The 1912 plan, the Torrance Tract and historic review
The City’s history says Jared Sidney Torrance and his investors formed the Dominguez Land Company. It acquired some 3,500 acres of ranchland from the Dominguez family. It hired the Olmsted Brothers firm to design what the City calls a planned modern industrial city. Groundbreaking was in October 1912. The City describes the Olmsted Tract as 109 city blocks with residential, commercial and industrial sub-districts. It says the tract is most notable for an axial landscaped mall aligned on a view of Mount San Antonio in the San Gabriel Mountains. The General Plan places that landscaped common down El Prado Avenue from Carson Street to Cravens Avenue. Irving Gill was appointed chief architect in June 1912. He designed the Pacific Electric depot, homes for workers, several downtown buildings and the arched bridge over Torrance Boulevard. The bridge’s National Register nomination says it was built in 1913, and it was listed on the National Register in 1989. The town was privately held until residents voted 355 to 11 to incorporate. The county dates incorporation to May 12, 1921.
An urgency ordinance created the Torrance Tract Overlay Zone on March 15, 2016. Its one-year sunset clause was later repealed. The overlay covers residentially zoned lots in the original tract, bounded by Dominguez Street, Western Avenue, Plaza del Amo and Crenshaw Boulevard. It applies to the lots that hold a house the 2011 to 2013 Historic Resources Survey identified as contributing or altered-contributing. Development on those lots goes to the Planning Commission, with notice to owners within 500 feet. The exception is a project that stays at or under a floor area ratio of 0.5 including garages and involves no whole or partial demolition of the historic house. It must also make no change to the house’s exterior facade and add no street curb cut. Emergency repairs and routine maintenance are also exempt. So are historically accurate reroofing and window replacement. Fences, walls and a detached accessory structure that doesn’t contribute are exempt too.
Historic designation is separate. The Historic Preservation Ordinance, adopted on December 12, 2017, lets the City designate a landmark with its owner’s consent. It can designate a historic district only with the written consent of the owners of every parcel in it. A designated landmark needs approval for exterior alterations, additions, relocation or demolition. Full demolition requires a certificate of demolition, which is treated as a discretionary permit under the California Environmental Quality Act and filed with an economic hardship application. As of September 2026 the City’s register listed ten landmarks designated since October 2022 and no historic districts. The code lets the City enter a Mills Act contract with the owner of a landmark. The City’s Mills Act page says a contract runs ten years and renews each year unless either side gives notice of non-renewal. It says the contract’s rehabilitation plan binds later owners. It also says the county assessor revalues the property annually, with no guaranteed tax reduction. As of September 2026 a draft update to the Torrance Tract Historic Preservation Plan was out for public review. The draft adds downtown’s commercial properties.
The Hillside and Local Coastal Overlay: when a project goes to the Planning Commission
The City adopted the R-H Hillside and Local Coastal Overlay Zone in 1977. It covers much of the city’s southern and western hillside land. On the City’s own map layer it takes in about 12% of the city and roughly two-thirds of the General Plan’s Hillside district. It runs from a strip along the Redondo Beach line north of Sepulveda Boulevard, through the southwest corner, to the hills south of Pacific Coast Highway. One of its stated purposes is preventing adverse impacts on the view, light, air and privacy of other properties.
By default, any development on a lot in the overlay needs a Precise Plan approved by the Planning Commission. The City’s process chart sends routine work straight to a building permit, though. Examples are a reroof, solar panels, an in-ground pool or an interior remodel that adds no floor area or openings. The code exempts building, remodeling or enlarging a house from a Precise Plan only when the project meets all of these conditions. The new or enlarged part must be one story and no taller than 14 feet. An addition also can’t be taller than the lowest part of the existing house. There can be no roof deck and no equipment on the roof. The interior area, including the garage, must stay at or below half the lot. The Planning Director must also find no adverse effect on nearby properties and no significant public controversy. The City processes that path as a Minor Hillside Exemption, with a comment period for nearby owners.
