Redondo Beach Waterfront Redevelopment: Separating What's Funded From What's Still in Court

Ask someone why they're excited about buying near King Harbor and you'll usually hear a version of the same story: the old AES power plant is finally coming down, and when it does, the whole waterfront changes. It's a tidy narrative. It's also not the mechanism actually moving value on the Redondo Beach waterfront right now.

The AES site is real. Fifty-one acres of shuttered generating station sitting on some of the most contested coastal real estate in the South Bay. But the thing that will determine what gets built there, and when, isn't a construction schedule. It's a courtroom. As of this spring, the city and site owner Leo Pustilnikov were still fighting over six separate lawsuits. One just settled. Five have not.

If you're comparing Redondo Beach to Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, or Torrance and factoring in "the waterfront redevelopment" as a reason values here will climb, it's worth knowing exactly what you're pricing in. It isn't a timeline. It's a legal outcome nobody, including the city, can currently predict.

What the AES fight has actually looked like

The plant closed for good on December 31, 2023, after operating in some form since 1954, according to PowerMag's coverage of the shutdown. Since then, the site's ownership group has pushed to build a large mixed-use project there, and the city has pushed back at nearly every step. Here's the shape of that fight, in order:

• 2022 – Pustilnikov's ownership group applies to build 2,700 residential units, a hotel, and 500,000 square feet of office space on the AES parcel, and files a $120 million lawsuit accusing the city of a multi-year scheme to zone out any viable use of the land.
• December 2023 – A Superior Court judge rules in the city's favor on a timing dispute over the housing element, a decision City Attorney Mike Webb called "a big victory" for Redondo Beach, according to Easy Reader News.
• February 2024 – A separate ruling goes against Pustilnikov on a related builder's remedy claim tied to the former S.E.A. Lab site on Harbor Drive.
• December 2025 – An Appeals Court rules against the city on a different housing element issue, faulting Redondo Beach's identification of "realistic" housing sites. Mayor Jim Light calls the decision "a kick in the teeth" and the city announces plans to appeal to the state Supreme Court, per Easy Reader News.
• March 30, 2026 – The city and Pustilnikov settle the original $120 million claim. Pustilnikov agrees to dismiss it entirely.
• May 2026 – The state certifies a revised Redondo Beach housing element, one that closes the loophole the Appeals Court flagged. City Attorney Joy Abaquin-Ford tells Easy Reader the city believes it's no longer exposed to builder's remedy, while a separate Pustilnikov case tied to that same housing element question sits remanded to trial court, with both sides negotiating.

"This is an extremely important victory." — Mayor Jim Light, on the March 2026 settlement, via Easy Reader News

Light added that the city had faced what he described as a threat to bankrupt it, and that dismissal of the claim removed that risk entirely.

That's one win, four years into a fight that started with a $120 million demand. Five cases remain, including questions still working through appeal that could reopen the door to a much denser project than the city, or most residents, appear to want. City leaders have said for years they'd prefer to see the majority of the site become parkland once the plant comes down. Whether that happens, or whether a court eventually forces something closer to Pustilnikov's original vision, is still genuinely undecided.

None of this is a reason to write off the AES site as a long-term factor in the waterfront's future. It's a reason to stop treating it as a near-term one.

What's actually funded, entitled, and moving

While the AES fight has ground on, several smaller projects along the same corridor have quietly cleared the parts of the process that actually determine whether something gets built: money and votes.

The Riviera Village project is the one worth watching most closely if you shop or dine in that part of the city. In March 2026, the city entered into a $4 million funding agreement with the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority for what's formally called the Riviera Village Pedestrian and Multi-Modal Enhancements Project, according to city legislative records. That money covers engineering, environmental review, and design work, not construction yet. But it's real government money attached to a specific scope, which is more than the AES site currently has in either category.

What that redesign actually becomes is still an open question. Council members have discussed widened sidewalks to accommodate dining decks, dedicated bike lanes, and even an underground parking garage as possibilities, according to reporting on the city's April 2026 strategic planning session. Nothing there is locked. But the funding to study and design it is locked, which is the step the AES site hasn't reached on any version of its plans since 2022.

Down the coast highway, the pattern repeats. The City Council approved a mixed-use project at 401 PCH in April 2026, reversing a rejection from its own Planning Commission the previous December, per Urbanize LA's project tracking. Legado Redondo, at 1700 PCH, was reported making progress through entitlements in late 2024, with a scope of 115 units, retail space, and a 110-room hotel. And as of August 2025, the west side of the South Bay Galleria had a 350-unit apartment building planned to replace surface parking. Each of these has cleared local approval hurdles that the AES site has not, six lawsuits deep, come close to clearing.

What this means if you're comparing Redondo to other South Bay cities

The city's own budget priorities tell a similar story about where real dollars are landing. The proposed 2026-27 capital improvements budget totals $199 million including carryovers, but the bulk of that is tied up in police and fire station construction, not waterfront work, according to Easy Reader's coverage of the June 2026 budget hearings. Over the prior twelve months, the city's Public Works department completed 108 capital projects: 41 street improvements, 19 public facility upgrades, and 16 at the waterfront specifically. Next year's list adds priorities like Seaside Lagoon infrastructure work and pickleball courts at Aviation Park, with council members each naming their own focus, from Riviera Village's multimodal study to Dominguez Park's landfill stabilization.

That's the actual texture of how Redondo Beach spends money on itself: broad, incremental, spread across dozens of smaller line items rather than concentrated in one signature transformation. The AES site is the exception, the one place where the story is binary and unresolved rather than steady and funded.

If you're weighing Redondo Beach against Manhattan Beach or Hermosa Beach and someone tells you the AES redevelopment is a reason values here will outperform in the next two or three years, ask what timeline they mean. If it's this decade, the honest answer is that nobody knows, including the city attorney's office. If you're asking what's actually reshaping the Riviera Village and PCH corridor in a way you can point to on a map and a funding line, that list is shorter, smaller, and considerably more certain.

A few questions worth asking before you write an offer

Is the AES plant still operating? No. It shut down for good on December 31, 2023, after decades as a peaker plant that ran only during high demand.

Could the AES site still become 2,700 housing units? It's not off the table. Several of the open lawsuits touch on builder's remedy questions that, depending on how they resolve, could still affect what's allowed there. The city has consistently favored parkland for most of the site, but the outcome depends on litigation still working through the courts.

Does any of this affect property values right now? The site's uncertainty means it isn't a reliable input for near-term pricing decisions in either direction. The Riviera Village multimodal project and the PCH corridor approvals are the more concrete signals if you're trying to gauge where the city is actually investing.

This isn't legal or investment advice, and litigation outcomes can shift quickly. If you want the current status of any specific project before you make a decision, that's exactly the kind of question worth asking someone who tracks Redondo Beach's council agendas as closely as its listings.

If you're weighing a purchase near King Harbor, the Avenues, or the Riviera and want a clear-eyed read on which projects are actually moving versus which ones are still theoretical, Lisa Moule Realty can walk you through what's funded, what's entitled, and what's still in front of a judge. Schedule your South Bay consultation and get the version of this story that accounts for all of it.