In a three-person race for Redondo Beach’s District 1 City Council seat, Rolf Strutzenberg is fighting from an unenviable third position. Unlike his opponents, Martha Barbee and Nils Nehrenheim, he has neither the benefit of being a sitting council member nor a lead activist.
As such, he’s a man without a country, sitting between local political extremes. But Strutzenberg says that he’s comfortable with the challenge.
“Carving out a significant portion of the middle ground is a greater challenge than grabbing onto either end,” Strutzenberg said.
A resident along South Redondo’s Avenue F, Strutzenberg’s political aspirations began with the fervor over the Legado Redondo mixed-use development, at the corner of Pacific Coast Highway and Palos Verdes Boulevard.
“That got me looking into things deeper than a normal resident would, then going to meetings, and it all was of interest to me,” Struzenberg said. “I liked the challenge of learning all of these things — there’s a massive amount that most people will never know.”
An Iowa farm boy by birth, Strutzenberg came to the South Bay by way of Texas. He was working in Toyota’s aerospace division, working on a since-scrapped plane project, when he was moved out to the West Coast, and he stuck around ever since.
But his background began in commercial construction, as a summer job to put himself through college. As he finished his degree, alternating between part-time, full-time and night classes, he worked on increasingly complex commercial construction projects.
“It wasn’t a long time, but it was enough to get an insight of what a developer does,” Strutzenberg said. “What the impacts are of big construction, the things you need to watch out for. One of my concerns is the the city doesn’t have the resources to oversee a complex project.”
The Waterfront redevelopment project, proposed by CenterCal, and the South Bay Galleria’s mixed-use redevelopment, are potential flags in that regard.
“I’d like to see [large project management] expertise within the city itself, not just 100 percent reliant on outside services..I don’t know if the staff could handle it,” Strutzenberg said.
He wants staff to be able to handle minute details — what kind of rebar will be used in the project, for instance — or at least what type of questions to ask. He also sees Redondo’s housing shortage as a matter of course.
“A housing crisis is what Detroit is in, where people have fled and empty houses are there,” Strutzenberg said. “What we have is a lack of affordable housing because we live in a desirable area.”
His concern is high-density housing, and he feels that downzoning of R-3 and mixed-use zoning, from 35 units an acre to 25 units, could be a solution.
Strutzenberg doesn’t support Measure C, and leans toward the Waterfront project. He dislikes the scale of the rezoning measure and its intent of stopping CenterCal’s proposal.
“I’m OK with the Waterfront moving ahead; I know it’s going change, it’s going to morph. All things are negotiable,” Strutzenberg said.
Though Strutzenberg is careful to note that he wants to keep out of the slings and arrows of election season, he feels that the current Council makeup is lacking in neutral viewpoints.
“What I see we need up there is an unbiased, analytical approach…to consider things objectively is one of my key drivers,” Strutzenberg said. “Objectively learning both sides to the furthest extent possible, understanding their needs and concerns but still reaching a decision that reflects those viewpoints in a balanced way.”
“It takes a lot of effort and a certain kind of experience to read through these things,” Strutzenberg said. “I have the desire and the will to really do this — and more importantly, I have the time.”
