Blog: Redondo City Council Gets it Right

A series of events that wouldn’t seem remarkable by themselves, have come together to create an opportunity to develop a considerable amount of property in King Harbor. It comes to about 15 acres, most of which is contiguous. There hasn’t been this much property available for development since the marina was built in the 60s.

The events that enabled this exciting opportunity have been recorded and reported but it hasn’t always been clear how they depend on one another and how they all fit together. The first event was the completion of the city’s asset management plan. A consultant named Larry Kosmont prepared a comprehensive report that outlined how the city should plan for the future of the pier/harbor complex. Kosmont presented his plan to the city council and harbor commission in January 2008.

One of the most unambiguous elements in the Kosmont report was the advice that the city should aggregate existing leaseholds. At the time there were approximately 35 individual entities contracted with the city to control some portion of the pier/marina complex.

That patchwork of different sized properties controlled by different people and companies created one of the biggest obstacles the city faced if it wanted to encourage any kind of cohesive development. The Kosmont report provided some guidance for overcoming that obstacle.

Then came the business plan, which wasn’t really a business plan at all. It was more of a conglomeration of a bunch of existing documents. Having a business plan was a worthwhile goal. So generating the document the city calls the business plan had a purpose. The plan they came up with failed to lay out any comprehensive outline that included a timeline, benchmarks and budgets. Still, the city had a business plan that included all the elements of the Kosmont report. It was approved in August, 2010.

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