Casual Attitude Is Key to Beach City’s Charm : Redondo Beach: ‘Sleepy town,’ which hasn’t escalated to pricier fold of its Manhattan Beach neighbor, is preparing to celebrate 100th anniversary.
The irony of the progressively shrinking size of each house he has owned since moving to Southern California is not lost on Steve Pinkerton.
First there was a four-bedroom home in San Pedro that he purchased six years ago for $165,000.
This was followed two years later with the joint purchase of a triplex in north Redondo Beach. Each partner lived in one of the large three-bedroom units while renting out the third.
Then on the eve of getting married he moved once again. Now a half mile from the ocean in southern Redondo Beach, Pinkerton, 31, and his wife, Laura, 29, own an 840-square-foot, two-bedroom beach cottage with a guest house.
“I basically paid $415,000 for land value,” said Steve Pinkerton, who works as an economic associate for the city of Redondo Beach. “That’s the decision you make between north and south Redondo. Do you want a great big condo for $400,000 or do you want a nice place by the beach for $400,000?”
The 6.2-square-mile, seaside city of Redondo Beach is a community of 60,000 residents. It is bounded by Hermosa Beach and Manhattan Beach on the north and Palos Verdes on the south; Torrance and Lawndale share its eastern border.
As the oldest of the neighboring South Bay cities, it has been proudly preparing for the celebration in April of 100 years of cityhood. To many it is still a “sleepy town” which has not yet escalated into the pricier fold of its Manhattan Beach neighbor.
In a sense, though, there have always been two Redondos.
Wide, curving streets are characteristic of south Redondo, a planned community that grew up at the turn of the century along the water’s edge. By contrast, north Redondo remained largely rural until the 1950s and evolved on its own. It has been only in the last decade that the landlocked north has come of age.
In large measure, the prevalence of salable condominiums has been responsible for the burgeoning transformation of north Redondo.
Unlike the smaller lots of some of the neighboring beach communities, the generously sized Redondo Beach lots--50 by 150 feet in the north and 40 by 140 in the south--have encouraged a use of outdoor living space that has set the standard in condominium design, according to Redondo Beach’s chief of planning, Paul Connolly.
“That standard has been copied in a number of cities, certainly up and down California,” said Connolly, and in turn has resulted “in families with children moving into these condos--mostly the two-on-a-lot, sometimes three-on-a-lot--that are every bit the equal of a small house in Manhattan or Hermosa.”
Although Bob and Kathleen Ackley’s children are grown, the appeal of one of two 2,700-square-foot attached condominiums on a 50-by-150 corner lot in north Redondo proved irresistible. Twenty-year residents of Redondo Beach, the Ackleys purchased their new Cape Cod-style home two years ago.
“We decided that we wanted a newer house for tax advantages as well as having a nice house,” said Kathleen Ackley, a fabric artist and advertising manager. “This is our dream house. When we’re tired of the upkeep and amount of cleaning it takes, we’ll hopefully find a townhouse but much smaller.”
What captivated the Ackleys was its roomy layout and a $419,000 price tag.
Said Kathleen, who regards their home’s condominium designation with some fascination, “We’re technically a condominium but we’re totally separate. The only thing we have in common is my garage wall. You don’t feel like this is a condominium. This is a big house.”
A two-bedroom starter home in north Redondo begins at $230,000, said John Parsons of ERA Edward Jenkins Realty. New homes with four or five bedrooms and three baths top the range at $650,000.
In south Redondo, a 1930s’ or 1940s’ two-bedroom beach cottage sells for between $250,000 and $300,000. Homes that total 4,100-square-feet with a sweeping ocean view can rise as high as $1.4 million.
“The farther away you get from the beach does not necessarily mean the lowest price in south Redondo because the land rises,” Parsons said. “You can still have a pretty terrific view.”
Two-bedroom condominiums start at $195,000 in the north and $230,000 in the south, said Scott Keran of Jim Wood Realtors. A 2,500-square-foot attached home for $390,000 in north Redondo will often list for $100,000 more in the south, he said.
The recent glut of townhomes in north Redondo has turned it into a buyer’s market, Keran noted.
Over half of the community is comprised of renters, according to the 1990 census. A one-bedroom apartment averages $850 a month in south Redondo and $675 in the north.
As Janet Sears, 52, tells the tale of the purchase of her first home four years ago her excitement seems as fresh as if it were yesterday.
The United Airlines stewardess recalls looking for a long time without being able to afford anything she looked at. It was a search complicated by her resolve to stay in south Redondo where the real estate prices are higher than elsewhere in the city. If it hadn’t been for her “mentor” realtor Dick Joyce, who suggested that she utilize an overlooked company retirement savings plan, she would never have been able to buy her home.
