According to Redondo Beach City Councilman Steve Diels, the spot on Pacific Coast Highway under the eye-catching King Harbor sign is one of the few places on PCH in the city where you can see the ocean.

True, you can see a small slice of the Pacific from that spot. But most of what you see from N. Gertruda, up Herondo to the top of the hill on 190th Street or across the short gap of PCH between 190th and Catalina is power plant, power lines and a dusty patch of unused dirt. It’s hard to imagine a less attractive view of an otherwise pristine ocean, although there’s probably a seaside landfill somewhere that could offer some competition.

Slowly but surely, the city has taken control of the portion of the swath of land between PCH to N. Gertruda that it has the right to control. Unfortunately it’s only a small strip at the top.
We have a landscape easement to a location 190 feet parallel to the centerline of PCH, said Brad Lindahl of the Redondo Beach Engineering Department. Lindahl has the title of Project Manager for what the city calls the PCH/Catalina Gateway Project.

While the pace of city Capital Improvement Projects (CIP) may strike some observers as slow, the results in this case have already had an impact on the surroundings.
Rehabbing the sign came first. The new sign has a fresh, clean look. Visitors can see it from the top of 190th Street and a considerable distance up and down PCH.

Next came paving the south-bound connector between PCH and Catalina Boulevard. It used to run two lanes under the King Harbor sign, Lindahl said. The new, single lane scheme makes sense. Adding a north-bound lane would have created chaos between two, often-crowded but normally orderly intersections.
It’s unclear whether New Catalina has relieved any traffic congestion. However, The locals seem to really like it and have really adjusted to it, Lindahl said.

The final portion of the PCH/Catalina Gateway Project, known as Phase 2, sits behind a draped fence that encloses the perimeter of the triangle created by PCH, New Catalina and old Catalina. Observation holes in the drape reveal a centerpiece that’s currently little more than a circle of concrete approximately 36 feet in diameter. We have a public art feature that has six steel and glass sails that will sit in a bowl that will have lighting that will vary in color and intensity, as well as a water misting feature, Lindahl said. The sails will rise more than 10 feet in the air.

According to Lindahl, a much less ambitious plan awaits the other side of New Catalina. On the west side we’re going to do some basic landscaping and hydro-seeding to kind of feather it into the Edison right-of-way. That’s the nice way of saying the big, vacant dirt lot will get a little green garnish, but it will remain a big, vacant, dirt lot.

Steve Diels believes the city could gain access to the entire plot all the way down to N. Gertruda. We have a history of cooperation with Edison, he said. He cites the North Redondo Bike Path as an example.

So what’s the bad news? This is not on any of our capital improvement priority lists. We did set a policy that if you get the money, that jumps your project up the priority list. At this point it’s only money, Diels said. He added he didn’t know why local proponents of open space haven’t set their sights on developing a piece of land that he believes could become a park with minimal difficulty.
Meanwhile, back up on PCH the city struggles to finish what should prove to be a dramatic and beautiful, pie-shaped public space that will help to welcome visitors to the Harbor/Pier area. Brad Lindahl crosses his fingers when he predicts a Dec. 16 unveiling of Phase 2.

He doesn’t spend a lot of time thinking about the property that lies beyond his control. You look at a project like this and it’s easy to see how much more there is to do, Lindahl said. That’s not how he sees it. He chooses to see Redondo’s beautification glass as half full. I’ve been with the city 16 years and I’m amazed at how much we’ve gotten done in that time, he said.

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