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Home » Fitness » Seal Beach, Rossmoor residents protest new fitness center as decision looms – Long Beach Press Telegram

SEAL BEACH >> It did not fetch the raucous crowds of recent political rallies. Instead, the protest drew a mob of SUVs and minivans that offered quiet resistance outside an upscale shopping mall.

On a recent Saturday afternoon, about 200 demonstrators drove to the Shops at Rossmoor. They parked their cars behind the Sprouts in a wide-open lot and left to do some shopping or simply walk home.

Others stayed behind to wave signs advertising their mission: No LA Fitness!

I am 100 percent against the fitness center, Rossmoor homemaker Karen Schultze said in an interview after the protest. Already the traffic problem here is terrible.

This is deja vu for residents of Rossmoor and the Seal Beach condominiums edging it. After the Seal Beach Planning Commission approved the 37,000-square-foot LA Fitness last year, condo dwellers filed an appeal. In July, the City Council took their side 3 to 2.

Real estate consultant Jones Lang LaSalle, also called JLL, pulled the application rather than subject it to a second vote in August that would officially uphold the appeal.

Opponents breathed a sigh of relief. But the health club reared its head again in December when JLL resubmitted essentially the same plan. In the five-month interim, two Seal Beach council members who voted against the project, David Sloan and Gary Miller, termed out.

The deadline for public comment is April 24, after which the project will return to the Seal Beach Planning Commission.

We expect to break ground in September and be up and operating by fall of 2018, said Marty Potts, senior vice president of JLL.

Rossmoor, a bedroom community of about 10,000, is its own island community. The unincorporated patch of Orange County holds little political sway with neighbors Seal Beach and Los Alamitos.

And, despite its name and location, the sprawling Shops at Rossmoor belongs to Seal Beach. Thus, it is Seal Beach that will decide the fate of the health club.

Last week, LA Fitness and JLL representatives wrapped up a series of three outreach events at the Old Ranch Country Club. Exhibiting maps and pictures, the spokesmen came to promote the gym as a local asset. But Rossmoor residents, for the most part, came to complain.

This is just a schmooze session to make us change our minds, said Marjorie Whitney, a retired speech pathologist.

A consulting firm hired by JLL completed a traffic study showing that the health club would generate about 1,218 additional daily trips to the center.

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However, the analysis concluded that minor alterations to the entryway off Seal Beach Boulevard would offset that influx.

Opponents are skeptical.

Former Councilman Miller said he cast his vote against the LA Fitness plan partly because it did not include an additional entry into the shopping center.

The developer was not willing to do that because it would reduce parking spaces, Miller said. I felt traffic would back up and create a hardship on the community.

Instead, the current plan would widen a left-turn lane into the mall and add a lane to an already existing entrance.

That solves nothing, said Jason Natanson, 39, who lives in one of the condos adjacent to the gyms proposed location.

As well as traffic, he and his wife, Melissa, say they worry about noise emanating from a health club open 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. on weekdays.

For years, the back parking lot has sat mostly vacant except for cars belonging to nearby condo residents. Most shoppers and diners park out front.

The potential loss of that condo parking means yet another issue for Rossmoor. Short on parking space at their complexes, condo dwellers could be pushed out of the lot and onto residential streets.

I understand why people dont like the idea of more traffic, but the truth is, they do not own that parking lot, said retired teacher Carol Brody, one of the few attendees at the recent meet-and-greet who supports the LA Fitness.

Brody does not live in Rossmoor, but in a gated nook of homes on the other side of Seal Beach Boulevard. Right now I drive 15 minutes to a 24 Hour Fitness, she said. I could just walk across the street to this LA Fitness.

JLLs Potts said he, too, understands the concern among Rossmoor residents.

Commercial properties and residential properties just dont live together well, he said. Thats why we always work to soften our footprint.

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Seal Beach, Rossmoor residents protest new fitness center as decision looms - Long Beach Press Telegram

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Home » Fitness » Seal Beach, Rossmoor residents protest new fitness center as decision looms – Long Beach Press Telegram