Under the City’s February 2026 staff report, a new two-story house or a second-story addition needs a Precise Plan. So does a one-story addition over 14 feet, a floor area ratio over 0.50 or a roof deck. The City’s process chart calls for a silhouette and a survey, with notice mailed to owners within 500 feet. The code itself requires notice within 300 feet. The Commission must find, among other things, that the project will not adversely affect neighbors’ view, light, air and privacy. It must also find that the project was designed to intrude on them least. The City says a court has read “adverse impact” to mean substantial impact.
State housing law narrows the review. The City’s staff report says accessory dwelling units (ADUs), junior units and SB 9 units need only a building permit, even in the overlay. Its process chart exempts SB 9 lot splits from overlay review. In the coastal zone, all of these also need Coastal Commission review. A two-story ADU in the overlay must be attached to the house. The report says the overlay’s subjective findings can’t be used to deny or reduce the density of a housing development project that meets the underlying zone’s objective standards. That protection covers projects of two or more units, which the report says includes a house with an ADU. The findings still apply when a single house alone is built or enlarged. The View Equity Ordinance of 2017 applies only in the overlay. It lets an owner seek to restore a view blocked by a neighbor’s vegetation. Restoration goes back only to the view that existed when the property was bought or on March 7, 2002, whichever is more recent.
The coast: a narrow coastal zone, permitted by the Coastal Commission
Torrance’s coastal zone is a strip in the southwest corner seaward of Palos Verdes Boulevard. It’s about 1% of the city on the City’s own map layer. The Coastal Commission described it in 2020 as about 104 acres, two to four blocks deep, with about 1,076 housing units. The Commission put its shoreline at about a mile, between Redondo Beach and Palos Verdes Estates. The Commission’s boundary line follows Palos Verdes Boulevard. A 2026 City staff report says every property west of the boulevard is in the coastal zone.
As of the Commission’s status chart for June 30, 2024, Torrance had no certified Local Coastal Program. The Commission approved a Land Use Plan with suggested modifications in 1981. The City didn’t accept them, and the approval lapsed. So the Coastal Commission, not the City, issues coastal development permits here. The City asks for a copy of the Commission’s permit, waiver or exemption with the building permit application. That includes accessory dwelling units and SB 9 projects. The City says they need Commission review in the coastal zone regardless of their distance from a bluff or the beach. Improving an existing house needs a coastal permit in some cases, among them work within 50 feet of the edge of a coastal bluff.
The City’s hillside code adds its own considerations west of Palos Verdes Boulevard. Multifamily buildings should not exceed 35 feet above existing grade. Nothing may be built seaward of the safe building line on Lots 149 through 164 of Tract 18379. Construction between that line and Paseo de la Playa needs a soils and geologic investigation on file. The Commission’s 2006 report on a fence at the toe of the bluff describes a 1988 boundary agreement. The report says that under it, the sandy beach below the bluff-top lots on Paseo de la Playa is subject to a public easement for beach and recreational use. The owners keep the right to an eight-foot fence at the toe of the bluff.
The water hazards are mapped narrowly. The state’s Tsunami Hazard Area covers about 23 acres of the city, mostly the beach. On the City’s zoning layer, about two and a half acres of residentially zoned land sit at its edge. The state says the map doesn’t meet disclosure requirements for real estate transactions. The flood maps of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) put about 47 acres, under 0.5% of the city, in special flood hazard areas. They’re at the beach and in a few pockets inland, with under two acres zoned for homes. As of September 2026 the county’s beaches department said it was piloting beach evacuation lights and sirens at Torrance Beach. Their messages include a tsunami warning.
