Downtown Manhattan Beach Voted for Quiet. The Money Says Otherwise.

If you've walked or driven along Morningside Drive in the last two years, you've seen the fence. It wraps a flat gravel lot where a three-story parking structure used to stand, and if you keep going toward the pier, you'll pass a second boarded-up building on Manhattan Beach Boulevard that used to be a bank. Both have sat like that long enough that most locals have stopped asking what's coming. The answer is arriving this September, and it is not the answer most residents thought they were getting when they filled out a survey about it.

That gap between what people said they wanted and what the city's own financing is pushing toward is the actual story here, and it's worth understanding before the vote happens rather than after.

Two Fenced Lots, One Vote This Fall

The lot behind the fence is Lot 3, at 1155 Morningside Drive, a three-story structure built in 1971 that held 145 parking spaces until a 2024 seismic evaluation found it structurally unsound. The city demolished it and replaced it with a temporary 69-space surface lot while it figured out what comes next.

One block away, the former US Bank building at 400 Manhattan Beach Boulevard tells a different version of the same story. The city bought the 16,570-square-foot, three-parcel site for roughly $13 million in April 2025, financed through tax-exempt Certificates of Participation, in part to head off the kind of dense residential development that state housing law would otherwise have encouraged there. Now both sites sit under direct city ownership, and the city is planning them together under an initiative it calls Project Pulse.

What Residents Actually Said They Wanted

Between last August and this July, the city ran one of its more thorough public input campaigns in recent memory: a phone survey of 588 residents, a booth at the Hometown Fair, appearances at multiple farmers markets, and focus groups with residents and downtown business owners. When people got to vote on specific uses for each site, the pattern that emerged was not what a builder-friendly reading of "redevelop two downtown lots" might predict.

A hotel, social club, or visitor center finished last in both columns, at both sites, according to results shared at a January City Council session covered by Easy Reader & Peninsula Magazine. Residents wanted more parking at the old parking lot, which is reasonable, but at the bank site, where the city has more freedom to build something new, open space beat every commercial option by a wide margin.

That preference has a face attached to it. Ralph, a resident who lives near the two properties, told the council that the empty stretch of land between them, behind Vons, is where he and his wife walk their dog most mornings. Nobody planned it as a park. It just became one because nothing else was happening there.

Jim Burton, whose home sits adjacent to the 400 MBB site, put the stakes more bluntly at that same meeting:

"Whatever you decide to do, you are going to change the lives of people right there."

The Hotelier Who Disagreed

Not everyone at the table wanted quiet. Mike Zislis, who owns the Shade Hotel directly across from Lot 3, pitched the council on a hotel expansion for that site instead, with subterranean parking connecting to the existing Metlox garage and hotel rooms built above. His argument leaned on performance, not preference: the Shade Hotel has operated at 96% occupancy and generated more than $10 million in transient occupancy tax revenue for the city.

It's a real number, and it ran directly counter to what the survey showed. Hotel use finished at the bottom of both site rankings. The tension between a proven revenue generator and a community that voted for open space is exactly the kind of decision that gets made in a September council chamber, not in a press release.

The Parking Number the City's Own Engineer Didn't Expect

Here's the detail that should reframe how you think about the "we need more parking" argument, because it came from the city's own traffic engineer, not from an advocacy group. Erik Zandvliet told the council that Manhattan Beach currently has more total downtown parking than it did before Lot 3 was demolished, because spaces were added elsewhere downtown during the gap. The temporary Lot 3 surface lot holds 69 spaces. A second temporary lot at 400 MBB adds 26 more. The Metlox garage, a short walk from both sites, still provides roughly 100 public spaces after 5 p.m. and on weekends at $2.50 an hour.

None of that erases the visual impression of two empty lots behind construction fencing. It does mean the "downtown is starved for parking" framing that shows up in casual conversation isn't quite supported by the city's own count.

What's Actually on the Table Now

The city unveiled conceptual designs for both sites in July. For 400 MBB, the leading concept is a two-story "anchor hub" with three food and beverage spaces on the ground floor, opening onto a plaza that would absorb the little-used stretch of Morningside Drive between the two sites, closed off with retractable bollards so it can flex open for events. The second floor would hold 5,400 square feet of creative office space with a 3,000-square-foot patio facing the boulevard, with what the city's own renderings describe as potential ocean peeks and sunset views. A small 16-space lot would sit behind it, accessed off Morningside and 10th Place, right behind Vons.

At Lot 3, the city is weighing two very different paths. Option A pairs 129 underground parking spaces across three levels with three stories of retail, restaurants, and a community patio above ground, with the top floor positioned for real ocean views if the council approves a height override. Option B drops the retail entirely in favor of maximizing parking, 200 spaces total, 71 more than Option A, while still preserving a third-floor community patio if the nonconforming height gets approved.

If you're trying to picture what changes for you specifically:

• A dedicated restaurant patio at Lot 3 facing Metlox Plaza and the Tree Section, if Option A moves forward
• A second, more secluded rooftop patio with west-facing ocean views, also under Option A
• A pedestrian plaza replacing part of Morningside Drive at 400 MBB, with bollards controlling car access
• Either 129 or 200 total parking spaces at Lot 3, depending on which option wins

Why the Rush, and Why September

The city didn't originally plan to land on a decision this late. Earlier planning documents pointed to an August 2026 council vote. The date has since moved to September, according to reporting from MB News, which is a small but telling sign of how much back-and-forth this process has already absorbed since it started in spring 2025.

The pressure to move at all comes from how the city paid for 400 MBB. City staff have said openly that the Certificates of Participation used to finance the purchase created an aggressive timeline, because bond payments start whether or not the site is generating revenue. Development could begin as early as 2028, most likely at 400 MBB first, with the two projects staggered rather than built at the same time.

What Changes Regardless of the Vote

One thing isn't waiting on September. New downtown and North Manhattan Beach parking meter rates took effect August 1, just days before this was written, part of a broader rate increase the city says will help cover debt service tied to the Lot 3 replacement. Meter rates outside the downtown and North MB zones stay at $2.50 an hour, unchanged. City staff pointed out that Manhattan Beach's rates had lagged behind peer cities like Hermosa Beach and Newport Beach, both of which raised theirs first.

Whichever way the council leans this September, downtown is going to look and feel different by the time anything actually gets built. Whether that means a quieter plaza where Morningside Drive used to run through, or two more levels of parking garage, depends on a vote that residents already weighed in on once, loudly, in favor of breathing room over more buildings.

Accardo Real Estate Associates has been watching Project Pulse unfold from a few blocks away, the same fences, the same Vons parking lot, the same dog-walking shortcut Ralph mentioned to the council. If you're thinking about what a changing downtown means for your own plans in Manhattan Beach, whether that's now or down the road, request a complimentary market consultation and we'll walk you through it in person.