“We went 25% down and no qualifying,” said Sears who paid $239,900 for the 1950 beach cottage, a three-bedroom fixer-upper. “I went full price because I didn’t want to lose it. I figured that even with ivy growing up the front and a half a rail for a porch the house had potential.”
And while frankly admitting to being cash-strapped these days, she counts among her dividends the amenities of the community: “I can walk to the beach, ride my bike, (I’m) near the airport. Shopping is inexpensive. I don’t have to dress up. It’s wonderful.”
Leslie Johnson, Sear’s 83-year-old neighbor, agrees. What Johnson likes best is the weather: “Our temperature doesn’t vary 15 degrees the whole year round. It’s in the 70s, winter, summer. Every afternoon the winds change and we get that southwest breeze. It makes this area nice, cool to live in.”
Decent housing wasn’t available in 1949 when Johnson decided to buy a 50-by-105-foot lot that sat on a sand dune. Using an FHA loan with 4 1/2% interest, he paid $2,500 for the lot and $15,000 for construction of the first house to be built on the then-empty tract.
“I’ve lived in a lot of places in this country,” said Johnson, a retired umbrella manufacturer. “I’ve always found a ‘we’re nice but you should have been here yesterday’ attitude. Around here it’s more of the same every day. You don’t have to come yesterday to find nice weather, a nice environment.”
The young coastal town took its Spanish name from its contoured shape and so the round beach was called Redondo, said Gloria Snyder, president of the Redondo Beach Historical Society.
Once part of the vast Dominguez Rancho, the nearly 1,400-acre Ocean Tract was sold first to a syndicate, and then in 1889 to J. C. Ainsworth and R. R. Thompson. These two retired Oregon transportation men established the Redondo Hotel Co. and the Redondo Railway Co. and built the first of Redondo Beach’s early wharves.
Redondo Beach, incorporated in 1892, grew swiftly as a popular resort as well as a working-class town with a busy lumber industry and a bustling shipping trade.
But a vulnerability to severe storms ultimately destroyed its dream of becoming Los Angeles’ port of entry and in 1899 the Port of Los Angeles was under construction in San Pedro.
By the 1930s Redondo Beach was consumed with gambling fever. Gambling ships docked offshore while bingo parlors and gambling outlets lined the amusement zone on the waterfront. In 1941, though, the Junior Chamber of Commerce successfully organized to clean up the town.
Clearly, the city has rebounded from the disappointments of the past. Looming large among its assets is King Harbor, a multimillion-dollar pleasure harbor that is probably far more suited to the needs of residents than the port that history had denied them.
It is here that Jacki Graves and her husband, Carl, often come for dinner or late evening jazz performances, a 10-minute walk from their four-bedroom, split-level condominium on the Esplanade.
Jacki said that her dream of owning a home on the Esplanade began gestating many years earlier when the couple was still living in the hill section of Manhattan Beach.
When the surrounding construction of enormous homes began taking away their view, the couple was forced to choose between moving, rebuilding or losing the value of their property. Now with the beach as their immediate back yard, the Graves look out on an ocean vista that stretches from Malibu to Palos Verdes.
The cost, said Jacki Graves, was “close to half a million. We got more square footage, an incredible view, no construction noise--for a hundred thousand less than our place in Manhattan. It’s perfect.”
The role Redondo Beach would someday play in the history of aerospace was foreshadowed in 1917 when Charles A. Lindbergh spent a semester at Redondo Union High School. In 1962 the city’s far-reaching relationship to the world of flight began when north Redondo became the home of TRW Space Park, one of the largest builders of unmanned spacecraft in the world.
Like the other 14,000 TRW employees who live in north Redondo, executive Jay Chabrow wanted to cut his commuting time. Nine years ago he and his wife, Mel, sold their Bel-Air home and purchased a 2,700-square-foot condo close to the border of Manhattan Beach. He paid $185,000 in a bankruptcy sale.
“Here I have the best,” Chabrow said. “I look up and I’m at the beach. I also have the quiet that you don’t have at the beach. And every now and then I can even go home for lunch. I love it.”
At a Glance Population
1991 estimate: 59,621
1980-91 change: +4.4%
Median age: 32.3 years
Annual income
Per capita: 24,500
Median household: 51,718
Household distribution
Less than $30,000: 23.7%
$30,000 - $50,000: 24.4%
$50,000 - $75,000: 27.1%
$75,000 - $100,000: 14.1%
$100,000 + 10.7%
