Marine Mammal Care Center fundraising reaches halfway mark for Redondo Beach facility; Joe’s Crab Shack closer to demolition
by Garth Meyer The Marine Mammal Care Center has reached a milestone in its fundraising effort to build a facility on the Redondo Beach waterfront. This week, State Senators Ben Allen and Laura Richardson announced $16 million in grants from Proposition 4 funding, while another $16 million came in from private, philanthropic matching grants from two area donors. The news marks the next phase of the campaign; to raise $33 million more to build an estimated $65 million marine hospital at the former Joe’s Crab Shack site on Portofino Way. The building would feature large patient care pools, a surgical suite, research and diagnostic laboratories, and meeting space and interactive exhibits open to the public. Some surgeries would be viewable by guests, according to the MMCC. The center is slated to expand the non-profit’s work, now based in San Pedro, responding to stranded and injured marine mammals along the California coast from Long Beach to Malibu. The new Redondo Beach building would more than double the San Pedro capacity. “The scale and complexity of marine mammal emergencies in Southern California have changed dramatically over the last decade,” said John Warner, MMCC chief…
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