Gabi James closed its doors on Catalina Avenue in late April after eight years of serving Spanish-French plates a block from the water. Most storefronts in a South Bay village would sit dark for a season while a landlord fielded offers. This one didn't get the chance. By early summer, Martha's, the Hermosa Beach institution that's been serving breakfast and lunch since 1984, had already signed on to take the space at 1810 S. Catalina Ave., wedged between Fringe and Redondo Beach Brew.
That's a fast turnaround for a 5,000-square-foot, two-story building. It's also not the interesting part.
The interesting part is why Martha's picked Riviera Village specifically, when co-owner Hilary Condren could have expanded almost anywhere along the coast. And the answer has less to do with the sunsets off the Esplanade than it does with a City Council vote most residents never saw on the agenda.
The Corner That Just Changed Hands
Condren and his team have run Martha's for about a decade, and this year marked the first time the brand stepped outside Hermosa Beach. They brought in Johnny De Vivo, who previously worked as executive chef at Rolling Hills Country Club, to lead the new kitchen. The upstairs floor of the building was a specific draw: Martha's has wanted a way to host private events for years, and the second story finally gives them room to do it without disrupting regular service downstairs.
None of that required Riviera Village. Plenty of storefronts in the South Bay have water views and open square footage. What Condren pointed to instead was proximity and energy, telling a reporter simply that "their downtown, their heartbeat is on fire."
That's a business owner's read on a place. It's worth checking against what the city actually did.
It's Not the Only New Kitchen in the Village
Martha's isn't an isolated data point. Back in 2024, a few blocks over, BeachLife Grotto opened inside a converted liquor store that had sat vacant and, in founder Allen Sanford's words, wasn't "contributing to the community much." Sanford, who co-founded the BeachLife Festival, worked with Village-based architect Miles Pritzkat to gut the old building down to its original walls and rebuild it as a two-story seafood restaurant with an open-beam rooftop deck. The design borrows from two restaurants that no longer exist: the old Admiral Risty in Palos Verdes and Millie Riera's Seafood Grotto, which once sat at Avenue I and the Esplanade. Sanford called the Village "the last bastion of the South Bay."
Two operators, two different restaurant concepts, two years apart, both choosing to build inside roughly six blocks of Catalina Avenue rather than anywhere else in the region. That's not a coincidence tied to one good season. It's a pattern, and patterns like that usually trace back to policy, not sentiment.
The Real Reason Operators Keep Picking These Blocks
Here's the part that doesn't show up in a restaurant review: while several neighboring beach cities have spent the last couple of years quietly dismantling the pandemic-era parklets that once turned parking spots into outdoor seating, Redondo Beach's City Council did the opposite. This year, it extended the outdoor dining deck program in Riviera Village for another five years.
That decision has a longer arc behind it. The parklets started in 2020 as an emergency measure, built by the Riviera Village Association with the city waiving parking meter fees so restaurants could seat customers outdoors during capacity restrictions. By 2023, the council was already working through a formal development permit process to convert those temporary structures into permanent fixtures. This year's five-year extension is the third act in that story, not the first.
For a restaurant operator sizing up where to sink six figures into a build-out, that kind of multi-year commitment matters more than a view of the water. A patio isn't an asset if the city can revoke it with the next election cycle. Redondo just told operators the opposite: this seating stays.
That's the mechanism behind the turnover. Gabi James didn't close because the Village went cold. Martha's and BeachLife Grotto didn't open because the ocean got closer. They opened because the city underwrote the outdoor square footage that makes a South Bay restaurant work, and made clear it isn't going anywhere.
What's Still Genuinely Up in the Air
The five-year extension settles the dining decks themselves, but it doesn't settle everything about how they'll look. At a strategic planning session this spring, the council also discussed whether the future of outdoor dining in the Village should shift from decks built into the street to wider sidewalks instead, and floated the idea of an underground parking garage to free up space for either option. Nothing there is decided. The streetscape you walk through today, with dining structures sitting where parking spaces used to be, may not be the permanent physical layout even though the program behind it now is.
If you've wondered why the Village currently reads as over 300 shops, restaurants, and services packed into a few walkable blocks between Pacific Coast Highway and the water, this is a piece of why the density keeps holding. Among the restaurants currently open there:
- Salt & Pearl
- Turquoise Restaurant
- Il Posto
- Riviera House
- The Hook & Plow
- The Craftsman - Brews & Bites
- Vida Modern Mexican + Tequila
That list will look different in another two years. The dining deck policy behind it probably won't.
What This Means for a Night Out This Month
Seaside Lagoon closed out its regular swim season on Labor Day weekend, September 7, which usually signals that the King Harbor waterfront quiets down until next summer. Not this year. The lagoon is hosting one more major event before it goes dark for the season: the 22nd Annual Redondo Beach Lobster Festival, running September 22 through 24.
A weekend pass runs $35, and the food lineup goes beyond festival standards. This year's signature chef is Jessica Jordan of Fishbar Manhattan Beach, who's bringing smaller versions of her Lobster Bistro dishes, including a lobster mac and cheese and a lobster-stuffed quesadilla, alongside the standard Maine lobster dinners. It's a reminder that the same instinct driving the restaurant turnover in the Village, betting on outdoor food and beverage as the thing that keeps a South Bay commercial district full, shows up at the waterfront too.
The Village Isn't Cooling. It's Being Underwritten.
Put the pieces together and the Village doesn't read like a neighborhood in transition so much as one where the transitions are the point. An eight-year restaurant closes and a forty-year institution takes its place within a season. A dead liquor store becomes a two-story seafood house designed around buildings that don't exist anymore. None of that happens by accident in a commercial district, and none of it happens without a city willing to commit to the infrastructure that makes outdoor dining pencil out for five more years.
If you live here, that's useful context the next time a storefront goes dark on Catalina Avenue. The turnover isn't a sign the Village is struggling to hold onto tenants. It's a sign of exactly how much operators are willing to pay to get in.
Thinking about what any of this means for property values or timing along the Village or elsewhere in the Beach Cities is a different conversation, and one worth having with someone who watches these blocks closely. If that's where your questions are headed, Tim Meza is a good place to start. Schedule a Consultation.
