Drive north on Harbor Drive in Redondo Beach and you will pass a 51-acre lot that has not generated a watt of electricity since the last night of 2023. The old power plant building is still there, windows dark, a Wyland Foundation mural of migrating gray whales still painted across one wall. The proposed One Redondo redevelopment has been described as a waterfront park with housing and shops, and as a potential source of nearby property-value gains.
That is one part of the story. The court record and current legal status add context for buyers and sellers.
The Redevelopment Proposal
The site belonged to AES until 2020, when Beverly Hills developer Leo Pustilnikov, through his firm SLH Investments, bought the shuttered Redondo Beach Generating Station for roughly $150 million. Power had been produced there in one form or another since 1907. Pustilnikov's vision, branded One Redondo, called for 2,700 apartments, a 300-room hotel, 550,000 square feet of office space, shops and restaurants, all wrapped around a 22.5-acre park. To get there, he filed under a once-obscure piece of state housing law called the Builder's Remedy, which lets a developer bypass local zoning entirely if a city's state-mandated housing plan, its Housing Element, was not properly certified when the application landed.
The proposal is often described as a park-centered redevelopment expected to benefit nearby property. The court record adds important context.
What the Courts Actually Decided
Redondo Beach fought the application from the start, twice ruling it incomplete in 2023. In December of that year, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge sided with the city, finding its Housing Element had taken legal effect earlier than Pustilnikov argued, which meant the Builder's Remedy did not apply to his original filing. Two months later, a different judge denied a smaller, 35-unit test version of the project on separate grounds: the coastal zone parcel simply is not zoned for residential use.
That looked like a clean win for the city, except the fight had a second front. Redondo, like Hermosa and Manhattan Beach, had leaned on zoning overlays elsewhere in the city to satisfy its state housing quota. On October 10, 2025, a state Court of Appeal ruled against Redondo in a case involving a Vons-anchored shopping center the city had counted toward that quota, finding the plan failed to show the site was a realistic place for new housing. The ruling threatened to reopen Builder's Remedy exposure across the entire city, not just at the old plant.
"This ruling is a kick in the teeth to cities who worked diligently to comply."
— Mayor Jim Light, as quoted by Easy Reader News.
Mayor Jim Light said that after the October ruling, and the city said it would appeal to the state Supreme Court. The uncertainty did not lift until this spring, when the state certified a revised Redondo Beach Housing Element. According to the city attorney, that certification means Redondo is shielded from Builder's Remedy claims for the remainder of the current housing cycle, which runs through 2029.
"The city is not subject to Builder's Remedy with the newly certified Housing Element."
— The city attorney, as quoted by Easy Reader News.
None of that resolved the underlying property dispute. As of an April 2026 update from Easy Reader News, five of six lawsuits between Pustilnikov and the city remained open, including one over a separate parcel across Harbor Drive tied to the former S.E.A. Lab building. One suit, a $120 million claim alleging the city engineered a scheme to block any viable use of the site, was dismissed by settlement on March 30, 2026. The others are still working through the courts.
What the Developer Has Said About Building
One reported detail is relevant to understanding the proposal. In November 2025, reporting on the Builder's Remedy phenomenon statewide (the story ran in the New York Times and was summarized by SFist) found that Pustilnikov, who has filed similar applications in Beverly Hills, Santa Monica and West Hollywood, told reporters he did not plan to build most of these projects himself.
The park-and-housing rendering is not a construction plan with a permit number and a completion date. His comments do not establish whether the Redondo Beach proposal will be built.
What Actually Moved This Year
If you are pricing a home near the harbor right now, the certified Housing Element, not the rendering, is the fact that changed. It is dated. It is verifiable. And it tells you something real: the specific legal mechanism that made the AES site (and, briefly, the rest of the city) vulnerable to a developer overriding local zoning is closed through 2029.
That is a smaller, less exciting story than a 22-acre park, and it is also the only part of the story you can bank on today.
The price data backs up the caution. Citywide, Redondo Beach's median listing price sat at $1.49 million in August 2026, down 6 percent from a year earlier, with homes spending a median of 49 days on the market. Zoom into the harbor-adjacent product most likely to benefit if the AES vision ever materializes and the picture gets more interesting. In the first quarter of 2026, single-family houses in Redondo Beach sold at a median of $1.7 million, up 6.4 percent year over year, while condos, the closest comparable product to what a mixed-use village would actually add to inventory, sold at a median of $1.2 million, down nearly 11 percent over the same period. If the market genuinely believed a park and a wave of new residential product were imminent, that is not the pricing pattern you would expect to see in the segment most exposed to it.
North and South Redondo tell a similar story of ordinary supply and demand rather than speculative lift. Over the three months ending in May 2026, North Redondo homes sold at a median of $1.6 million, down about 1 percent from a year earlier, while South Redondo, the zip code that actually touches the harbor, matched that median but slipped closer to 4 percent. Neither number shows a market pricing in a transformation. Both look like a coastal market moving on its usual fundamentals: limited inventory, walkability, and proximity to the water that has nothing to do with what may or may not get built on 51 acres of former power plant.
What This Means If You're Buying or Selling Near the Harbor
For a seller near King Harbor, this is good news dressed as a caution. Your home's value is not waiting on a project that may take years to clear its remaining lawsuits, or may never break ground at all under its current ownership. Price and market the home on what exists today: the marina, the pier, the walkability, the same fundamentals that have supported South Bay coastal pricing for decades. Do not let a buyer talk you into a discount on the theory that a competing wave of new inventory is about to hit the harbor. It is not, at least not on any timeline anyone can point to in writing.
For a buyer, the caution runs the other way. If a listing agent or a market report is including a premium in the price because of "waterfront redevelopment," ask for the source and the date. The certified Housing Element is a real window of legal clarity that runs through 2029. A 2,700-unit village with a 22.5-acre park has not been approved by the city, so its scope and timeline remain unresolved.
This is precisely the kind of situation where reading the court filings and certification date, alongside any marketing summary, changes the number you should be willing to pay or accept. If you are weighing a purchase or a sale anywhere near King Harbor and want that read done properly, Lauren Forbes Group will walk the legal and market record with you before you write an offer or set a list price. Schedule a private consultation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Will the AES site ever become a park? Some version of open space has been part of the city's plan since Redondo voters approved zoning for park uses on the site in 2010, well before Pustilnikov owned it. Whether that happens under the current ownership, and on what timeline, remains unresolved while multiple lawsuits are still open.
Should I wait to buy near the harbor until this is resolved? Based on the current pricing pattern, in which houses and condos near the site are moving in opposite directions rather than both rising, there is no evidence the market is waiting either. Buying decisions should rest on the home and the fundamentals in front of you, not a rendering with an uncertain completion date.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.