Long Beach City Council

Long Beach is about to consider a rare step to ease anti-smoking rules. At a time when cities nationwide are banning smoking in public places from bars to beaches, the Long Beach City Council today will consider a proposed amendment to its no-smoking ordinance that would exempt cigar lounges and hookah bars.

A controversial Home Depot project in Long Beach -- planned across the street from one of the region's last coastal wetlands -- is in limbo after a judge Thursday tossed out the development's environmental report. Los Angeles District Court Judge John A. Torribio ruled that the report was flawed -- a decision that represents a significant victory for opponents of the Home Depot Design Center, who said the project would damage the wetlands.

Long Beach has been preening its oceanfront image for more than a decade by pouring money and support into a wealth of new projects on its shores: a $117-million aquarium, gleaming Miami Beach-style condominium towers, a waterfront shopping center with sea-themed eateries, such as Gladstone's and Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. What's missing amid all this sea fever, some say, is a Southern California style seashore.

Lennie Arkinstall deftly steered his 14-foot aluminum skiff through murky tidal inlets teeming with shorebirds and strewn with trash in the heart of the degraded salt marsh known as the Los Cerritos Wetlands. The groundskeeper of the privately owned mosaic of mud flats and oil fields framed by power plants, tank farms, malls and busy highways a few miles east of downtown Long Beach wanted to show off the area's potential as a wildlife refuge.

The battle over banning grocery sales at big box stores in Long Beach will now be fought at the polls and could cost the state's fifth-largest city hundreds of thousands of dollars. The Long Beach City Council voted in September to ban grocery sales at stores larger than 100,000 square feet, including Wal-Mart, even though the discount retailer had no plans for a so-called Supercenter in the city.

Decades ago, Long Beach was something of a surfing mecca, with wave-pounding beaches where legends like Duke Kahanamoku held the first national surf contest in 1938. About nine miles of solid rock changed that. The breakwater, a 50-foot-high wall of rock built by the Army Corps of Engineers in the 1940s, stopped the waves. And by creating a protective barrier, the wall allowed the Port of Long Beach and surrounding marinas to expand and thrive.

Long Beach City Councilman Dan Baker resigned Tuesday amid questions about his personal business dealings with the head of the city's police union. The Long Beach Press-Telegram reported last week that Baker had not disclosed a real-estate partnership he entered into with the head of the city's police union, Steve James, two weeks before Baker voted in August to approve a 21% pay hike over four years for the police union. Baker and James were among a group of investors that purchased a $7.

A day after Long Beach City Councilman Dan Baker resigned during a speech in a council meeting, residents gossiped about his dramatic exit from local politics and city officials grappled with how best to fill his seat. In a speech at the start of Tuesday's 5 p.m. meeting, Baker announced that he was quitting his job, saying he and others were victims of a "witch hunt" by the press.

The Long Beach city councilman who resigned last week after questions were raised about his property investment with the police union president inappropriately used his City Hall office to run his real estate business, the city attorney said Thursday. City Atty. Bob Shannon said he is continuing to investigate Dan Baker, who resigned during a televised City Council meeting Feb. 7.