Filling the Void

city staff worked with the AACCLB advisory committee and a pair of consulting firms to facilitate a variety of community outreach activities (meetings, surveys, interviews, roundtables, etc.) to create a vision of what the cultural center might look like and how it would best serve the community.

According to the Preliminary Institutional Business Plan created during the 2019 visioning process, the AACCLB was advised to plan on an operating budget of $2.2 million per year (including paying the needed 17 or so full-time employees), only one-third of which is projected to come through earned revenue sources even when the cultural center is up and running. That means a lot of fundraising both now and later.

To that end, last fall the AACCLB invited Simpson to come on board and captain the ship. A local heavy-hitter when it comes to nonprofit fundraising — under his guidance, LBCAP tripled its staff and septupled its budget before he moved on to head the $30 million Miller Foundation in late 2019 — Simpson recognizes the scope of logistical challenges inherent to creating a multimedia space filled with everything from “exhibits which emphasize and encourage dialogue on race, reconciliation and healing” to collections featuring artifacts and highlighting the “life experiences of African-American heroes and sheroes, both famous and forgotten,” including residents who have made contributions to the arts, sciences, sports, and education — not to mention hosting an array of arts and educational programming and other events “to preserve, honor, and share [African-Americans’] rich heritage and culture,” along with informa- tion on matters as practical as homebuying and holistic health and dietary practices.

Funding chal lenges aside, the biggest obstacle so far has been finding a sufficient space. Simpson estimates that 15,000 sq. ft. is the minimum workable footprint (though this would probably be too small to do everything the AACCLB envisions), while the city manager’s final memorandum on the visioning process (dated Feb. 18, 2020) recommends a maximum footprint of 40,000 sq. ft. Viltz, the AACCLB’s facilities chair, says that unfortunately none of the seven or eight cityowned assets put forward so far has fit the bill, and so the AACCLB has expanded the search to the private sector.

Although the AACCLB is amenable to building from the ground up — even if this means a lengthier timeline, not to mention that locating an adequate lot may not be any easier than finding an existing spot — Viltz is hopeful that ground she’s already covered may eventually bear fruit. “There are a couple of spaces we’ve looked at that I haven’t given up on,” she says. “There’s always the possibility that something that isn’t available now but is maybe just sitting there that the owners decide to sell or lease.”

Simpson hopes getting the word out about the AACCLB’s plans may bring new options to the table. He notes that because fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic (such as a permanent increase in the percentage of employees working from home) has depreciated value of some commercial real estate, “It could be a good time for us [to find a home], because there’s a value proposition in partnering with the African American Cultural Center […] because now you’d have this amazing organization running programs and educating the city [from your commercial space].”

In the interim, one organization partnering with the AACCLB is the Bixby Knolls Business Improvement Association, enabling the AACCLB to offer a small variety of programming out of the EXPO Arts Center, including a Pan Afrikan Study Group, West African drum and dance classes, and various exhibits, such Forgotten Images’ The Roots of Slavery (through Feb. 27), featuring an extensive collection of artifacts from America’s darkest days presented as a meditation on how “the slave trade impacted American economics, the divide in social class, agriculture, human rights, and more.”

But this is only a glimpse of what the AACCLB envisions. And they’re in it for the long haul, because, as Simpson articulates, the project is simply too important not to manifest.

“This cultural center is not a nice-to-have, it’s a must-have if our next generation is to understand from whence they came and the struggles that were undergone and the fights that were taken on for us to have what we have and not take it for granted,” he says. “[…] “It’ll be a place to go that’s ours. It’s not a church, so you don’t have to worry about, ‘Well, I’m not religious’; it’s not a political or government institution, so you don’t have to worry about whether your politics fit; it’s a neutral space. It’s a cultural center that happens to have a Black origin or theme — but we’re teaching American history from a Black perspective.”

The African American Cultural Center of Long Beach welcomes inquiries of all sorts, from real estate opportunities and donations of any amount to class/event participants and potential volunteers. “If you believe in our vision,” says Simpson, “then tell us how you think you can contribute. Maybe you’re a retired teacher. Maybe you can be a docent for an exhibit. Maybe you’re a carpenter who can build us mobile walls. … I’d like to think there’s a place for everyone to come to the table and feel like their contribution is valued, so long as it fits our vision.”

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