Redondo Beach's Waterfront Has Two Futures. Buyers Keep Pricing In the Wrong One.

A buyer touring a condo near Harbor Drive this summer heard a version of the same line that's been repeated in Redondo Beach for twenty years: the waterfront is about to transform. It's a true sentence and a misleading one, because there are two separate "waterfronts" under discussion in this city, and they are moving at completely different speeds. One is funded, incremental, and already visible in the calendar of events happening at Seaside Lagoon this year. The other is a 50-acre parcel tied up in six-plus lawsuits with no construction date, no matter how many renderings have circulated since 2022.

Confusing the two is an easy mistake. It's also an expensive one if it shapes what you're willing to pay for proximity to a project that may not exist yet.

Two projects, one shared name

The first project is the former AES Redondo Beach Generating Station, a natural gas plant that shut down at the end of 2023 after operating since 1954. Developer Leo Pustilnikov bought the site in 2020 for around $150 million and has proposed a mixed-use project called One Redondo: roughly 2,700 apartments, including 540 designated affordable, a hotel, offices, retail, and a 22.5-acre park. The application used California's builder's remedy law, a provision that lets developers bypass local zoning if a city hasn't met its state housing targets.

The city rejected the application in 2023 on procedural grounds, calling it incomplete. YIMBY Law then sued the city over that rejection, arguing Redondo Beach had ignored its own housing plan. Pustilnikov filed his own suit against the city seeking $122 million, alleging officials had tried to "zone out of existence any economically viable alternative use" for the land. By last September, Pustilnikov's ownership group had six separate lawsuits pending against the city.

That number has started to shrink, but only by one so far. On March 30, 2026, Pustilnikov agreed to dismiss the suit alleging the city ran a multi-year scheme to block development, a claim that had sought roughly $120 million in damages. Patch reported the same dismissal in mid-April 2026, noting the suit had demanded $122 million since it was filed in 2022. Five suits, by Easy Reader's count that same month, remained active, including disputes over a separate parcel near the S.E.A. Lab building and a bankruptcy case the city joined to try to restore a 2020 option agreement that would reserve part of the AES site as parkland.

The second project has almost nothing to do with the first. The King Harbor Public Amenities Plan is a city-led framework covering Seaside Lagoon, Moonstone Park, the public boat launch, and the promenade connecting Mole C to the Horseshoe Pier. City Council first approved the plan in October 2022. This spring, a 100% draft version went back to Council for further approval. The city's own project page is explicit about the boundary between the two efforts: the amenities plan "does not consider the AES plant, as this is a private facility not owned or operated by the City."

What the two projects actually look like, side by side

A city that has done this before

This isn't Redondo Beach's first stalled megaproject on this stretch of coast. Before the AES fight, the city entered an agreement with a developer called Redondo Beach Waterfront LLC for a sweeping harbor makeover, reported at the time as a $300 million project. That deal collapsed into litigation, and the city's own city attorney page notes a Los Angeles Superior Court judge handed the city a major victory in its fight with the developer over the failed project. One local account of the fallout put the city's settlement costs at $2 million across the related lawsuits.

Go back further and the pattern holds. Between 2000 and 2002, AES worked with the city on a rezoning for high-density condos under a plan called "Heart of the City." Residents defeated it with a referendum petition. By 2004, the city had shifted course toward a designation called "Ocean Reserve," which required the power plant to eventually phase out, a goal that took another nineteen years to reach.

"The major blighting influence" on the waterfront, is how the South Bay Parkland Conservancy has described the AES site while advocating for its removal and conversion to parkland.

The organizations pushing for a park have been consistent since at least 2004. The mechanism that keeps delaying an answer, whether it's a referendum, a rezoning fight, or a builder's remedy lawsuit, keeps changing. That's the pattern worth internalizing if you're comparing homes near this stretch of coast: the site has been "about to become something else" for over two decades, under at least three different legal and political frameworks, and hasn't yet.

Why the funded project is the one to watch

If you're weighing a home in North Redondo, South Redondo, or up in the Hollywood Riviera against something in a neighboring beach city, the AES litigation is close to irrelevant to your day-to-day experience of the harbor. It's contained to one parcel and one set of court dockets. The Amenities Plan, by contrast, touches the parts of the waterfront residents actually use.

The city's own strategic plan for the period running through March 2026 set concrete, funded objectives tied to this plan: a target of March 1, 2026 to evaluate the costs of improving the Pier Parking Structure to support redevelopment, and an earlier target of July 15, 2025 to develop a strategy for marketing and leasing open commercial sites in the Harbor and Pier area. Those are the kinds of near-term, budgeted line items that actually move a neighborhood's daily experience, long before any court resolves who gets to build on the old power plant footprint.

The harbor's calendar this year backs that up. Seaside Lagoon hosted the BeachLife Festival over three days in early May, then reopened weeks later for a longer public viewing event tied to the World Cup tournament period, running from mid-June through late July. The pier's own free concert series ran its usual Thursday and Saturday schedule from early July into late August. None of that required the AES litigation to resolve first, because none of it depends on that parcel. The King Harbor Association, which has represented harbor businesses since 1975, points to four marinas and roughly 1,400 boat slips that keep operating regardless of how the power plant case turns out.

Questions worth asking before you price in "waterfront potential"

• Is the redevelopment being described the AES site, or the city's Amenities Plan? They are not the same project, and only one has a construction budget.
• If it's the AES site, has the specific lawsuit affecting that timeline settled, or is it one of the five still open?
• Does the property sit inside the Amenities Plan's boundary, roughly between Portofino Way and the south end of the International Boardwalk, or near the separate AES parcel further along Harbor Drive?
• Are there other unresolved land-use questions nearby, such as the high-tension transmission lines that run inland along 190th Street, which residents have also flagged as delayed by ongoing legal disputes?

A short FAQ

Is the AES site actually going to become a park? City leaders and groups like the South Bay Parkland Conservancy have pushed for that outcome since at least 2004, and a 2020 option agreement reportedly reserved part of the site for parkland. That agreement is one of the pieces currently caught up in the bankruptcy case the city joined this year. A park remains one possible outcome, not a confirmed one.

Does the AES litigation affect home values outside the immediate waterfront? The lawsuits are specific to that roughly 50-acre parcel and the adjacent S.E.A. Lab dispute. Homes elsewhere in Redondo Beach are more likely to feel the effects of the funded Amenities Plan, since that touches shared public spaces like Seaside Lagoon and the pier promenade that residents across the city actually use.

What about the power lines along 190th Street? Some residents have raised concerns that legal battles tied to the AES site have also delayed removal of the high-tension transmission lines running inland along 190th Street. If you're looking at a property near that corridor, it's worth asking directly what, if anything, has changed on that front, since it's a separate issue from the harbor projects above.

Sorting out which waterfront project a listing is actually referring to takes a few extra questions, but it changes what you should be willing to pay for the promise of change. If you're weighing a home near King Harbor, the AES parcel, or anywhere else in the South Bay and want a second set of eyes on what's fact and what's still speculation, Hiraya Group is glad to help you sort it out. Let's Connect.