Torrance Municipal Airport-Zamperini Field: curfew, noise rules and disclosure
The City’s 1940s history says the federal government bought 480 acres of the Weston Ranch in the southern part of the city in 1941. It says the government built the Lomita Flight Strip there as a training base for Army Air Corps P-38s. The City’s airport chronology instead dates a Bureau of Public Roads purchase to 1939. It puts the runway’s construction in 1943 and calls the field a staging base for P-38 squadrons. The City applied for the field after the war. It named the field on December 7, 1946 for Louis Zamperini, a Torrance High graduate and Olympic athlete. It received quitclaim deeds from the United States in 1948 and 1956. The City describes the field as a general aviation airport and the headquarters of Robinson Helicopter Company.
The municipal code bars takeoffs from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. on weekdays and from 10 p.m. to 8 a.m. on weekends and six holidays. Landings aren’t curfewed. Federal and state aircraft and public-safety and emergency flights are exempt. So is a takeoff the City Manager finds performs a vital economic function that couldn’t otherwise be done, if it’s expected to meet the night noise limits. Unless exempt, aircraft taking off or landing may not exceed a single-event noise exposure level of 88 dBA or a maximum of 82 dBA by day. At night the limits are 82 and 76 dBA. Noise is measured at ground level outside the area bounded by Lomita Boulevard, Crenshaw Boulevard, Pacific Coast Highway and Hawthorne Boulevard. Touch-and-go landings are banned. Three violations in three years can bar a pilot from the airport for the next three years. The City monitors aircraft noise around the clock and takes complaints online. But it says it doesn’t control how high planes fly or their flight paths, which the Federal Aviation Administration manages.
Los Angeles County’s Airport Land Use Plan draws an airport influence area around the field. The plan was adopted December 19, 1991 and revised December 1, 2004. State law requires a natural hazard disclosure report to carry a “Notice of Airport in Vicinity” for property inside such an area. Inside Torrance, the county’s influence area and its four runway protection zones cover the airport and land zoned for industry and commerce, with no home inside. So does its only mapped noise contour, a line at a community noise equivalent level (CNEL) of 70 taken from the 1991 plan. The runway protection zone off the east end of the runway continues across Crenshaw Boulevard over homes in Lomita. The influence area also touches a few Lomita home parcels at its edge. The City’s separate airport hazard zoning chapter limits heights in five zones around the field. It sets no height limit on anything under 35 feet above the ground.
The refinery on 190th Street and how its hydrofluoric acid is regulated
The Torrance refinery at 3700 West 190th Street began operating in 1929 and lies inside the city limits. Torrance Refining Company LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of PBF Energy, operates it. PBF’s purchase from ExxonMobil closed on July 1, 2016. The operator says it produces gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel, liquefied petroleum gases, coke and sulfur. On September 9, 2026 PBF closed its purchase of the two hydrogen plants at the refinery from Air Products.
On February 18, 2015, when ExxonMobil owned the plant, an explosion occurred in the electrostatic precipitator of the fluid catalytic cracking unit. It threw debris that, in the U.S. Chemical Safety Board’s words, nearly hit tanks in the alkylation unit that uses modified hydrofluoric acid. The board put the precipitator about 80 feet from that unit. Its final report, released May 3, 2017, says four contract employees sought first aid for injuries sustained while fleeing. It says catalyst dust was reported outside the refinery. It also says the board couldn’t analyze whether the unit’s safeguards could prevent a release beyond the property, because ExxonMobil hadn’t provided the documentation.
The refinery uses modified hydrofluoric acid under a consent decree and later court orders. The Los Angeles Superior Court issued the decree in a City of Torrance case in the early 1990s. In April 1991 the South Coast Air Quality Management District adopted a rule that set a phase-out of hydrogen fluoride unless a performance standard was met. A court invalidated it for a procedural error in its environmental review. A new Proposed Rule 1410 began in 2017. It ended on September 6, 2019, when the district’s board voted 8 to 3 to accept voluntary safety commitments from the Torrance and Wilmington refineries and stop the rulemaking. In March 2022 the district reported that, by the company’s account, all of the promised upgrades were finished at the end of 2021. It said an inspector had confirmed those that could be seen. The City Council’s Resolution 2017-23, adopted unanimously on March 29, 2017, supports the refinery-safety efforts of listed stakeholders. Among them are the air district, elected officials, the refinery’s operator and Southern California Edison.
