Part of the Redondo Beach waterfront will finally get a new look — and as soon as next year.
The California Surf Club, an indoor-outdoor, 21,000 square-foot compound adjacent to the Seaside Lagoon, is set to open in 2024 at 239 N. Harbor Drive.
It’s being developed by Allen Sanford, who created the BeachLife Music Festival. which premiered in 2019.
The surf club and a new restaurant in South Redondo Beach have given Sanford and investors a path to transforming BeachLife from a music-only brand to an all-encompassing cool, hip and coastal lifestyle brand. And the festival and surf club concepts combined are giving the aging South Bay waterfront renewed purpose.
Sanford wants to create a home for the community rooted in “good conversations, good vibes and good views; just living the beach life every day,” he said while presenting the approved plan at this week’s City Council meeting.
“The goal is for you to spend the whole day at the harbor,” Sanford said. “Maybe not the whole day at the surf club, but that’s your home base.”
The city’s Harbor Commission approved the project a year ago.
And, Sanford said in a Thursday, Dec. 14, interview, the surf club concept doesn’t need Californial Coastal Commission approval. That’s because two old buildings — a Ruby’s restaurant and On the Rocks — are being repurposed, with exterior walls remaining, to create a surf shack vibe for the club.
“I think there’s a story in every building,” Sanford said by phone. “I want to keep some of that history.”
The interiors of the buildings have been completely gutted, Sanford added, as demolition began about three weeks ago. Had they razed exterior walls, he added, it could have taken up to two years just to get plans approved.
The land for California Surf Club is being leased from Redondo Beach as part of a public-private partnership Sanford added. It’s an 11-year lease, he said, but he is in active conversations to extend that.
“We believe the community would like that as well,” Sanford said.
This week was Sanford’s first time speaking publicly about the project at a City Council meeting.
Mayor Bill Brand said on Tuesday, Dec. 13, that he asked Sanford to present the design so people could see in real time what’s going on at the waterfront.
Sanford initially expected to open the Surf Club before the 2024 BeachLife Festival in May — but now has his sights on the social space opening in “the next nine months.”
The California Surf Club will be a members-only experience similar to a golf county club where people pay a yearly sum, Sanford said on Thursday.
He and his team have not penciled out the economics yet, Sanford said, so he’s not ready to share what a membership might cost. But, he said, anyone would be able to purchase a day-pass to the club if there is space available, similar to how neighboring Seaside Lagoon works now.
On the north side of the club (the former Ruby’s building), there will a 300-seat restaurant with an outdoor bar, always open to the public.
The rest of California Surf Club was fashioned, Sanford said, by partners brainstorming a simple prompt: “If I was at the club, I would like to … .”
The club’s spaces fill in that blank, Sanford said.
There will be a great room for people to just chill and hang out. A fireside speaker lounge will offer a space for club members to listen to guest speakers give inspirational talks. A listening room might have a singer/songwriter giving a talk about the creative process for writing lyrics while playing a snippet of the song on high-fidelity equipment. A private, bring-your-own food kitchen lets members bring freshly caught fish or lobster and prepare it for friends and family.
One of the biggest challenges, Sanford said, will be organizing all the programming for club members. Partner Jim Lindberg is leading that charge, he said.
Outside, there will be two more bars, sunset dining and lounge decks, a private music and event courtyard, a Zen chess garden, fire pits and fireplaces, paddle board, kayak and bike rentals, and an outdoor shower.
Before BeachLife arrived on the scene and California Surf Club came to fruition, developer CenterCal Properties was planning to massively revitalize the entire waterfront with a blueprint the City Council had approved in 2016.
But a slurry of lawsuits and controversy stalled that plan, and ultimately, the city thwarted it by passing Measure C in 2017, which shut down huge development projects that would add too much density.
But around late summer or fall next year, the multi-use communal space of California Surf Club, Sanford said he hopes, will renew what it’s like to visit the sand and spend the day in Redondo Beach.
Sanford said during Tuesday’s council meeting he wanted to create something to root coastal culture in Redondo Beach and foster appreciation for the ocean in upcoming generations.
“I’ve been teaching my (5-year-old) daughter to surf since she was two,” Sanford said. “I went to paddle with her on the harbor one day and I just didn’t want to leave.”
They certainly didn’t have to go home, but, Sanford said, he felt there was something missing upon coming back to shore.
“I wanted that moment to continue,” Sanford said, “but when we got out the water, there was nowhere to go.”
Besides going to sit and eat at a restaurant for a couple of hours, he said, “there was no way for me to enjoy that day with my daughter, to enjoy community, like-minded people and just be.”
The idea behind the club was also inspired by the time Sanford spent in Australia studying philosophy.
“From Darwin at the north tip down to the bottom (of the country), in every single city, there was a surf club,” Sanford said. “Every Friday, the entire community would go out to that surf club whether it was big or small; the parents would be hanging, the kids would be on the beach.”
What stuck with Sanford about that experience, he said, was that those children got to grow up on the beach.
“It was in their blood,” he said. “It builds a respect for and an enjoyment of the ocean.
“It was just a weekly celebration of beach life.”