Two and a half years ago, Allen Sanford told the Redondo Beach city council his plans for the first project of note on the waterfront in “a decade, maybe two.”
The work began in 2024, and it proved far more extensive than anticipated, but the California Surf Club opened in May 2025 – combining the old Ruby’s, and the shuttered On The Rocks/Chiller’s into a private club and a separate, public restaurant.
Initiation fees for the founding, 450 members were $6,000 – $10,000, with monthly dues of $350, of which $100 is a food and beverage credit.
“We resent the whole idea of exclusivity,” Sanford said. “The word we use is tribe. A collection of families who have the same social and cultural interest. Our love is the ocean, the beach.”
The cost to remodel/reconstruct the two buildings caught Sanford and business partner Rob Lissner by surprise. The project went 35% over budget.
Along with Sanford, California Surf Club is run by President Jeff Jones, of Quality Seafood, and Jerry Garbus, chief operating officer, who opened the M.B. Post and Fishing with Dynamite restaurants in Manhattan Beach.
In 2021, as the proposed CenterCal waterfront redevelopment matter came to a close in Redondo Beach, the city formed a waterfront amenities working group, its aim to revitalize the area without fundamentally changing it.
Two years later, Sanford, who had leased the On the Rocks building for BeachLife, began talking to Jones, who had leased the former Ruby’s, with plans to open a new restaurant.
They decided to join forces to create California Surf Club.
Jim Light went from appointed Redondo Beach mayor to its elected mayor in the March 2025 city election, which also brought in new city councilmembers Brad Waller and Chadwick Castle, and Joy Ford as city attorney.
Light beat term-limited Councilman Nils Nehrenheim for mayor, and three other candidates.
Upon his appointment in February 2024, after the death of Mayor Bill Brand, Light said he would not run for election, when questioned by the council, including Nehrenheim. A year later, after Light was encouraged to run – by people who had opposed his appointment – he changed his stance and mounted a campaign.
Four rounds of ranked-choice voting – making its debut in Redondo Beach in 2025 – helped Light reach the 50%-plus 1 margin to win the election 5,927 votes to 4,052 for Nehrenheim.
An effort that began in 1959 culminated in a unanimous vote by the 2025 Redondo Beach city council to place a public boat ramp between R10 Social House and Riviera Mexican Cantina, at a 45-degree angle into the water. It will not affect city commercial property.
The push to choose a location waxed and waned over the decades, encompassing 19 potential spots. The latest endeavor stemmed from the city’s Harbor Amenities Plan, set forth in 2021 in the aftermath of the failed CenterCal waterfront redevelopment project.
The boat launch is to be paid for by the state Division of Boating & Waterways. Its deadline to apply for a new grant is next month. The application process requires a preferred site.
The Eddy Redondo Residences, or Legado project, opened in May at the corner of Pacific Coast Highway and Palos Verdes Blvd., on the four-acre site of the former Bristol Farms grocery store, and before that, The Strand music venue.
The new 115-unit residential complex with ground floor retail offers one, two and three-bedroom apartments priced at $3,999 per month to $9,500. The three-bedroom penthouse is $20,000 per month.
A smattering of tenants moved in when the building opened. The first commercial tenant moved in in late summer.
Redondo Beach Mayor Jim Light remained skeptical of the project.
“I don’t like this kind of development; the commercial doesn’t provide the revenue for the city,” he said in May. “The zoning was optimized for residential over commercial (which is) not as attractive to someone who doesn’t live in the building. A hundred residents can’t patronize a business enough… I’m hopeful it’s different with this one.”
“We understand there are a range of perspectives on development,” Legado CEO Edward Czuker said upon the opening. “That said, we believe The Eddy is already proving how thoughtful design and community-focused tenants can create lasting value for Redondo Beach.”
The original plan for Eddy Redondo, in 2014, was for a larger, 180-unit complex, which was then pared down to 146 units, then 115, in order to get approval from the Redondo Beach city council.
Redondo Beach City Councilman Zein Obagi, Jr., reached a deferred prosecution agreement in February with the U.S. Attorney’s Office of Central California, after a felony criminal probe into his actions with a former client – which previously resulted in a two-year ban from practicing law.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office agreement stipulated that it file allegations of felony wire fraud and deprivation of honest services. At the end of the deal’s three-year term, if Obagi, Jr., complies with its rules, the charges will dismissed. If not, the criminal charges may be pursued.
The State Bar of California in 2024 found Obagi, Jr., culpable of two acts of “moral turpitude” for failing to pay $515,000 to a former client after settlement of a lawsuit.
