The former AES generating station at 1100 N. Harbor Drive stopped supplying power after a ceremonial shutdown on December 31, 2023. AES reports the facility as retired effective January 1, 2024. Almost three years later, the 51-acre site is still waiting. There has been no shortage of ideas. A 2,700-home mixed-use application, a park proposal, and a string of lawsuits have all been aimed at this property.
In the waterfront disputes decided so far, the deciding factor has been what the city's certified Local Coastal Program allows on the land. A California appeals court ruling on July 30, 2026 made that explicit. For anyone weighing a home near King Harbor, it is the most useful way to understand what might eventually rise across Harbor Drive.
The July 30 ruling turned on land use
The case, New Commune DTLA v. City of Redondo Beach, concerned a smaller parcel across the street from the plant. The ownership group behind the AES site had applied to build Ten21, a 141,000-square-foot mixed-use building at Harbor Drive and Yacht Club Way. It included 30 condominiums, six of them affordable, plus ground-floor commercial space and underground parking. It would have stood beside the existing S.E.A. Lab building at roughly nine times its size, according to Easy Reader's August 7 report.
The application relied on the Builder's Remedy, a provision of state housing law that exempts projects from certain local zoning rules when a city lacks a state-certified housing element. The developer had filed after Redondo Beach submitted its housing element and before the state approved it. The city deemed the application incomplete. Judge James C. Chalfant of Los Angeles Superior Court denied the developer's petition in 2024, and the three-judge appellate panel unanimously upheld him.
The decision came down to one sentence in the coastal plan. As the land-use attorneys at Sheppard summarized it, the parcel was designated
"only for public access, coastal recreational facilities and services supporting boating and fishing."
The court held that the city had made the two findings state law requires before it can deny a Builder's Remedy project in the coastal zone. The first was that the Coastal Act required the denial. The second was that no feasible method existed for the housing to comply. City Attorney Joy Ford called the ruling "huge" in Easy Reader's coverage. Mayor Jim Light said it "confirms that while California's housing laws are important, they do not eliminate the longstanding protections established by the California Coastal Act."
The same opinion explains when a denial would fail
The ruling also sets limits on what a city can deny. Sheppard's analysis points out that the court relied on the fact that the land was not designated for residential use. The developer also never proposed amending that designation, so the city had no compliance path to evaluate. The firm reads the opinion this way. Where residential use is already permitted, even with "technical nonconformity" to development standards, or where a feasible route to coastal compliance exists, coastal cities "will be hard-pressed" to meet their burden for denying housing.
That makes the use designation a lever that can move in either direction. Easy Reader noted that the existing homes west of Harbor Drive were permitted before the area's current coastal commercial zoning took effect in 2008. The housing that already stands along this stretch exists because of when it was approved. A new project faces the designation in force today.
Across the street, the AES site carries a similar designation
The power plant parcel has its own constraints. City zoning classifies it as P-GP, the Generating Plant Zone, and the site lies within the Coastal Zone under a Coastal Commercial designation, as Easy Reader reported in 2022. The Daily Breeze has reported that housing there conflicts with the General Plan, the Local Coastal Program, and zoning unless approvals or amendments are granted. According to Easy Reader, the site had long been zoned industrial, and the City Council adopted the generating-plant classification in 2010, ten years before the current owners bought the land. AES's annual report dates the sale to March 27, 2020.
The proposal on file is called One Redondo. The state Department of Housing and Community Development describes it as 2,700 homes, 540 of them for lower-income households, along with 300 hotel rooms, 550,000 square feet of office space and 160,000 square feet of retail. The formal application is dated February 6, 2023. HCD's May 2023 technical-assistance letter said a complete preliminary application filed before the housing element was certified could preserve Builder's Remedy benefits. It also stressed that CEQA and the Coastal Act still apply. On May 9, 2023, the City Council unanimously upheld its finding that the application was incomplete, as the Daily Breeze reported.
The Ten21 opinion addressed a different parcel, and the AES-site case is a separate lawsuit. The legal question is the same in both: a Builder's Remedy claim meeting a coastal land designation that does not include housing.
