New campaign to market LA Waterfront, but exactly where is that?
Quick, where’s the lone Civil War museum in Southern California, the third-largest suspension bridge in the state and L.A.’s original ferry building?
Meet the LA Waterfront. That’s the new name and website branded by the Port of Los Angeles to attract visitors to places such as the Drum Barracks Civil War Museum in Wilmington, the Vincent Thomas Bridge and the Los Angeles Maritime Museum in San Pedro.
The new website provides an interactive map with more than 50 points of interest, a calendar of events and an update on new projects coming to the area.
“It’s a hidden gem down here,” the port’s media spokesman Phillip Sanfield said. “So many people, whether on the Westside, Pasadena, downtown or the Valley, have no sense that we have this waterfront down here.”
New attractions such as the World War II-era USS Iowa battleship and Crafted, a marketplace of homemade goods in former port warehouses, opened last year. And Ports O’ Call Village has taken the first step in redeveloping the 1963-era string of restaurants and shops along the waterfront.
Though cruise ship traffic has fallen off in recent years, the industry still brings about 400,000 people to the Harbor area each year, and the USS Iowa is on track to bring in an additional 150,000 visitors a year, according to Sanfield.
The goal, he says, is to introduce the harbor to tourists from all over the world and to reintroduce it to Southern Californians, many of whom have never set foot in the city’s southernmost reaches.
Contact: LA Waterfront
Mary.Forgione@latimes.com
Follow us on Twitter @latimestravel, like us on Facebook @Los Angeles Times Travel.
Sign up for The Wild
We’ll help you find the best places to hike, bike and run, as well as the perfect silent spots for meditation and yoga.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
