$17 Million to Relocate and Vacate

Long Beach Press Telegram, August 17, 2007

Then city of San Pedro will pay a petroleum storage company $17 million to vacate 12 acres of waterfront property in the Port of Los Angeles.

The settlement comes after five years of negotiations in which the port threatened to condemn the property over various environmental and safety issues.
Clean up, which may take several years, is organized by the city and the port.

-As in so many other communities, San Pedro has determined that the burden of cleanup costs and just compensation far outweigh the value to the community of an industrial use in an area attempting to de-industrialize. This is of major public policy import because there will soon be a day which there simply is not enough land to maintain industrial uses. Further, the environmentally sensitive uses being placed by gasoline type companies will inevitably change to higher and better uses such as high-rise residential, commercial development and intensively used port facilities.