There is also a physical constraint. AES's report for fiscal 2025 states that the Coastal Commission found roughly 5.93 acres of the site to be Commission-jurisdictional wetlands. AES disputes that finding and calls them "alleged wetlands." The company also reported that the city was still processing its coastal permit application to disable or remove pumps on the property.
Where each thread stood at last report
Several matters are still open, and most of the public reporting predates the September court dates. Each row shows the most recent status found in the record, not a confirmed current state.
| Matter | Last reported status | Source date |
|---|---|---|
| $120 million suit claiming the city zoned out viable uses | Settled and dismissed with prejudice March 30; city waived about $30,000 in sanctions | April 2026 |
| Ten21 Builder's Remedy at S.E.A. Lab | City's denial upheld on appeal; Easy Reader said the developer "may appeal" to the California Supreme Court | August 2026 |
| Remaining owner lawsuits against the city | Three left, with court dates set for September | August 2026 |
| AES-site Builder's Remedy and 2020 park option bankruptcy case | Among the pending cases; no later outcome located | April 2026 |
| 2021–2029 housing element | Invalidated on appeal October 10, 2025; city petitioned the California Supreme Court for review, with no disposition located | December 2025 |
| Coastal Commission wetlands finding | Disputed by AES; pump-removal permit still pending | FY2025 report |
The bankruptcy row affects the park question most directly. The city filed to join that case in order to restore a 2020 option agreement that would reserve part of the site as a park. The 2022 One Redondo drawings included 22 acres of greenspace. Even so, no approved public park plan exists for the plant property.
The housing element is the piece that could change the math
The October 2025 appellate ruling held that Redondo Beach's housing element violated state law. Its residential overlays on commercial and industrial land allowed development with no housing at all, and the plan failed the statutory site tests, according to the Daily Breeze. The city said it would seek California Supreme Court review, and by December 2025 a petition had been filed. The public record reviewed for this post does not show how the high court ruled on that petition.
Meanwhile, the city's housing element page shows a draft amendment that would replace the housing-site overlays with high-density residential and mixed-use districts. The page says the draft went to HCD for initial review. The May 5, 2026 City Council agenda proposed the matching resolution and ordinances. Final adoption was not confirmed in the sources reviewed.
This connects back to the July ruling. Under Sheppard's reading, a city's legal footing for denying housing gets much weaker wherever housing becomes a permitted use. Whatever designations the city finally adopts will mark out the parcels where that shift applies.
The greenspace already taking shape at Herondo and PCH
One piece of the waterfront has moved forward. Bill Brand Gateway Park sits at the southwest corner of Herondo Street and Pacific Coast Highway, beneath Southern California Edison power lines near the former plant. The Daily Breeze reported that the city scheduled a ribbon-cutting for July 28, 2026. The first phase covers 2.2 acres on the east side of a 5.1-acre site. It includes a granite meandering path, cobble swales, native plants, irrigation and benches. Mayor Light has said the goal is to green the full 5.1 acres, and his personal vision is a greenbelt to the sea reaching up to 190th Street.
The park is named for former mayor Bill Brand, who founded the South Bay Parkland Conservancy in 2004. Light has said the two of them, along with the conservancy, pushed for this site since 2010. It shows that the city's open-space plans for this corner of town are already partly built, while the larger AES parcel waits on the courts.
The documents that answer the question for a specific address
For a buyer looking at the harbor end of North Redondo, the useful question is what the coastal plan permits on a nearby parcel. Who owns it and what they have proposed matter less. Three public records answer that:
- The use designation in the Local Coastal Program for the parcel in question, which is the language the July 30 ruling relied on.
- The city's current zoning classification, such as the P-GP Generating Plant Zone on the AES site.
- The adoption status of the housing element amendment and the residential or mixed-use districts it creates.
Each of these changes through public hearings, as the housing element amendment on the May 5 City Council agenda shows.
Questions about what could change near a particular address on Harbor Drive come up often in this market, and the answers sit in public records that take time to piece together. Gary E. Richardson walks clients through the designations and pending matters near a property before they make an offer. Schedule a private consultation with Gary.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
