Three conspicuous locker stations have arrived across the boardwalk as part of a one-year pilot program. The project was first discussed during the May 19 city council meeting, when Long Beach Parks and Recreation Commissioner Joe Brand explained the proposal from Keub LLC. “This has been successful on college campuses all over the country,” Brand said. “They’re going to use us as more or less the guinea pig to try to get out into some of the bigger recreation areas.”
At the Aug. 4 city council meeting, City Manager Daniel Creighton further explained the project and its goal, “The idea is to have a secure place for people to store items like keys, wallets, or cell phones that they don’t want damaged when they go to the beach or run on the boardwalk”
Each locker measures nearly 7-feet tall, 2-feet deep, and roughly 5-feet wide, offering 50 individual lockers of varying sizes. The storage units are positioned in three locations — at Laurelton Boulevard adjacent to the boardwalk entrance, at Riverside Boulevard next to Skudin Surf and at the Edwards Boulevard boardwalk entrance, near another of the city’s latest boardwalk installations — a pull-up and dip exercise station.
Rather than being distributed symmetrically across the eastern, central and western sections of the boardwalk, the layout was based on high-traffic areas after the locker manufacturer performed an assessment. “The three spots that the company identified when we had a walkthrough were some of the busier beaches here in the center of town” Brand said. “Particularly the Laurelton area, between surfing, beaches, volleyball play and some of the summer races that we run through the recreation department.”
Customers are charged digitally through a secure website at a rate of $1 per hour. The lockers were provided at no cost to the city — for installation, maintenance and operation. The city will receive 20 percent of gross revenue from locker use, with Keub LLC projecting nearly $16,000 in revenue, per year per locker bank, generated for Long Beach.
“I think it’s a great a great quality of life enhancement,” City Council Vice President Chris Fiumara said. “You have peace of mind. Your stuff is locked up and secure just like in any major transportation hub.”