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Shopping Centers Today -> February 2004
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The Pike retail-entertainment center opens on site of Long Beach amusement park
BY LEE KESSLER
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The bridge is part of The Pike at Rainbow Harbor, a $130 million dining, entertainment and retail center built last December by Developers Diversified Realty Corp. Decorative as it may be, the bridge is more than a signature design element; it provides access to the harbor area’s sculptured gardens and 370,000 square feet of waterfront restaurants in this city 22 miles south of Los Angeles.
The project sits on 18 acres between The Aquarium of the Pacific and the Long Beach Convention and Entertainment Center. Its anchors are GameWorks, a 40,000-square-foot entertainment destination, and a 14-screen Cinemark theater. The center is also host to California Pizza Kitchen, Coldstone Creamery, P.F. Chang’s China Bistro and a comedy club. A number of tenants are already signed on for the second phase, which is scheduled to open in June, says a DDR spokesman. They include Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., Outback Steakhouse and Kelly’s Coffee & Fudge Factory.
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Heather Richmond, a CB Richard Ellis associate based in nearby Torrance, notes that the project’s restaurant-entertainment focus and tourism’s dominance of the local economy make retailers shy away. “We have a couple of retailers that we represent that were looking at the project,” she said. “And I think the concern was, when you’re not in the heavy tourism season, are you going to generate the volumes that are needed to substantiate the rents that the tenants are going to pay. … When they’re not in tourist season, how are they going to pull the beach cities’ residents and pull from further south towards Orange County? That’s a concern.”
Getting the project off the ground has been a bit of a roller coaster ride in itself, even for DDR, which owns and manages more than 200 shopping centers, totaling more than 50 million square feet in 41 states, including a dozen in Southern California. In 2000 anchor tenant Resorts Theaters filed for bankruptcy and pulled out. The skittish city of Long Beach issued a “notice to cure” (a legal measure providing a time frame for “curing” problems that arise during the execution of a contract, or to take further steps), fearing that the developer might fail to meet its obligations. The firm was quoted in published reports as saying that it was “extremely surprised and disappointed” by the city’s action. The project was still viable, DDR argued, and the firm would protect its investment, which at the time was about $17.5 million.
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| DDR is working to attract retail tenants to complement The Pike’s entertainment offerings. |
Some 405,600 people live within five miles of the center, and average household income in the area is about $52,330 yearly, says DDR. The firm estimates that the project will bring roughly 900 jobs to the city, which is the fifth-largest in the state. That’s good news for Long Beach, which took a beating when the Navy closed its base in the 1990s, depriving the local economy of an estimated $4 billion per year.
The city is already bouncing back, though; it now claims more than 5 million visitors a year, many of whom visit the Queen Mary, the heralded ocean liner now moored there. The Pike will give them and area residents another place to visit. Says a company news release, “DDR is thrilled to be part of the continuing downtown resurgence of Long Beach.”
 | Current Issue November 2008 |