OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA The few open spaces that remain in Long Beach continue to dangle in the political breeze like piñatas, their fate frequently seeming to depend on nothing more than the blind swing of a lucky land developer.

During the past few years, the biggest of these places—the 56-acre, so-called Sports Park site on former oil and industrial land in the center of the city, and the 30-some-acre Los Cerritos Wetlands on the east side—have been offered and withdrawn, in whole or in part, during secret and public negotiations, with some of the best-connected, highest-rollers in town.

The city has suddenly tossed out its 20-years-in-the-planning Sports Park blueprints and it has acquired—although not legally protected—a piece of the Los Cerritos Wetlands in exchange for its public-service yard. Meanwhile, developers and city planners alike continue to eye another slice of wetlands for a road that would provide traffic mitigation for development at the intersection of Second Street and Pacific Coast Highway. 

And then there is contractor Sean Hitchcock, who in the spring of 2009 simply rolled his own heavy equipment and some city-owned asphalt unannounced onto a corner of the wetlands at Loynes Drive and Studebaker Road and began to install soccer fields.

Into this undisciplined situation comes Terry Watt—well, at least for an evening. The renowned land use planner and environmental mediator is speaking Thursday night at 7 p.m. at a special open meeting of the Los Cerritos Wetlands Land Trust in the auditorium of Kettering Elementary School.

During the past five years, Watt has made her name synonymous with implementing order and extracting solutions from exactly the kind of mess that Long Beach has made.

And it is a mess.

“I’ve been reading up on this one,” Watt said Wednesday morning during a short telephone conversation with Greater Long Beach. “It’s so gnarly.”

But so were circumstances near Lake Tahoe, at the Tejon Ranch and in Orange County, where Watt helped bring together unlikely partners to protect some of California’s most fragile, threatened lands:

+++In 2005, Watt negotiated $243.5 million in an Orange County transportation measure to comprehensively mitigate for habitat impacts due to freeway projects with impressive environmental non-profit support.

+++In 2006, Watt helped secure protections for Martis Valley (Waddle Ranch), near Lake Tahoe, and create the Martis Fund—a non-profit funded through real estate and development transfer fees.

+++In 2007, Watt worked with the County of Marin to craft one of the nation’s most ambitious local plans to fight global warming.

+++In 2008, Watt was one of the Planning and Conservation League’s (PCL) representatives helping to preserve 240,000 acres of the magnificent Tejon Ranch.

After that last one, the not-for-profit PCL presented Watt with its Award for Individual Achievement, describing her work as “innovative, inspiring, and resourceful.”

Asked how she might apply those characteristics to local activists’ long battle to preserve the Los Cerritos Wetland, Watt said she was still sketching out some potential game plans for her Thursday-evening presentation at Kettering School.

“The question is, how do you step back and think creatively about a vision—a different vision than this continuous land grab by inappropriate development?” Watt offered. “I’m impressed by the work that local environmentalists have done. The question is, what do you do with all that work to get some traction and dialogue to turn this thing toward a permanent solution?”

Although Watt The answer, Watt said, is finding common ground—or the beginnings of a path toward it.

“We need a toehold on a bigger vision that’s shared with the other side,” she said. “How to do that? Although there are several replicable steps from work I’ve already done, it’s also true that each situation is unique—the players are always different. Right now, I’m trying to think about where the current setting looks primed for a breakthrough.” 

[ FOLLOW-UP COVERAGE TO COME ]

TERRY WATT ADDRESS PRESENTED BY LOS CERRITOS WETLANDS LAND TRUST • KETTERING ELEMENTARY SCHOOL • 550 SILVERA AVE • LONG BEACH 90803 • LCWLANDTRUST.ORG • 7PM THURSDAY • FREE