Bruce’s Beach: how the land left and returned to one family
Willa Bruce bought two lots along The Strand, in 1912 and 1920. She and her husband Charles turned the site into a seaside resort, Bruce’s Lodge, that welcomed Black beachgoers from across Los Angeles and beyond. In 1924 the city moved to take the resort and the land around it by eminent domain, for a park. Los Angeles County’s history of the site says the real reason was racial. The family left in 1927 and the resort was demolished. The court’s final judgment on the condemnation came in 1929.
Accounts of what followed differ. The county’s history says the land sat empty until the city built a park in 1956. The City’s 2021 history report records park work there from the early 1930s. It says that by 1956 the area had been landscaped into a terraced park. The City Council voted in July 2006 to rename that park Bruce’s Beach, and it was dedicated under the new name on March 31, 2007.
The park and the Bruce lots aren’t the same land. The City owns the park, just above the former Bruce property. The lots themselves passed to the State in 1948 and to Los Angeles County in 1995. The county’s lifeguard administration building stands on them. A 2021 state law, Senate Bill 796, allowed the county to transfer the land. On July 20, 2022 the Board of Supervisors returned it to the Bruces’ great-grandsons. The county said it would rent the property back for its lifeguard facility. In January 2023 a county supervisor announced that the family had decided to sell the property back to the county. The county assessor’s records show the parcel at 2600 The Strand in government ownership from January 30, 2023.
Short-term rentals: the coastal zone line decides the answer
Outside the coastal zone, Manhattan Beach doesn’t allow stays of fewer than 30 days in residential zones. Its zoning code lists them as transient uses that the residential districts don’t permit. Chapter 4.88 of the municipal code also makes it unlawful in residential zones to rent, occupy or advertise a dwelling or a room for less than 30 consecutive days. The chapter exempts properties in the coastal zone.
That exception has been written into the chapter since December 2, 2022. It follows the Court of Appeal’s April 2022 decision in Keen v. City of Manhattan Beach. The court held that the zoning the Coastal Commission certified in 1994 allows residential rentals of any length. So the city’s 2015 and 2019 bans amounted to amendments of its certified program, and the Commission never approved them. In the case, the City didn’t dispute that a new ban inside the coastal zone would need Commission approval. No Manhattan Beach short-term rental amendment appeared on the Commission’s agendas from May 2022 through October 2026.
Inside the coastal zone, the City requires every short-term rental to hold a City business license and to collect and remit transient occupancy tax. Accessory dwelling units (ADUs) and Senate Bill 9 (SB 9) units have their own rules, so the coastal-zone exception doesn’t settle them. State law has cities require that two kinds of unit be rented for terms longer than 30 days. They are units built under SB 9 and the ADUs a city must approve ministerially. The City’s code bars renting any ADU or junior unit for less than 30 days outside the coastal zone. Its ADU handout lists that rule for all ADU permits.
In 2026 the City kept the ban outside the coastal zone and raised its penalties. On January 20, a motion to introduce an ordinance allowing short-term rentals outside the coastal zone during the FIFA World Cup failed on a 2 to 3 vote. In May and June the Council made any violation of Chapter 4.88 an infraction, punishable as set out in Government Code section 36900(d). That section is the state’s fine schedule for short-term rental ordinances. Its limits apply to infractions that pose a threat to public health or safety. Each day is a separate offense.
If you’re counting on rental income, check whether the address is in the coastal zone on the City’s zoning map or interactive GIS map. Then confirm the current rules with the Planning Division.
Built on dunes, with a beach that more than doubled in width
The General Plan says Manhattan Beach is built on sand. It says its early dunes, some 50 to 70 feet high, were hard to level. The City’s sea-level-rise assessment says much of the development along the coastline sits on what were once large sand dunes. In the late 1920s, developers from Hawaii contracted with the Kuhn Brothers Construction Company to supply Waikiki Beach with Manhattan Beach sand. The supply ran for almost ten years. The sand went by Santa Fe Railroad car to the harbor at San Pedro and then by ship or barge. Some dunes remain, among them the 100-foot dune that gives Sand Dune Park its name. A restoration project begun in January 2022 is enhancing about three acres of existing dunes along about 0.6 miles of shoreline between 36th Street and 23rd Street.
