Beach Cities Health District Development Plans

The Beach Reporter - 1/23/20

BCHD is hiding behind "deliberative process" to withhold discussions with the City of Torrance and Redondo from its owners regarding the planned 600,000 square-foot, 60-foot-tall development that will take 15 years to build and impact the local area for another 50 plus years.

The voters of Manhattan, Hermosa and Redondo Beach approved the charter and bond initiative of the South Bay Hospital District in the 1950s. The hospital was failing when other hospitals enjoyed rapid growth, so BCHD created itself absent any approval from the same voters and seized the assets of South Bay Hospital District.

BCHD is attempting to force through a development larger than the denied CenterCal Mall-by-the-Sea. It's a $1.2 million-per-apartment, 430 unit, $530 million senior complex designed to serve a 200 square-mile area, 10-mile radius area. The pollution of the 15 year construction project will burden the neighbors of Redondo and Torrance. The chronic stress of the project construction and operation will be 65 plus years overall, shortening the lives and reducing the quality of life of the surrounding areas in order to service a majority out-of-district clientele.

BCHD hiding its communications in an attempt to gain approval from Torrance and Redondo Planning and City Councils by using Deliberative Process is unconscionable.

BCHD needs to come out of the shadows and stop the secret communications immediately and disclose all prior communications. This project should either take place in the open without illegitimate blockages of information, or it should be discontinued.

—Mark Nelson, Redondo Beach