Under the district’s Rule 1180, adopted in December 2017 and amended in January 2024, the refinery runs real-time fenceline air monitoring and publishes the data online. The district’s February 2025 community monitoring plan lists stations at Guenser Park and on Elm Avenue. It says hydrogen fluoride is continuously monitored at the station nearest the refinery. On January 7, 2025 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) objected to the refinery’s renewed federal operating permit, which the district issued. The objection granted in part a petition from the Del Amo Action Committee.
Del Amo and Montrose: Superfund sites near Torrance, not in it
Two Superfund sites carry Torrance’s name in EPA records, and neither is in the city. The EPA’s site descriptions place the Montrose Chemical and Del Amo sites in the Harbor Gateway area of Los Angeles, between Torrance and Carson. Its pages also use Torrance addresses, though. In places they say “in Torrance”. Montrose made the pesticide DDT at its plant on Normandie Avenue from 1947 to 1982. The site was added to the National Priorities List in 1989. Del Amo is a 280-acre area where synthetic rubber was produced from 1943 to 1972. The EPA’s site page says it was placed on the list in 1997. The EPA’s own mapped Del Amo boundary comes no closer than about 3,000 feet to the Torrance city line.
The EPA lists the Montrose site at a Torrance, CA 90502 address, but ZIP 90502 lies wholly outside the city. On the Census Bureau’s ZIP tabulation areas, it covers parts of unincorporated West Carson and of Harbor Gateway and no part of Torrance. No parcel whose tax-rate city is Torrance has that ZIP. The Montrose plant address and the EPA’s own site point both fall in the City of Los Angeles.
The one mapped overlap is a groundwater plume outline. The EPA manages contamination from both sites as a single dual-site groundwater unit. The plume outline it publishes for Montrose is a responsible-party delineation linked to a 2020 monitoring report. It touches about 6 acres at Torrance’s eastern edge, most of it zoned for heavy manufacturing. As of September 2026 the EPA’s site pages say the contamination currently has not been detected in groundwater used for drinking water. They name Torrance among the cities whose supply the EPA is protecting. The EPA completed its latest five-year review of the groundwater cleanup in September 2025. On March 5, 2025 it removed 46 acres of Del Amo from the National Priorities List.
Torrance Unified: schools by address, and two exceptions at the edges
Torrance Unified serves almost all of the city. The state’s and the county’s district maps each place more than 99% of the city’s area in the district. The district assigns each student a home school by address, and you can look it up with its School Locator. For this guide, we tested parcels against the locator’s own boundaries in September 2026. Of the 38,160 residential parcels whose tax-rate city is Torrance, 38,144 fall in exactly one attendance area, each with one elementary, one middle and one high school. Of the 16 others, three are the Los Angeles Unified parcels described below. Twelve sit on the Lomita line, just outside the locator’s boundary though inside the district on the county’s map. One has no address. Among the 2,557 residential parcels with a 90277 ZIP, only a 31-unit condominium complex near the Redondo Beach line falls outside the Riviera Elementary, Richardson Middle and South High area. The district has 17 elementary schools, 8 middle schools and four comprehensive high schools, all inside the city. The high schools are North, South, Torrance and West. Kurt T. Shery High is a continuation school and Gene Drevno a community day school.
If you live in the district, you can ask for a different Torrance Unified school through an open enrollment lottery. It depends on space, allows one requested school per student and comes without district transportation. Once the student attends, the placement becomes the student’s permanent school unless the student moves out of the district or accepts a spot through a later lottery. Some programs are entered by application. One is Spanish dual-language immersion, which for 2026-27 took transitional kindergarten and kindergarten students at Carr and Torrance elementary schools. Students whose home school is one of the two get priority, and the program school then becomes the home school. Another is an Early College program with El Camino College at North and Torrance high schools. Students who live outside the district need a release from their own district and a Torrance Unified inter-district permit. The district decides those case by case on space, grades, attendance and behavior.
