Growing Together in Bellflower

In the Middle of Rebuilding its Future

STAFF REPORT

“We can continue to our journey of growing Bellflower and making it the best city possible to live, work, play, and pray,” said Bellflower Mayor Scott Larsen in his State of the City Address held at Simms Park on February 28th. The Mayor declared that the City is growing stronger as they, in the council, work together and support one another.

		MAYOR SCOTT LARSEN during his State of the City Address: “My City Council colleagues and I are committed in working together as a strong team. We give many hours of our time and effort to help the city move in the right direction. The community expects us to make progress and indeed we expect that of ourselves...” Photos by Zion Publishing ©

The address highlighted major developments in the past years. Bellflower’s better future started with public safety in the 1990’s. The City continued to experience historically low crime rates. In 2006 the FBI recognized Bellflower as being the 18th Most Improved City in the decline of crime rates among cities with 75,000 population or more nationwide.

“Growing Together” is the new City Motto as pronounced by City Manager Michael Egan. With ‘Facing Challenges” as the theme, Egan, challenged everyone to work together and to support one another for the betterment of Bellflower.

		“GROWING TOGETHER” “We have a lot of challenges, we know what to do, we know what our goals are: turn the City around, we know what the path is, it’s hard work, it’s setting standards and consistently applying them, treating everybody fairly and taking one step at a time,” declares City Manager Michael Egan.

“Being together is about, all of us being honest with one another, admitting the problems that we have, admitting the challenges, and focusing together in the same direction to face our challenges and fix them. Because we want to build a better future for this community,” said Egan.

Community development is now the City’s priority, to start attracting new and better businesses that will support the community over the long run. Redeveloping an old city takes a lot of work and one of the major challenges Bellflower faces is the lack of infrastructure to support contemporary businesses. Over a number of years the City has made modest developments and brought new businesses within the community.

Major developments from 2007 include: the unveiling of the Tower of Time; the restoration of the Belmont Building to its original 1914 architecture and is now home to Starbucks and Subway; the recently-opened Pirate Park, a pirate-themed play area at Bellflower Blvd. and Belmont Street, features a 17th century ship, scull cave, Spanish fort and treasure chest; the redesigned parking lot next to the post office; a new Union Bank building (Bellflower corner Alondra), and adjacent retail center is in construction that will include Panda Express, Little Caesars Pizza, Game Stop and T-Mobile; Thompson and Simms Parks’ new installed gym floors; Corte Fina, a 64-unit gated community of luxury town homes in Artesia Blvd. and Woodruff Ave.; a new shopping center featuring a Starbucks, Roebeks Juice, Wingstop and Game Stop (Bellflower Blvd. corner Rosecrans Ave.); a dozen beautiful single-family homes were constructed on Beverly Street; six artistically-themed traffic signal boxes located throughout the City; the green project at Palo Verde and 91 Freeway; and the restoration of the historic Pacific Electric Train Depot to its original 1918 state, features an apple orchard, garden and picnic tables.

The City of Bellflower looks forward to develop and grow further to meet the needs of its diverse community. Future projects include: the new Smart and Final building to include a decorative landscaped pathway; Bellflower Village project, that will expand Café Camellia, while the second building will house retail stores on the first floor and residential units on above floors; Town Center Gateway project will feature a plaza with four kiosks and a landscaped median along Belmont Ave.; West Branch Greenway project will incorporate landscaped pedestrian and bicycle pathways along the former Union Pacific Railroad; the West Artesia Specific Plan will pave the way for the encouragement of freeway-oriented big-box retail developments along the north side or Artesia Blvd. between Downey Ave. and Lakewood Blvd.; and the City is seeking to develop the Palm Street Linear Park that will feature a bike and walking trail.

Bellflower’s finances continue to be very conservative - the City’s goal is to increase its revenue in order to add more services to the community. Nevertheless even though not a wealthy city in terms of revenue availability at the moment, the City operates in such a way that the finances are well managed to maintain its programs. The City’s finance department has been acknowledged for excellence in financial reporting for thirteen years in a row. Bellflower maintains its revenue growth by keeping in place with inflation and population growth.

“The City fought over redevelopment plans for twenty years, it took us a long time; we pretty much missed the boat and we got in real late. We are starting to scratch the surface, we are starting to make some improvements but we have a long way to go… We can’t miss too many more boats when they come along. We missed this one, we’re making a little bit of progress, but we have to be able to looking for every opportunity and take advantage of it.” Egan added.