The beach itself has grown. A 2012 City staff report on research by George Reppucci put its width at the pier at about 180 feet in 1912. It put the width at more than 400 feet a century later. The report credited sand placed on beaches to the north since 1938, carried south by littoral drift. That sand came from construction of the Hyperion Treatment Plant, the Scattergood Power Plant and Marina del Rey.
The City’s 2021 sea-level-rise assessment gives its own account. It attributes about 250 feet of that widening, from the 1940s to the 1970s, to nourishment of beaches up the coast combined with sand moving south along the shore. The nourishment began with Hyperion sand placed on Dockweiler Beach in 1938. The assessment describes the beach as 300 to over 400 feet wide in places.
Where the city’s commercial and employment corridors sit
The General Plan names five core commercial areas: Downtown, North End and El Porto, Manhattan Village, Rosecrans Avenue and Sepulveda Boulevard. It concentrates businesses that serve the wider region along Sepulveda Boulevard and along Rosecrans Avenue east of Sepulveda. The Plan calls Sepulveda the only state highway in the city and says it doubles as a commercial corridor. The Manhattan Village shopping center lies east of it, between Marine Avenue and Rosecrans Avenue.
Between Aviation Boulevard, Rosecrans Avenue and Marine Avenue, the General Plan’s industrial designation covers the uses it names as Raleigh Studios and Northrop. Northrop Grumman lists a group of its Space Park buildings at 3301 Aviation Boulevard in Manhattan Beach. Its One Space Park buildings are in Redondo Beach.
The Plan also lists a country club among Manhattan Village’s parts. The Manhattan Country Club is at 1330 Parkview Avenue. The Plan names the Marriott Municipal Golf Course among the area’s recreational features. That course is now the golf course at westdrift Manhattan Beach, on land the City leases to private operators. Aviation Boulevard runs along the city’s whole eastern edge.
Area districts: how high and how large you can build
The zoning code assigns every lot to one of four area districts, shown on the City’s zoning map. It sets lot sizes, setbacks, heights and floor area by district. City staff have described Area District III as the beach area and Area Districts I and II as inland. In the City’s 2023 zoning map layer, Manhattan Beach Boulevard divides Area District I to the south from Area District II to the north. Area District III runs along the beach side from the Hermosa Beach line to about 38th Street. It reaches inland to about Ardmore Avenue and Valley Drive in the south and Bell Avenue farther north. Area District IV is the north end beyond it.
On single-family (RS) lots, the height limit is 26 feet and two stories in Area Districts I and II. In Area District III it’s 30 feet and three stories, or 26 feet and two stories inside the Gaslamp overlay. The RH zone allows 30 feet in every district. Height is measured from a plane at the average existing grade of the lot’s four corners. No part of a building may exceed the limit by more than 20%, measured from existing or finished grade, whichever is lower.
The maximum floor area on an RS lot in Area Districts I and II is 0.7 times the lot area on lots up to 4,800 square feet. On larger lots it’s 240 square feet plus 0.65 times the lot area. In Area Districts III and IV it’s 1.6 times the lot area in the RS and RM zones and 1.7 times in RH. Up to 400 square feet of garage for two required spaces doesn’t count, and neither does basement space entirely below grade. Front setbacks are 20 feet in Area Districts I and II and 5 feet in III and IV. RS lots in I and II must also leave an added front setback area equal to 6% of the lot area, or 8% on a corner, unless an exception applies. One exception is an interior lot without an alley, 55 feet wide or less, with all parking in the rear half.
Minimum lot sizes are 7,500 square feet in Area District I, 4,600 in II and 2,700 in the beach-side districts, III and IV. Maximums of 15,000, 10,800 and 7,000 square feet apply to new subdivisions and to building sites created by merging lots. The City adopted them in 2008, sized so that most pairs of original lots could still be merged. It codified the Area District III and IV limit in 2015. Inside the coastal zone, the Local Coastal Program’s residential chapter sets the same lot sizes, 30-foot height limit and floor-area ratios. That chapter covers the RM and RH zones of Area Districts III and IV.
The code says the height and floor-area standards may not be raised unless a majority of voters approves in a citywide election. The same goes for lowering the minimum setbacks, lot dimensions or lot area per dwelling unit. The Local Coastal Program’s table carries the same clause. The height-measurement rules carry a similar one that names a March 1997 referendum. The City re-adopted the residential chapter on April 1, 2025 and amended it on July 7, 2026 without changing these figures.
