The decade was one of resolution for the downtown areas of the three beach cities. In Hermosa Beach the village main drag was remade, in Redondo Beach the harbor area – a de facto downtown – saw its future determined by voters, and in Manhattan Beach a boutique hotel anchored a development that filled a big empty space.
Massive makeover
In Hermosa, the decade’s end marked the completion of a total makeover of upper Pier Avenue, the iconic main drag that connects Pacific Coast Highway to sparkling Pier Plaza by the sea.
The $4.3 million makeover, recommended by a special architectural team in the early 1990s, left upper Pier with wider sidewalks, a palm-lined center median, succulent flora in expanded planted areas, and a cutting-edge system to keep dirty storm water out of the Pacific Ocean.
To some, it was a too-extreme makeover. During a year-long meeting process before the project was launched, some avenue businesspeople complained that their parking would disappear and their simple shops would be gentrified out of existence as rents rose.
Proponents, including Councilman Kit Bobko, the project’s spearhead, pointed to some shiny new construction already under way on the avenue, and said the makeover would help manage development that was going to occur anyway.
In the end, the city got $4.3 million in federal, state and county money, remade the avenue over eight difficult months for the shopkeepers, and in October 2010 unveiled the result.
“This is a great day for Hermosa,” Mayor Peter Tucker said to more than 100 people who gathered for a sun-splashed ribbon cutting.
Will of the people
The end of the decade marked a long-anticipated resolution in Redondo as well, when a 4 percent margin of victory at the polls appeared to clear the way for revitalization of the city’s harbor area, which can be seen as a seaside downtown-by-default.
It was late in 2010 when the harbor zoning in Measure G was approved by 52 to 48 percent of the vote.
With that victory, a boutique, 45-room Shade Hotel proposed by Manhattan Beach entrepreneur Mike Zislis could go forward, possibly beginning construction soon after decade’s end.
Les Guthrie of Marina Cove, the harbor’s longest and largest leaseholder, signaled that he would proceed with a significant reinvestment in his properties as well.
The greater part of the decade had been consumed with often fiery debate.
In 2001 City Hall proposed a plan it called the Heart of the City, which called for new residential development on and around the AES power plant site and a new downtown commercial district in the harbor area.
The next year the Heart’s beating was stopped by a grassroots referendum movement that focused on housing density and traffic.
By mid-decade, city officials were changing the zoning for the power plant area back to its former designation, largely commercial and industrial, and adding public parks, open space and recreation as permitted uses.
“Obviously this is a big milestone for all of us,” said Bill Brand, president of the South Bay Parkland Conservancy.
Milestone or no, the debate raged on, with slow-growth proponents and backers of a big park on AES land fighting those who pushed for a vigorous harbor area redevelopment.
In the end, the Measure G vote marked a major defeat for Building a Better Redondo, the “slow growth” citizen’s group that successfully sued the city to bring the zoning war once again to the ballot box.
On election night, after the result was clear, more than 100 Measure G supporters lifted champagne to their lips at Delzano’s restaurant and celebrated what many called a watershed vote in the city’s recent history.
“The people have spoken!” Chris Cagle called over the cheering. He had spoken the same words in June 2002 when he and a band of residents delivered more than 10,000 signatures to City Hall for the referendum that halted the Heart of the City.
“This is an enormous watershed moment,” said Councilman Steve Diels. “Not only a watershed moment, a waterfront moment…The future of Redondo Beach was on the line. The negativity just could not win.”
Across the street at the Crowne Plaza Hotel’s Splash restaurant, the BBR party was a smaller and quieter affair, marked by grace in defeat.
BBR Chair Jim Light said that Measure G supporters “ran a good campaign.”
“We asked for a public vote, and we got it,” he said.
Cagle, whose political career began with a letter to the editor opposing the Heart of the City and led to six years as a city councilman, contended that Measure G marked a compromise by implementing a harbor area zoning cap of 400,000 square feet of commercial development, removing home zoning, adding park zoning to the power plant site, and adding a public boat ramp and a 12-foot waterfront promenade.
“We needed to fully conclude this matter,” he said. “It’s been like the World Series of local politics.”
Light peered into the coming decade in conciliation.
“It is time to move forward,” he said. “I think in the end both sides want what is best for Redondo. I have offered to help move forward should our opponents want my support.”
Filling a hole
In Manhattan Beach, the decade began with no change from the previous one. The old Metlox Potteries site remained a big empty eyesore in the village downtown. Then in 2004 the Pasadena-based Tolkin Group broke ground on a 97,000 square-foot development — anchored by the Shade Hotel — stretching from Valley Drive to Morningside Avenue and from Manhattan Beach Boulevard to 13th Street.
Workers erected a pair of two-story buildings to house retail shops, restaurants, a spa, exercise studios and offices on the southeast and southwest ends of the property, with Shade on the northeast corner. The buildings, including the hotel with its luxury suites, stand over about two-thirds of the complex, and a central plaza and garden stand upon a two-level, underground parking garage.
In 2007 Mike Zislis, a Palos Verdes native and owner of the Rock ‘N Fish restaurant down the street, opened the Shade, after carefully touring the best hotels all over California and the world, from the Montage in Laguna Beach to the Ritz in Paris.
Larry Drasin, the designer of Zislis’ Rock ‘N Fish in downtown Manhattan, was on board from the beginning. Christopher Lowell, an Emmy Award-winning host of his own Discovery Home Channel design series, was coaxed into contributing to the design as well.
“I was living in Manhattan Beach on The Strand. When Rock ‘N Fish opened it sort of became my haunt,” Lowell said. “Michael had repeatedly asked me [to take part in the design of the Shade] and I kept saying, ‘No, no, no.’ I was in between TV series and writing books and I wasn’t sure I wanted to get involved in a long term project.”
Shade quickly won wide recognition.
Citysearch readers voted it Best Luxury Hotel and Best Business Hotel, with the Best Hotel Staff in Los Angeles. Shade was one of 19 American properties to land on the Conde Nast Traveler’s Hot List.
It was named “Best Weekend Getaway” and “Best Romantic Hotel” by Citysearch, and won high praise from publications including The Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Angelino Magazine, and California Home & Design.
“Manhattan Beach is one of the last beach-side gems,” Zislis said as the hotel opened. “I couldn’t believe there was not a hotel in the downtown.” ER
