San Pedro Fights Back Against Demolition By Neglect
By Emma Rault, community reporter
“Demolition by neglect” is an existential risk to San Pedro. The term is used to describe situations when property owners allow their buildings to fall into disrepair. Sometimes, the reasons for this can be circumstantial — lack of funds or changes in arrangements, like a longtime owner or steward stepping down, causing important expertise to be lost.
At other times, it betrays a lack of interest in the buildings themselves and what they mean to the community. We tend to see this when land becomes more valuable than what is on it, as in Los Angeles in recent decades.
For absentee property owners, it’s easier and more profitable to cash out and let a developer put up something new.
Corporate developers, meanwhile, are often happy to let buildings sit and rot. As time goes by, people are more likely to get exhausted, tired of pushing back against ill-advised plans and looking at boarded-up windows. “Just do something — anything!”
A quick scroll through Zillow will reveal a number of blighted homes billed as “investment opportunities.” In other words: not a new homeowner’s fixer-upper, but an invitation for developers to come in, bulldoze, and start over.
When it happens to houses, it’s bad enough. When it happens to community spaces, however — spots that are important to our history, our connections with each other, our sense of place — it can be devastating.
But people can — and do — push back. Last year, we reported on the Port of LA’s plans to bulldoze what’s left of historic Tuna Street — the last surviving buildings from the thriving Japanese American community that was abruptly evicted after the attacks on Pearl Harbor at the beginning of WWII.
It’s a site that organizations such as the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the LA Conservancy consider rare and precious. And it’s vitally significant to the Terminal Islanders — a multi-generational organization made up of Japanese Americans with roots on the island.
That includes people with a direct link to the remaining buildings on Tuna Street, like Tim Yamamoto and Derek Nakamura, whose grandfather and great-grandfather Akimatsu Nakamura ran a grocery store on the site.
When they learned the port was intending to demolish these buildings to create more space for container storage, they immediately took action. They set up a preservation committee headed up by Paul Boyea, reached out to other stakeholders, and opened a dialogue with the city. The Central San Pedro Neighborhood Council stepped in passing a motion of support and brought the Terminal Islanders in masse to the Harbor Commission. The port gave lip service to the preservation but their intent was demolition.
Then last month, CD 15 Councilmember Tim McOsker introduced a motion to landmark the buildings, which after a touching meeting received a unanimous “yes” from the LA City Council.
The advocacy of the Terminal Islanders spurred a realization that these buildings have been stuck in limbo for far too long. “This is our opportunity … to do something that significantly acknowledges this great legacy,” McOsker said.
The end goal, Paul Boyea said at the city council meeting, is “adaptive reuse”: bringing the buildings back to life in a way that memorializes the important history of this community once known as East San Pedro. According to the US Post Office, it still is part of the 90731 zip code.
Meanwhile, over on the other end of San Pedro, we have Walker’s Cafe. After it was shuttered by its absentee owners in late 2021, a widespread community effort — with a petition signed by more than 3,000 people — resulted in the cafe receiving LA Historic-Cultural Monument status in 2022.
The landmarking triumph sent out a powerful signal. To quote the National Trust for Preservation’s slogan: “This place matters” — it needs to come back to life.
But partway through the landmarking process, the property was somehow scooped up off-market for $650,000 by Prospect Group, a developer whose MO is summed up in their Instagram bio as “Fix & Flip.”
In the years since they have let the shuttered cafe sit. And sit. And sit. Following numerous requests from our neighborhood councils, in October 2023 Prospect Group finally appeared at a Coastal San Pedro Neighborhood Council meeting — and unveiled plans for a massive, 3,500+ square feet, two-story residential development in the back of the lot.
This ocean-view mega-mansion would dwarf Walker’s Cafe — not to mention the single-story homes on either side of it — and rob the cafe of the space needed for storage and outdoor seating.
In short: this huge development would mean the death of the cafe — and it would destroy the unique historic charm of Point Fermin.
When the developer’s lawyer presented the plans to the community, dozens of local people and stakeholders sounded the alarm. They included neighbors, restaurant owners who had been ghosted by Prospect Group after offering to work with them to bring the cafe back, realtors, and architectural historians specializing in bringing LA’s historic sites back to life.
Prospect Group submitted their plans to the city’s Department of Planning two weeks later, having ignored the community’s concerns and made no substantial changes.
Two years later, the questions raised at that neighborhood council meeting still remain unanswered. Questions like: Where are the accommodations needed for the cafe to reopen — space for parking and dumpsters, enough outdoor seating to turn a profit, and the legally required distancing between a working kitchen and the huge house planned in the back?
Entering the third year of Prospect Group’s ownership, it’s looking as though no answers have been given because no good answers exist. Because the priority appears to be something else altogether — not bringing a popular business back to life, but squeezing every drop of profit out of a parcel of real estate.
On March 20, 2025, at 9:30 a.m., Prospect Group’s plans for the site will be discussed at a Planning Department hearing.
If the developers are able to push these plans through, this would allow them to sell the lot with “entitlements” — permits to build that mega-mansion — and leave Pedro behind in its rear-view mirror. They’d be able to turn a profit without so much as breaking ground. That’s what it means to “Fix & Flip.”
In that scenario, Walker’s Cafe becomes collateral damage. A landmarked legacy business held hostage for years on end with issues piling up and its chances of revival dwindling.
Graphic by Emma Rault.
But like Tuna Street, Walker’s Cafe still has a chance. With the recent loss of the Alhambra, Dancing Waters and Brouwerij West, it’s even more important to hold onto the historic community spaces we’ve got left.
San Pedro again finds itself at a crossroads. Last year, the question was: More container storage or nationally significant historic buildings?
The answer was loud and clear.
Now: An oceanfront mega-mansion or a new chance to take in the view and meet with friends in a 1940s legacy eatery?
The March 20 hearing will be held online. You can let them know how you feel. For details on how to attend and share your views, see https://planning.lacity.gov/dcpapi2/meetings/document/78316 or go to savewalkerscafe.com.