One more rule matters if you’re planning a remodel. If a structure doesn’t meet current yard, height or certain other standards, it generally can’t be enlarged or altered past a cost limit. The limit is half the cost of rebuilding the structure, and the work counted includes other permitted work in the previous 60 months. It doesn’t apply if the work brings the structure into conformance. The code exempts some cases from that cost test, each on conditions of its own. Among them is a structure whose only nonconformity is a single substandard front or interior yard, with any substandard interior yard at least 3 feet wide. Another is a structure whose only nonconformity is a substandard street-side yard or rear yard on a street or alley. A third is a building whose height is nonconforming only because of the way the code now measures it, for work that meets every other rule.
The coastal zone: where it runs and when a coastal permit is needed
About a sixth of the city’s land, the strip nearest the ocean, is in the coastal zone. The Coastal Commission’s boundary line follows streets through the city, among them Vista Drive, Crest Drive and Morningside Drive. Through the middle of town it follows the old Santa Fe railroad right-of-way between Valley Drive and Ardmore Avenue. Veterans Parkway now runs along that right-of-way. The City’s Local Coastal Program places its coastal zone in Area Districts III and IV. The City’s 2023 zoning map layer marks all of Area District IV and about two-thirds of the parcels in Area District III as coastal. It marks none in Area Districts I or II. You can check any parcel on the City’s interactive GIS map.
The Commission approved the City’s land use plan in 1981. In 1994 it certified the City’s implementation plan, which transferred coastal permit authority to the City. A coastal hazards section was certified in February 2024. As of September 2026, the Commission had extended its deadlines to act on two later amendments. It extended the deadline on the City’s 2025 housing and accessory dwelling unit (ADU) amendment to December 19, 2026. It extended the deadline on the outdoor dining amendment to June 5, 2027. The City adopted a further amendment to the program, Ordinance 26-0009, on July 7, 2026. It changes the residential and ADU chapters, and the City authorized sending it to the Commission. Until the Commission certifies the City’s coastal ADU rules, the City says ADUs in the coastal zone are subject only to state law. If you’re adding an ADU in the coastal zone, the City says you’ll need a coastal development permit as well as a building permit.
In the coastal zone, development needs a coastal development permit from the City unless the Local Coastal Program exempts it. Development includes new construction, reconstruction, demolition, grading and lot splits. The City’s permit jurisdiction doesn’t reach tidelands, submerged lands or public trust lands. Improvements to an existing single-family house, including a garage, pool, fence or shed, are exempt except in listed cases. Among the listed cases are a guest house or second unit and work on a beach or within 50 feet of a bluff edge. Another is work that the permit for the original structure said would need a new permit. The list is longer on a lot between the sea and the first public road parallel to it, or within 300 feet of the beach. There it also includes an addition of 10% or more of floor area, an added story or loft and a height increase of more than 10%. A significant detached structure, such as a garage or fence, is on the list there too.
The strip between the sea and the first public road, or within 300 feet of the beach, is the main part of the appealable area. The appealable area also takes in land near wetlands, streams and coastal bluffs. Approvals or denials of major public works projects or energy facilities can be appealed wherever they are in the coastal zone. A City approval in the appealable area can be appealed to the Coastal Commission within ten working days after the Commission receives the City’s notice of final action. Any two commissioners can appeal, and so can the applicant or an aggrieved person as the program defines one. The City’s permit takes effect only when appeals are exhausted. A Commission denial, or a Commission permit on appeal, voids it. Under state law, a City decision on a coastal permit for an ADU can’t be appealed. The City’s 2023 zoning map layer counts 921 parcels in the appealable area. Its inland edge runs along Manhattan Avenue.
Hazard maps: fire, flood, earthquake and aircraft
No part of Manhattan Beach is in a fire hazard severity zone. On the fire hazard map of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE), dated March 24, 2025, the whole city is Local Responsibility Area. The only class that touches it is non-wildland. CAL FIRE’s jurisdiction table records no Very High, High or Moderate zone in the city. Two further sale disclosures are tied to those zones: the fire-hardening notice for homes built before 2010 and the defensible-space documentation rule. They apply only in High or Very High zones.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) flood maps for the city took effect on April 21, 2021. They place the seaward part of the beach in special flood hazard areas, Zones AE and VE. Base flood elevations there are 16 to 20 feet above the NAVD88 datum. The rest of the city is in Zone X, an area of minimal flood hazard, and that includes the landward edge of the sand in places. In the City’s 2023 zoning map layer, only open-space parcels on the beach intersect those special flood hazard areas.
