Vehicular entrances will be limited to 32nd Street only. Other site improvements (resulting from the associated Site Plan Review Application No. 1611-18) consist of ADA improvements, and street trees and tree wells.
Staff has analyzed the project in accordance with the required findings for CUPs, and finds that positive findings are able to be made (Exhibit F - Findings). As such, staff recommends the City Council deny the appeal of the Planning Commission's denial of the requested continuance, and deny the appeal of the Planning Commission's approval of the CUPs, thus approving the project.
Public hearing notices were distributed on May 4, 2017, in accordance with the requirements of Chapter 21.21 of the Long Beach Municipal Code. Any comments received prior to the City Council hearing of May 23, 2017 will be provided to the City Council at or before the hearing. Additionally, all public comment received at the Planning Commission hearing, and following the hearing, are provided to the City Council as well (Exhibit G - Public Comment Letters).
In accordance with the Guidelines for Implementation of the California Environmental Quality Act, a Categorical Exemption was prepared for the proposed project (Exhibit H CE-17 -053), finding that this project qualifies for a Categorical Exemption per Section 15305 of the California Environmental Quality Act Guidelines.
This matter was reviewed by Assistant City Attorney Michael J. Mais and by Budget Management Officer Rhutu Amin Gharib on May 4, 2017.
TIMING CONSIDERATIONS
City Council action is requested on May 23, 2017. Section 21.21.504.B of the Zoning Regulations requires a public hearing for an appeal to the City Council to take place within 60 days of receipt of an appeal, the first of which was filed on April 3, 2017.
FISCAL IMPACT
There is no fiscal or local job impact associated with this recommendation.
SUGGESTED ACTION
Approve recommendation.
Respectfully Submitted,
AMY BODEK, AICP
DIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENT SERVICES
APPROVED:
PATRICK H. WEST
CITY MANAGER