Drive the length of Redondo Beach's harbor on any given Saturday and you will pass three different versions of the same promise. Along Harbor Drive, a chain-link fence still rings the old AES power plant site, decades into a conversation about turning it into parkland. A few minutes south at Pacific Coast Highway and Palos Verdes Boulevard, storefronts and a renovated hotel now stand where a contested apartment project once nearly died in a packed council chamber. And up on Prospect Avenue, a 1960s hospital building waits for a senior living campus that has been in public process since 2017.
Buyers hear about all three. Listing agents mention them, neighbors mention them, and the phrase that ties them together, something is coming, gets used as if it means the same thing every time. It does not. The gap between "approved" and "open" in Redondo Beach has run anywhere from two years to more than two decades, and the variable that predicts which you are looking at has nothing to do with acreage or budget. It comes down to who benefits from the delay.
Three Projects, Three Very Different Speeds
The AES site is the clock that keeps resetting. The 50-acre former power plant parcel sits on what was once known as the Old Salt Lake, a spring-fed lagoon designated California Historic Landmark #373, according to the South Bay Parkland Conservancy. In the early 2000s, the city and AES floated a plan to rezone the site for high-density condos under the name "Heart of the City." Redondo Beach voters killed it with a referendum. The plant itself was supposed to shut down years ago under the state's once-through-cooling policy, but the operator secured extension after extension from the State Water Board, and Redondo Beach eventually sued over how one of those extensions was granted. The plant has since been decommissioned, and the city's own announcement put it plainly, calling it the end of a century-old waterfront generating station that had defined the city for generations, per Redondo Beach's public records. But decommissioned is not the same as delivered. In 2022 the city signed only a five-year interim license with Southern California Edison for a placeholder passive park, trail access, a native plant garden, and signage, while the full 25-acre park and wetlands restoration remains in the planning stage, according to the Southern California Wetlands Recovery Project. The city's own 2025-2026 strategic plan still lists waterfront goals as items to investigate and market, not projects under construction.
Legado Redondo shows the opposite pattern. Developer Legado Companies proposed a 4.3-acre mixed-use project at 1700 W. Pacific Coast Highway: a five-story building with 115 residential units, roughly 22,000 square feet of street-level retail and restaurant space, and a renovation of the adjacent Palos Verdes Inn into a 110-key hotel with a rooftop pool, according to Urbanize LA's reporting on the project. During its approval process, the project nearly died. The Planning Commission moved toward denying the conditional use permit, and Easy Reader News described a hearing where opponents in matching t-shirts overflowed the council chambers and the commission's chief complaint was that Legado had failed to build trust with its neighbors before asking for approval. The project recovered from that low point, and by May 2025 it had opened as the Eddy Redondo Residences, with tenants moving in and the mayor describing himself as skeptical but hopeful, according to Easy Reader's coverage of the opening.
The Beach Cities Health District's Healthy Living Campus is the slow, steady middle. The 11-acre former South Bay Hospital site at 514 N. Prospect Avenue has been in public process since 2017, with more than 60 meetings, over 1,000 community comments, and an Environmental Impact Report certified in 2021 that has not been legally challenged since. The scope has shifted along the way. An earlier, larger redevelopment plan was scaled back, and BCHD relocated its Center for Health and Fitness and PACE program into an existing building on campus rather than waiting for new construction. Then, on May 28, 2026, the BCHD board voted to authorize a ground lease agreement with Sunrise Senior Living, following an Advisory Working Group recommendation from earlier that spring, according to BCHD's own announcement. Sunrise is now expected to file for a conditional use permit with the city, which means the project still needs local approval before ground actually breaks, nine years after the public process began.
The Question That Actually Predicts the Timeline
Three projects, three very different clocks. The pattern is not about money or paperwork volume. It is about incentives.
AES had no financial reason to hurry. Environmental advocates including the Palos Verdes-South Bay Sierra Club argued at the time that the operator was being paid tens of millions of dollars a year just to keep the plant available on standby, which gave the company every reason to keep requesting extensions rather than walk away. When the party controlling a site profits from the status quo, a park promise can sit for more than two decades without anyone technically breaking a rule.
Legado had the opposite pressure. A private developer holding a 4.3-acre commercial parcel accrues carrying costs, loan interest, and property taxes every month the site sits empty. Once the specific obstacle, in this case a trust deficit with neighbors, got addressed, the financial incentive to finish fast took over, and the project went from a hostile hearing to an open building on a timeline measured in months, not decades.
BCHD sits in between because it is a public health agency, not a profit-driven operator, and its incentive was never speed. It was legitimacy. Spending nine years and 60-plus meetings before signing a lease looks slow next to a private developer, but it also means the project has survived two rounds of "STOPBCHD" opposition candidates in local elections without a successful legal challenge to its EIR. Slow, in this case, bought durability.
| Project | Public process began | Current status as of August 2026 | Who controls the pace |
|---|---|---|---|
| AES power plant site | Referendum fight, early 2000s | Plant decommissioned; only an interim 5-year passive-park license signed, full 25-acre park still in planning | Prior operator benefited financially from delay |
| Legado Redondo (Eddy Redondo Residences) | Proposed, faced a near-denial hearing over community outreach | Open, leasing, hotel renovation underway as of May 2025 | Private developer with carrying costs pushing for speed |
| BCHD Healthy Living Campus | 2017 | Ground lease authorized with Sunrise Senior Living, May 2026; CUP application still pending | Public agency prioritizing consensus over pace |
What This Means Before You Write an Offer
If a listing or an agent mentions a nearby project as a selling point, the acreage and the rendering tell you almost nothing about timing. What tells you something is the answer to a short list of questions.
- Who owns the delay. Is the entity in control of the site a private developer paying carrying costs, or an operator that benefits from the status quo the way AES did for two decades?
- What stage the permit is actually in. Redondo Beach's Community Development Department publishes the status of every major project, including whether it has been approved, is pending appeal, or was denied, on its major development projects page.
- Whether the project has already survived organized opposition. Legado's most contentious hearing happened before it opened, not after. A project that just cleared a hostile hearing may be closer to done than one that has never faced public scrutiny at all.
- Whether the driving party is a public agency running a lengthy consensus process, in which case a distant completion date is not a red flag, it is the plan working as intended.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the AES park still actually happening, or is it dead? The plant is decommissioned and the city holds an interim license for a placeholder passive park, but the full 25-acre park and wetlands restoration remains in the planning phase rather than under construction, based on the city's own current strategic plan and reporting from the Southern California Wetlands Recovery Project.
Is the Legado Redondo project finished? The residential and retail component opened in 2025 as the Eddy Redondo Residences, with the adjoining hotel renovation continuing afterward.
Does the Healthy Living Campus redevelopment affect nearby home values right now? As of August 2026 the project has a signed ground lease agreement but still needs a conditional use permit from the city before construction begins, so any value effect would follow an approval that has not yet happened.
Redondo Beach rewards buyers who read the fine print on "coming soon." If you are weighing a purchase near any of these sites and want a read on how the timeline might actually affect your decision, Amy Pearce can walk through what is confirmed, what is still speculative, and what a realistic horizon looks like before you write an offer. A free home valuation is a good place to start that conversation.
