Spotlight On Redondo Beach: Failed Urban Renewal Effort Prompts Redevelopment Plan

By CHRISTOPHER KEOUGH

Staff Reporter

Good intentions and bad planning conspired to turn William Hammond Hall’s city-by-the-sea into a paragon of urban blight.

Now, 50 years after the bulk of Redondo Beach was leveled under the federal Urban Renewal Program following World War II, public and private interests have come together to revive the city.

Designed by Hall in 1887 and incorporated in 1892, Redondo Beach has seen its waterfront cut off from the rest of the city by a power plant, parking lots and a wall of self-storage units. The municipal pier to the south is a jumble of seafood joints and souvenir shops.

But city officials are working with management at the 50-acre AES Corp. waterfront power plant to restore the urban core. The plan is to make the entry to King Harbor, indicated by the arch at Herondo Street and Pacific Coast Highway, open into something more than a strip of small, nondescript hotels and a sleepy pier.

The new developments are part of the Heart of the City Specific Plan, a 150-acre blueprint to redevelop underperforming municipal property, including two surface parking lots and the portions of the power company’s land that it no longer needs. The plan to create pedestrian-friendly streets of retail, cafes, public spaces and low-rise office buildings could potentially cost $180 million.

Whatever the cost, most agree it’s time to reclaim the waterfront.

“We lost our downtown,” said Marna Smeltzer, executive director of the Redondo Beach Chamber of Commerce. “Now you go downtown and it’s beautiful, but it’s just a parking lot. You go downtown for dinner and then you drive home.”

Sensitive development

City Manager Louis Garcia said a remade downtown, with its retail, entertainment and service space, is designed to serve the community on a day-to-day basis. Garcia hopes that the project will attract tourists who don’t want to deal with traffic, high prices and other tourists in Santa Monica on weekends.

That’s a welcome change for those who work downtown.

“It’s critical to Redondo Beach to rebuild the waterfront for tourism, for the economy and for the ambience,” said 39-year-old Glen Trujillo, who works at Catalina Coffee Co. and has lived in the city for more than 10 years.

“The best thing we can do is come up with a project that shrinks the size of the plant and is compatible with the character of the beach community,” said C.J. Thompson, general manager of AES Redondo Beach.

AES’ portion would be a mixed-use project heavy on the residential component, Thompson said. While specific housing numbers had not yet been set, he said AES’ $90 million development would include 100,000 square feet of office space and a small amount of retail enough to serve the new housing built.

The city’s portion of Heart of the City includes as many 3,000 housing units.

Redondo Beach has signed agreements with South Bay developer Mar Ventures Inc. for the purchase of two parking lots comprising 10 acres at the south end of the project site.

Garcia said there would certainly be a need for more housing, citing the addition of at least 1,000 jobs at Northrop Grumman Corp., which is a major subcontractor on the recently awarded Joint Strike Fighter project.

While the city is touting the plan as a way to restore an urban core that has languished for 50 years, not everyone agrees that the proposal would restore the proper character of the city.

Nadine Bennington, co-chair of Citizens for Less Development in King Harbor, said her organization supports development in the area but is concerned about densities and the potential to create “the Great Wall of Harbor Drive” and cut off views to the ocean.

Garcia said the plan would assure that views would not be blocked, noting how sidewalks along Catalina Avenue would be widened and paths would be established from Catalina to the beach to restore views of the Pacific.

Garcia said Heart of the City might include affordable housing, but that hasn’t been decided.

Whatever is decided, Smeltzer said she would like to see some sort of destination attraction that the city could use to draw visitors. “We don’t want to promote it as a Disneyland; that’s not what we want to see down there,” she said. “We want to see a community place.”