Redondo Beach's Waterfront Has Three "Coming Soon" Signs, and They Don't Share a Timeline

Ask three different people in Redondo Beach what's happening with the waterfront and you'll get three answers that sound like they're describing the same thing. A power plant site turning into parkland. A hotel and apartments rising at Pacific Coast Highway and Palos Verdes Boulevard. A hospital campus becoming a senior living community. All three get filed under the same shorthand: waterfront redevelopment, on its way.

The problem is that "on its way" has meant a five-year build for one of these projects and a six-year legal fight with no end date for another. If you're weighing a purchase near any of these sites, the gap between those two outcomes matters more than the headline. It decides whether the change you're pricing in shows up before your next mortgage statement or sometime after your kids finish high school.

What's Fenced, What's Open, and What's Still Waiting on a Permit

Here's where each project actually stands as of this fall.

Three sites, three very different clocks, and none of them started from the same kind of friction.

Why Legado Redondo Took About Six Years and No Lawsuits

The corner of PCH and Palos Verdes Boulevard used to hold the Palos Verdes Inn. Legado Companies closed a $75 million construction loan in December 2019 to build a five-story complex with 115 residential units over roughly 22,000 square feet of street-level retail, plus a renovation of the adjacent hotel into a 110-key property with a rooftop pool. Fencing went up around the site by early 2020, and after pandemic-era delays the project opened in 2025 with tenants moving into the Eddy Redondo Residences.

What made this one move is easy to overlook because nothing dramatic happened. The site already carried a commercial designation that matched what Legado wanted to build. The developer voluntarily scaled the unit count down twice, from an original 180 units to 146 and finally to the approved 115, specifically to keep neighborhood support intact rather than fight for a larger number in court. No zoning change request, no Coastal Act dispute, no ballot measure. Just a loan, a permit that matched the parcel's existing use, and a construction timeline.

Why the AES Site Is Still Fighting Over Its Own Zoning

The old power plant tells a different story, and the difference isn't about money. Pustilnikov's ownership group paid more for this site than Legado spent on its entire project, and it still hasn't broken ground.

In August 2022, the ownership group filed an application for a mixed-use project called One Redondo, proposing more than 2,300 residential units, a hotel, offices, and about 22 acres of open space. The city ruled the application incomplete, and in May 2023 the council voted again to deny it on appeal, arguing it conflicted with the site's coastal commercial designation and the requirements of California's Coastal Act. A related builder's remedy claim over the adjacent SEA Lab building lost in Los Angeles Superior Court in February 2024. In March 2026, one of six pending lawsuits between the two sides was settled, with the developer agreeing to drop a claim that the city had run a multi-year scheme to block development. Five lawsuits remain, including disputes over the SEA Lab building, builder's remedy applications, a bankruptcy proceeding tied to a 2020 option agreement to reserve parkland, and the city's own Housing Element, which the city is appealing after losing in court.

Part of what makes this site harder is baked into the land itself. The Coastal Commission has designated roughly 6.55 acres of the property as wetlands, which triggers habitat protections that a standard commercial parcel doesn't carry. Part of it is procedural. Redondo Beach's City Charter, under Article XXVII, requires that major land-use changes go to a public vote, not just a council decision, which means even a fully cooperative rezoning would need voter approval before density could increase. Add a developer proposing a use the site isn't currently zoned for, and you get a fight that runs through the Coastal Commission, the courts, and potentially the ballot box all at once.

A Public Process Can Be Slow Without a Single Lawsuit

The Healthy Living Campus shows a third pattern, and it's worth separating from the other two because nobody has sued anybody here.

The Beach Cities Health District has been working through redevelopment of the 11-acre former South Bay Hospital site since 2017, running more than 60 public meetings and collecting over 1,000 community comments along the way. An Environmental Impact Report was certified in 2021 and hasn't been challenged since. When an earlier, larger version of the plan proved too ambitious for the community's appetite, the district scaled it back and relocated its Center for Health and Fitness and PACE program into an existing building on campus rather than wait for new construction to catch up.

On May 28, 2026, the district's board voted to authorize a ground lease with Sunrise Senior Living for a project estimated at roughly $537 million. Sunrise still needs to file for a conditional use permit before construction can start, which means nine years after the public process began, the project still has at least one more approval to clear.

This is friction without conflict. No zoning fight, no Coastal Act dispute, just the accumulated time cost of a public agency running a long consensus-building process before a private operator can build.

What This Means If You're Weighing a Home Near the Harbor

Redondo Beach's affordability relative to its neighbors is part of what draws buyers here in the first place. Reported median prices as of early 2026 put Redondo Beach around $1.28 million, compared to roughly $1.95 million in Hermosa Beach and $3.25 million in Manhattan Beach over the same period. Some local market coverage has floated the idea that AES site redevelopment alone could raise nearby property values 10 to 18 percent within a half mile once complete. That projection assumes a completion date. Six years after the plant closed and with five lawsuits still active, that assumption is the one thing this article can't confirm for you.

Contrast that with the PCH and Palos Verdes Boulevard corridor, where the retail space and hotel renovation tied to Legado Redondo are already part of the neighborhood rather than a future promise. A buyer evaluating a home near that corner is pricing in something that exists. A buyer near the AES fence line is pricing in something that has been promised in some form since at least 2015.

Two questions worth asking before you write an offer:

Does a nearby project's timeline actually affect my home's value right now? Only if it has already delivered something, like open retail space or completed construction. A signed ground lease or a filed application is a milestone, not a finished product, and the distance between the two has run anywhere from a few years to well over a decade on this stretch of coastline alone.

How do I tell which "coming soon" claim to weight more heavily? Check whether the proposed use matches the site's existing zoning and whether the California Coastal Commission has jurisdiction over the parcel. Projects that align with current designations move in a handful of years. Projects that ask for a zoning change on coastal-zone land, especially where wetlands or a City Charter vote requirement are involved, can take a decade or more, and there's no guarantee they clear that timeline at all.

None of this makes Redondo Beach's harbor a bad bet. It makes "waterfront redevelopment" a phrase that needs a follow-up question every time you hear it in a listing description or an open house conversation.

If you're looking at a home near any of these three sites and want a clear read on what's actually confirmed versus what's still speculative, May-Ann Fisher can walk through the specifics before you write an offer.