Will the pandemic reshape downtown Hermosa Beach?
A vacant storefront for rent on Hermosa Avenue. Local real estate watchers expect vacancies to increase in the coming months. Photos Across the United States, the coronavirus has made packed restaurants and carefree urban mingling impossible. In Hermosa Beach there is hope that in the long term the pandemic may lead to a city center that is more bustling and attractive to businesses than the version that preceded it, as well as fear that things will get worse before they get better. In a meeting this week of the city’s Economic Development Committee, a body created to reckon with the turmoil COVID-19 has wreaked on the city’s business climate, officials received grim predictions about the immediate future of commercial real estate in the city. While contraction is inevitable from a pandemic that, nationwide, has killed more than 180,000 people and thrown 30 million out of work, some business owners and real estate watchers suggested that Hermosa’s path to recovery may be stymied by zoning and building code provisions, and the ideas about parking, transportation and density they embody. Jon David, a commercial property owner in the city, described the city’s parking code as…
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