5 Of The Most Remarkable Waterfronts In The U.S.

Excerpted from United Airlines – Hemisphere 

By Daniel Wellbelove

April 6, 2021

Los Angeles

From Venice’s Muscle Beach to Malibu’s surf breaks, Los Angeles County is home to some of the most iconic oceanfront settings on the planet—but there’s always room for more. Specifically, Wilmington and San Pedro, 25 miles south of Downtown LA, have been the beneficiaries of a long-running series of investments from the Port of Los Angeles to create not only a 400-acre destination for visitors with landscaped public spaces, shopping, and dining, but also to increase opportunity for residents of the community.

“As much as we want to be a visitor attraction that brings people in to enjoy the port, to enjoy the water’s edge, and to enjoy the infrastructure and development from a recreational and entertainment perspective, we want there to be significant job growth as well,” says Michael Galvin, director of waterfront and commercial real estate at the Port of Los Angeles. “I’m talking about quality jobs that relate to advancing technology and jobs that relate to creating new industries out of the ocean.”

The last 15 years have seen the building of new pedestrian promenades, plazas, and marinas, along with the arrival of the Battleship USS Iowa Museum—the only battleship on the West Coast that serves as a museum—and the opening of the Crafted makers marketplace and Brouwerij West beer garden. Construction shows no sign of slowing, either. Wilmington is set to get a “window on the waterfront,” in the form of a nineacre, $71 million park and promenade, while a $33 million town square and promenade are in the works for San Pedro. The $150 million West Harbor retail and entertainment district, which will feature 42 acres of restaurants, offices, and public markets, as well as an open-air amphitheater, is set to debut in 2022.

Perhaps most exciting is the creation of AltaSea at the Port of Los Angeles, where a historic dock is being reborn as a 35-acre marine research and innovation campus. Boeing, the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the Southern California Marine Institute are among the partners in the project, which aims to expand our understanding of the ocean, incubate ocean-related businesses, and advance ocean-related education programs.

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