Coming next for emerging San Pedro waterfront – release of EIR for West Harbor amphitheater

A long-awaited draft environmental study on the proposed 6,200-seat amphitheater for San Pedro’s West Harbor waterfront development will be released Wednesday, Nov. 6, with a public meeting to follow later within the month.

Port of Los Angeles officials confirmed the date for releasing the environmental impact report during an interview on updates for West Harbor, San Pedro’s long-awaited new waterfront development.

The San Pedro Fish Market, meanwhile, is still operating from a temporary spot on the 42-acre West Harbor grounds, but received Los Angeles County approval this week to bring back its popular seafood market experience, including live lobster and crab as early as this weekend, said market CEO Michael Ungaro. The restaurant, one of San Pedro’s longstanding family staples, is preparing to move to its second temporary spot while awaiting its new permanent location at West Harbor.

“We are in phase 1.5 preparing to move to Phase 2, which is basically where Acapulco (Restaurant) used to be,” Ungaro said of their next temporary location at West Harbor. “We will operate there until we rebuild our legacy location inside West Harbor. Phase 2, although temporary, will be have a state of the art 4,000 square-foot kitchen complex, bar, and harbor side seating for well over 1,000.”

Discussions with West Harbor continue on plans for the restaurant’s permanent space — which developers said will include a 30,000 square-foot building footprint with both indoor and outdoor dining — with a possible announcement coming soon, Ungaro said, adding that the business’ popular docuseries “Kings of Fi$h” is now streaming on Amazon Prime and a second season is in the works.

The latest updates come following other recent news that West Harbor will also include an amusement park space that will feature a coastal observation wheel standing between 100 and 150 feet tall, and located toward the north end of the development’s footprint. Also to be included will be a seaside carousel and other rides and attractions.

“We’re excited about the amusement park,” said Port of Los Angeles Director of Waterfront and Commercial Real Estate Mike Galvin. “It’s another genuine attraction that will help them attract more people on weekends and keep people in the area longer.”

The southern end of the waterfront promenade is also now essentially complete, Galvin said, and is ready to turn over to West Harbor. The northern section of the promenade has been open to the public since 2022.

Designed as a shopping, dining and entertainment complex where Ports O’ Call Village once stood, West Harbor will open in phases, beginning with some tenant openings in 2025 and a grand celebration set for 2026. The first of what will be several framework buildings to house various tenants has been completed. Tenants will now create their own spaces within those structures.

Eric Johnson, CEO of Jerico Development in San Pedro, said soft openings for several of those tenants are anticipated in the next year but it will be “up to the tenants” how quickly they can get their spaces ready. Building within the city of Los Angeles, he added, is a complicated process.

“I think they’ll do good business because there’s so much pent-up demand to get out there,” Johnson said.

Also coming likely in 2025, he said, is Bark Social, a membership dog park.

Buildings A and B are now more than 80% leased, Johnson said, with about 100% of the ground property spoken for.

“We’re basically out of space,” Johnson said. “We have one restaurant space left.”

Despite the progress, there’s no arguing that the overall development has been a long time coming. The approval for the project was in 2009 but after that, time was needed to find and hire a developer, come up with specific plans and do site remediation. The pandemic also held things up as attention everywhere was on the economy and available financing.

And the port had to deliver the ground lease to developers, which also took time, Johnson said.

“These things just take a long time; they’re complicated,” Johnson said. “It’s very involved to build this much infrastructure. We’re definitely moving as fast as we can.”

“It’s taken a lot of coordination between our (port) work being done on the site — which is now virtually completed — and West Harbor working around that,” Galvin said. “It’s a complicated project.”