Two small areas fall outside the district. The state’s and the county’s maps put about 15 acres along Pacific Coast Highway near Crenshaw Boulevard, by the Lomita line, in Los Angeles Unified. The parcels include a 91-unit apartment property and part of a mobile home park. Torrance Unified’s locator returns no school for either. Los Angeles Unified’s lookup assigns 2442 Pacific Coast Highway to Eshelman Avenue Elementary and Alexander Fleming Middle School in Lomita. It gives Narbonne High in Harbor City as a zone of choice. But it doesn’t place the mobile home park’s address in its district. About 41 acres of golf course at the Rolling Hills Estates edge are in Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified. Check any address in the district’s own tool before you rely on a school.
Metro’s K Line extension: an approved route and no committed date
Metro plans to extend light rail 4.5 miles from Redondo Beach (Marine) Station to the Torrance Transit Center, with two new stations. It now calls the project the K Line Extension to Torrance. On January 22, 2026 its Board certified the Final Environmental Impact Report and approved the Hawthorne Option. That route leaves the rail right-of-way to follow Interstate 405. It runs elevated in the median of Hawthorne Boulevard, with a station beside the South Bay Galleria. It returns to the Metro right-of-way south of 190th Street and ends at an at-grade station at the transit center. The Board chose it by motion over the locally preferred 170th/182nd grade-separated “Hybrid” alternative. The Board had selected that alternative in May 2024. Its staff recommended the Hybrid, and the City of Torrance supported it. The City said it was deeply disappointed by the vote.
As of September 2026, Metro’s project page, FAQ and Board reports set no construction start or committed opening date. Metro says the project is in design. It says staff will return to the Board with costs, schedule and delivery plans at 30% design. Its project page gives an estimated completion of late 2036, pending funding. Its January 2026 staff report estimated an opening in December 2036 if federal and Caltrans approvals took two years. The report said they would likely take longer. If they took up to four years, it estimated an opening by the end of 2038. Metro’s FAQ conditions the 2036 date on full funding. A March 2026 committee report says staff will return to the Board to award a contract for utility relocation, freight realignment, grade crossings and early civil works. Board action is tentatively planned for 2029.
The planned terminus, the Mary K. Giordano Regional Transit Center at 465 Crenshaw Boulevard, has been Torrance Transit’s hub since it opened in June 2023. Current bus service includes Line 4X to downtown Los Angeles and Union Station and Line 8 to the LAX/Metro Transit Center.
A charter city with its own police, fire, water and buses
Voters ratified Torrance’s charter on August 20, 1946. It was filed with the Secretary of State on January 7, 1947. Voters approved a recodified charter on April 17, 1973. The charter sets a City Manager form of government. The Mayor is elected citywide and six council members by district. The Council adopted that system by ordinance on June 19, 2018 and phased it in at the 2020 and 2022 elections. General municipal elections fall on the date of the statewide primary in even-numbered years.
The City has its own police and fire departments and lists six fire stations. Torrance Municipal Water is a City utility and a founding member of the Metropolitan Water District. It says it serves about 78% of the city. On the City’s provider map, California Water Service serves most of West Torrance and about a third of the Hillside district. The City of Lomita’s water department serves small slivers. Torrance Transit, established in 1940, runs the City’s buses. The library system has six branches. The City collects trash from residential homes. Multi-family properties and businesses arrange their own haulers. The City maintains 287 miles of City-owned sewer lines, and each property owner maintains the private lateral.
The ground varies too. The City maps expansive clay under most of North Torrance and in the Walteria Lake area, about 31% of the city on its own layer. That soil swells and shrinks with moisture. Where it’s present, the building code sets minimum continuous footings and reinforced slabs for light-frame construction. If you own a home on that soil, the City advises keeping water from ponding near foundations and not planting trees within about ten feet of the house.