“As part of my civic duty, I chose to enter into this agreement, which is not an admission of guilt, but a sincere effort to bring to a close a matter that I have been dealing with for more than two years,” Obagi said. “This resolution will allow me to keep my focus on the needs of my growing family and the Redondo Beach community I serve.”
In a lawsuit brought by Leo Pustilnikov, the filed-for-bankruptcy co-owner of the Redondo Beach AES plant, a California State of Appeals court ruled in October that the city failed to identify locations for a sufficient number of “realistic” new housing units to satisfy its Housing Element, or Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) allotment.
The Appeals Court judges’ panel ruling was unanimous, and Pustilnikov’s company, New Commune DTLA, was awarded costs.
The ruling cited a Redondo Beach Vons property on Inglewood Avenue as an example, because, though city zoning allows residential development there, it also allows commercial. The court pointed to Vons’ “sole and absolute discretion” over its lot, and that the Redondo Housing Element put forth no evidence that Vons would consent to a plan for housing.
Redondo sought to satisfy its RHNA requirements through the use of zoning “overlays,” as have Hermosa and Manhattan Beach, and many other California cities. An overlay permits residential development, but keeps the underlying zoning, to allow other uses such as commercial and/or industrial.
Overlays are accepted by the HCD (California Department of Housing and Community).
Unless successful in appealing to the appellate ruling, Redondo Beach will have to revise its Housing Element.
In further findings the court emphasized that to obey California Housing Element law is to choose pathways to realistic development, as opposed to theoretical planning, or “paper compliance.”
The court also stated that cities cannot bank on speculative development of commercial property to meet their assigned RHNA numbers.
Without a certified Housing Element, cities are vulnerable to the state “Builder’s Remedy” law, which may permit projects of higher heights and greater density than what local zoning allows.
Redondo Beach Police Chief Joe Hoffman retired in December after nearly four years as chief, and a total of 31 years as a Redondo Beach Police officer, the only department he ever worked for.
“There is a fine line between leaving early and staying too long. I’m a believer that you need to leave something when you’re not quite ready,” Hoffman said. “There is a point in anyone’s career that you get burned out. Having that energy and enthusiasm and commitment, it can affect the culture when you (start to lose that). I don’t want to leave, but I need to make sure I leave before I get there. I’m not there, and don’t want to ever get there.”
Hoffman met his wife of 24 years, Kristen, when he responded to a call at the Redondo Beach Cheesecake Factory. She was working at the bakery counter.
Hoffman’s career included roles with the RBPD as cadet, motorcycle officer, patrol officer, SWAT team member, detective, range instructor, lieutenant, captain, assistant chief and chief.
On the verge of approving retail cannabis in Redondo Beach, the city council pulled back in August, opting to survey the public before taking any further action.
Councilman Scott Behrendt was the first to express reservations about permitting retail shops, and Councilmember Paige Kaluderovic said the city needed first to get its smoke shops in order.
“Illegal products are being sold at our current stores. The survey should be later,” she said, “after we have provided this enforcement and crackdown in our city.”
Ultimately, the council agreed to hire the firm FM3, at a cost of $39,000, to poll 500 Redondo Beach registered voters on whether they want retail cannabis strores.
“(The poll results) will be just one data point to consider,” Behrendt said.
Mayor Jim Light weighed in too.
“One of the worst things we can do to the public is poll them and ignore it,” he said. “I think we need to be prepared to live with what we hear.”
With a May moratorium in effect on new smoke shops in Redondo Beach – to keep the number at 16 or fewer until June 2026 – the Redondo Beach city council zeroed in on an ordinance to ultimately limit the shops to five.
Marc Wiener, Redondo Beach Community development director, said the city has added seven smoke shops since 2019, with a record of compliance issues, including illegal sales of flavored tobacco and cannabis.
He explained that a new smoke shop ordinance would allow 10 stores at first. The number would be reduced by attrition.
Each of the final five shops would need to receive a conditional-use permit from the city within five years.
Restrictions include buffer zones around schools, youth centers and parks; and a design review. The permits would need to be renewed every three years.
Before the city council’s moratorium, a smoke shop could be approved to open “by right.” No permit was required.
Five-term City Attorney Mike Webb retired April 1. He did not run for a sixth-term, instead endorsing his protege, quality of life prosecutor Joy Ford. Previously, Webb worked as a Redondo city prosecutor for 11 years.
He sought his final four-year term, in part, to defeat the application to build a new power plant at the AES site, and to feel good about where he would be leaving the Redondo Beach Enhanced Response to Homelessness.
Webb started with the city on March 1, 1994, working for city attorney Jerry Goddard. Webb never worked in private practice – always a prosecutor.
Elected first in 2005, he named as a career highlight the long-sought shutdown of the AES plant Dec. 31, 2023, along with his six years working on the city’s homelessness project. ER