The state’s seismic hazard map for the Venice quadrangle was released in 1999. It zones a band along the entire stretch of beach for liquefaction. Its only earthquake-induced landslide zone in the city is a small area of about 12,000 square meters. Just over half of it is on the dune at Sand Dune Park, and the rest is on parts of two neighboring public parcels. No Alquist-Priolo fault trace is mapped within two kilometers of the city. The General Plan says no surface faults are known to cross it, although it lies above the buried Compton Thrust Fault.
No Los Angeles County airport influence area reaches the city. The nearest, for Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), begins between 1.5 and 2 kilometers away. The airport’s report for the second quarter of 2026 lists no Manhattan Beach land within its 65 dB community noise equivalent level (CNEL) noise impact area. The City keeps a page for noise complaints about LAX and Hawthorne Airport.
The state’s natural hazard disclosure statement covers FEMA special flood hazard areas (any Zone A or V) and dam failure inundation areas. It also covers High and Very High fire hazard severity zones, wildland areas that may contain substantial forest fire risks, earthquake fault zones and seismic hazard zones. It has no line for tsunami or sea-level rise.
Tsunami and sea-level rise: what the maps and City studies show
On the state’s Tsunami Hazard Area map for Los Angeles County, dated March 22, 2021, the hazard area in Manhattan Beach covers the beach. It reaches to about the oceanfront row of lots along The Strand. The state says its tsunami maps are meant for coastal evacuation planning. It says they aren’t legal documents and don’t meet disclosure requirements for real estate transactions.
The City’s own tsunami plan draws a wider line, and the City says it will be updating that plan. The plan says the immediate coastline structures west of Highland Avenue are threatened. It assumes a worst case of a 42-foot run-up from a landslide off Palos Verdes, which would reach all beach-front property west of Highland Avenue. It also says there’s no siren system for early warning. The City’s current guidance is to move to higher ground and to sign up for the Alert SouthBay emergency alerts.
For sea-level rise, the City’s 2021 vulnerability assessment modeled rises of 2.5 to 9.8 feet. It found that the coastal hazards it studied aren’t expected to directly affect any residences, roads or major infrastructure before 2100. The adaptation plan that followed says The Strand and the development east of it aren’t expected to be affected before the end of the century. The exposed assets are public ones. One is the Marvin Braude bike trail, which wave runup in a 100-year storm could reach with 4.9 feet of rise.
The plan projects that the average beach, about 370 feet wide in 2020, would narrow to about 200 feet by 2100 if sea level rose 6.8 feet with no adaptation. That 6.8-foot rise is the state’s precautionary medium-high risk aversion scenario. The coastal hazards policies the Commission certified in February 2024 require a site-specific coastal hazards report for new development and redevelopment within the mapped hazard areas.
Who provides police, fire, water and other services
Manhattan Beach has its own police and fire departments. The Police Department is at 420 15th Street. The Fire Department has two stations. Station 1, at 400 15th Street, is first in from the ocean east to Sepulveda Boulevard. Station 2, at 1400 Manhattan Beach Boulevard, covers the area between Sepulveda and Aviation boulevards from Artesia Boulevard to Rosecrans Avenue. Each station runs a paramedic engine company and a paramedic rescue ambulance that transports patients to local emergency rooms. The City charges for transport at Los Angeles County’s general public ambulance rates. Los Angeles County lifeguards patrol the beach. The county Fire Department’s Lifeguard Division has its headquarters at 2600 The Strand.
The City is the direct provider of water, sewer and storm drain maintenance. Its drinking water comes from two sources. One is groundwater from the West Coast Basin, pumped from City wells. The other is imported water bought from the West Basin Municipal Water District, which receives it from the Metropolitan Water District. The city also uses recycled water, and in 2025 most of its supply was imported. If you own a home here, you maintain the sewer lateral from the house to the main. Wastewater travels through Los Angeles County Sanitation District sewers to the A.K. Warren Water Resource Facility in Carson. Waste Management is the City’s franchised trash hauler and bills customers directly.
Southern California Edison delivers electricity that Clean Power Alliance supplies. The City joined the Alliance in December 2017 and placed customers in its 100% green power tier. Customers may choose a lower tier or leave the Alliance. Southern California Gas supplies natural gas.
The City is a general-law city with a council-manager government. A 2016 ordinance moved its general municipal election to November of even-numbered years, starting in 2020.
