The Walk From Sixth Street to the Harbor Finally Works
Saturday morning on Mesa Street between 5th and 6th, the certified farmers market sets up in its usual parking lot, produce stands and a line already forming half a block over at Colossus Bread. A few doors down, Distrito Coffee is pulling shots for people who used to have to choose between the espresso and the walk to the water, because for most of the last decade those were two different errands in two different parts of town.
They aren't anymore. Over the past eleven months, San Pedro's waterfront and its historic downtown core have quietly stitched into a single loop you can walk without moving your car, and most of the pieces that made that possible opened without a ribbon cutting.
For most of the last decade, downtown San Pedro built its own momentum independent of the water. The Warner Grand Theatre kept running its 1,500-seat art deco program. The Grand Annex, a 150-seat cabaret room at 434 W. 6th Street run by the nonprofit Grand Vision Foundation, kept booking touring acts. J. Trani's Ristorante kept a Friday night crowd that spilled out to the bar. Meanwhile the 42-acre stretch of waterfront where Ports O' Call once stood sat behind construction fencing, and the San Pedro Fish Market, the restaurant most identified with that waterfront, spent two years serving its shrimp trays out of a temporary parking lot while the site was rebuilt around it.
Those were functionally two different trips. You went downtown for dinner and a show, or you went to the water for seafood and a view, and the six or seven blocks between them were mostly a drive, not a walk anyone bothered to take.
The Fish Market's return set the pace. In October 2025, the fourth-generation Ungaro family reopened as the New Landing at 706 S. Harbor Blvd., an oceanside deck with roughly 1,500 seats, open 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Friday and until 10 p.m. on weekends. It's a temporary home again, this time by design, ahead of a permanent 55,000-square-foot building targeted for late 2026 with room for close to 3,000 people. The family has run the place since 1956, a run long enough that Amazon Prime turned it into a docuseries.
Around the same stretch of promenade, the pieces kept arriving one at a time. The walkway now runs from Berth 84 Park to Berth 77 Park. A Starbucks opened daily from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. Catalina Tea Bar set up on the promenade with flavored teas and zero-proof cocktails. Harbor Breeze Cruises started running boats Friday through Monday, and Wheel Fun Rentals started renting bikes and surreys on weekends and holidays. The Los Angeles Maritime Institute's tall ships are docked and open to the public, with monthly Sunset Sails for anyone who wants to be on the water rather than just next to it.
None of this happened as a single announced opening. It happened as a string of smaller ones, close enough together that by the time most people noticed, half of it was already running.
The second half of the loop came from the other direction. Last December, Dustin Trani opened The Majestic inside the restored Harbor View House, a Mediterranean Revival building that spent decades as a state-run mental health facility before its conversion. The original gymnasium is intact, polished floors and a sloped running track around the upper perimeter, and downstairs a speakeasy is still being built into the old boiler room around a 30-foot library bar. The restaurant hosts live music and up to two dozen special events a year, and the San Pedro Chamber of Commerce called it a significant milestone for downtown's growth. It sits steps from the harbor and from San Pedro Plaza Park.
Trani, who became executive chef at J. Trani's Ristorante at 18, has said plainly that San Pedro isn't a pass-through town, and that every decade someone promises the waterfront is about to change. His family was told to move the original restaurant closer to the water back in 1974. This time the promise came with an actual building.
A block or two away, construction is underway on Jules, an eight-story, 281-unit apartment building at 625 S. Beacon Street from Trammell Crow's High Street Residential arm. It takes up a full city block near the historic City Hall, and the ground floor is planned for a cafe, restaurant, or grab-and-go concept. The name references Jules Verne, a nod to AltaSea, the 35-acre ocean science campus next door to the waterfront. A new open piazza near City Hall is nearing completion in the same stretch, which matters more than it sounds like it should: it's the physical link between the historic downtown blocks and the water, the piece that turns two separate destinations into one continuous walk. Jerico Development's Alan Johnson has put a number on the broader shift, noting roughly 5,000 multifamily units in design, construction, or permitting around downtown San Pedro as of mid-2025. That's not a restaurant opening. That's density arriving to fill in the walk once it exists.
Put it together and a Saturday can run start to finish without a car. Farmers market and a coffee downtown, a walk past the Grand Annex, then down through the new piazza toward the water, ending at the Fish Market's New Landing for lunch or a Harbor Breeze cruise in the afternoon. Fall brought a full concert calendar to the Grand Annex, blues shows, a Doors tribute act, First Thursday art nights pairing music with rotating shows from local artists. One September blues bill sold out days before the show. October opens with a First Thursday art night featuring work curated by Henry Krusoe, an Angels Gate Cultural Center resident artist, followed the next night by a New Orleans swing act with a pre-show wine tasting.
For anyone who wants to keep walking past the promenade, the loop extends further along the LA Waterfront to the Battleship USS Iowa Museum and the World Cruise Center, with AltaSea sitting just beyond West Harbor's edge. None of it requires driving between stops.
The loop works today, but it isn't finished. Most of the tenants inside Building A, a 73,000-square-foot structure that's now fully built, are still rolling out. Mike Hess Brewing is bringing its first Los Angeles location and a seaside beer garden. Tacos El Franc, a Michelin Guide-recognized Tijuana taqueria featured on Netflix's Taco Chronicles, is opening its first LA outpost here rather than in a more obvious neighborhood. Glass Box, Paraná Empanadas, and LoZio Pizza round out a lineup where roughly 80 percent of the operators are family businesses, many with roots in San Diego. Most of that wave is expected through the rest of 2026.
The 6,200-seat amphitheater, run in partnership with Nederlander Concerts, the same firm that programmed the Greek Theatre for years, already proved it can handle a crowd. It debuted in July as the home of the Los Angeles FIFA World Cup 26 Fan Zone, four days of free admission and paid parking during the tournament's final rounds. A full concert season is planned for 2027. The 175-foot Ferris wheel that developers are calling the tallest in California, along with a carousel and wave swinger, is timed for a formal grand opening later this year, once the summer restaurant wave settles in. A 50,000-square-foot padel and pickleball complex from The King of Padel is coming with it, described as the only waterfront facility of its kind in Southern California.
That grand opening will get the press coverage. The people who've been walking this loop since last fall will already have their regular table at the Fish Market and their opinion on the Tacos El Franc lineup before the Ferris wheel ever turns.
If the changes along this stretch have you wondering what they mean for a home near the water, or you're weighing a move that would put you closer to this walk, Jason Sikola has been watching San Pedro's waterfront take shape block by block. Let's Talk Real Estate.
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