My case for a San Pedro Waterfront Dividend and a practical agenda for connecting waterfront activity to downtown.
For most of my life, San Pedro's waterfront has been a promise.
It has also been a workplace.
I grew up working at the San Pedro Fish Market. I remember jam-packed holiday weekends, especially Christmas Eve, and hearing mariachi as part of the waterfront's normal soundtrack. Those crowds meant long shifts, real jobs and a business that became part of San Pedro's identity.
That experience gave me an early view of the question now in front of us. When people come to the waterfront, how much of the opportunity reaches beyond the place that drew them?
Several of the projects San Pedro has waited years for are now arriving at the same time.
West Harbor is welcoming visitors through a growing mix of food, harbor cruises, sailing, paddle sports, bike rentals and special events, with permanent restaurants and additional attractions still to come. The San Pedro Fish Market is part of that return. Battleship IOWA is expanding its work through the National Museum of the Surface Navy, Maritime Pathways, STEM education, workforce programs and community service. Cruise activity is also growing rapidly. The Port recorded more than 1.6 million passengers in 2025, up from roughly 1.1 million the year before, and it has pursued proposals to expand cruise-terminal capacity at the World Cruise Center and Outer Harbor.
People are coming.
The question is what happens after they arrive.
A San Pedro Waterfront Dividend is the share of waterfront activity that becomes lasting value for the larger community.
It is a cruise passenger spending another night in a local hotel. It is a family visiting West Harbor and continuing downtown for dinner, shopping or an event. It is more customers for local businesses, more visits to museums and cultural institutions, occupied storefronts, new jobs, support for nonprofits and stronger reasons to invest in San Pedro.
If West Harbor is full while nearby downtown streets remain quiet, we'll have created a successful waterfront destination and an incomplete economic development strategy.
Hoping the activity spreads beyond the waterfront is not a strategy. The connection has to be designed, operated and measured.
Much of the foundation is already here.
The Port has invested heavily in public access, roads, parks and promenades. The $32.9 million Town Square and Promenade Phase I created a nearly mile-long public connection meeting Sixth Street. The 2018 Harbor Boulevard project added the roadway realignment, traffic signal, bike lanes, marked crosswalks, lighting, landscaping and walkways. The Plaza Park hillside along Miner Street received more than 700 plants, nearly 100 trees and new benches. The Port has also adopted a final San Pedro Waterfront Connectivity Plan.
The San Pedro Historic Waterfront Business Improvement District already operates free hop-on and hop-off trolleys serving downtown and the waterfront. The Chamber publishes an official visitors guide and operates a Tourism Ambassador Program.
I don't want to erase that work to make the case for what should happen next.
The next job is to make these investments work together and prove that the benefit is reaching beyond the waterfront.
West Harbor can't create downtown foot traffic by itself. The Port can't activate privately owned storefronts. The Chamber can't market its way around a confusing physical experience. Small businesses can't extend their hours indefinitely without evidence that customers will be there.
San Pedro should have one understandable Waterfront-to-Downtown Loop.
A visitor should be able to arrive at the cruise terminals, see Battleship IOWA, walk through Town Square, continue toward West Harbor, take a trolley into downtown, find Pacific Avenue and the Arts District, and understand how Plaza Park and Miner Street fit into the experience.
The roads, sidewalks, trolleys, signs, public spaces and destinations already exist. Four focused moves would make them function as one visitor experience.
A visitor with luggage, a boarding pass and several hours to spend shouldn't have to conduct a planning exercise on the sidewalk.
They need clear answers. Where can they leave their bags? What can they reach on foot? When is the next trolley? What is happening downtown? Where can they eat, shop or visit before leaving?
A visible welcome and mobility point near the primary waterfront arrival area could provide walking times, trolley information, visitor assistance, luggage storage through participating businesses and reservations for local experiences.
It should also create a memorable sense of arrival. A public design process could invite local artists to develop a landmark grounded in San Pedro's maritime identity, including the Vincent Thomas Bridge, Angels Gate Lighthouse, harbor signals, working cranes and the people who built this community.
The visitor shouldn't have to know San Pedro to find San Pedro.
Sixth and Seventh Streets are the most direct connections between downtown and the waterfront. Pacific Avenue is the commercial spine that can carry activity farther into the community.
The infrastructure is largely there. The experience remains inconsistent from block to block.
A sign pointing toward downtown isn't enough if a visitor can't tell what is there or whether the walk will be worth it. The route needs consistent wayfinding, clean sidewalks, visible crossings, lighting, shade, public art, trolley stops and active storefronts.
Vacant storefronts could host temporary galleries, visitor services, pop-up businesses and local vendors during major waterfront events. The same event calendar should reach trolley operators, hotels, attractions and participating businesses.
Not every business can remain open for every cruise call or event. We can identify the highest-opportunity dates and coordinate extended hours, local offers and programming around them.
Sixth, Seventh and Pacific should work as the front doors to the larger San Pedro experience.
When you look closely at the Miner Street bluff, the opportunity is obvious.
The road, bike lane, palms and harbor views are already there. So are gaps in maintenance and the absence of any clear invitation to stop, look around or continue into the rest of San Pedro.
The Port has already invested in this area. The answer is to protect that investment, finish the public experience and establish who will maintain it.
I'd like San Pedro to explore a Miner Street Harbor View Walk, a coastal bluff garden, arts corridor and walkable gateway connecting Plaza Park, Harbor Boulevard, West Harbor and the southern waterfront.
The first phase should focus on care. Restore sightlines, remove dead brush and visual clutter, repair obvious sidewalk and curb problems, and establish funded recurring maintenance. Temporary installations by local artists could begin giving the corridor a stronger identity.
A later phase could add native planting, durable maritime art, seating, lighting and small overlook moments. We should also study whether an accessible switchback or another connection between the lower waterfront and upper civic edge is physically possible.
The first decision is not which rendering we prefer. It is who owns, controls and maintains each part of the corridor.
Miner Street is a case for protecting the value we have already created before asking for another major capital project.
I support POLAHS, its students and its mission. I don't believe the former courthouse site at Sixth and Centre is the right place for the school's expansion.
POLAHS has proposed a workforce development center, gymnasium, theater, visual-arts facilities, an amphitheater, public plaza and community programming after hours and on weekends. I respect the ambition behind that plan, and I still don't support committing this site to a campus expansion.
This parcel sits at the intersection of downtown, the Arts District and the waterfront gateway. San Pedro has very few sites with this combination of visibility, scale and economic potential.
The property should go through a transparent and competitive public process with clear evaluation criteria. Those criteria should include downtown activity, jobs, visitor spending, public benefit, parking, mobility, support for local businesses and long-term economic value.
My preference is a hotel-led, visitor-serving mixed-use development with active ground-floor uses and meaningful public space. Housing, cultural uses, restaurants, retail and parking could strengthen the right proposal. The site's primary job should be connecting downtown activity to the waterfront while adding lodging capacity, private investment and a broader mix of daily and evening activity.
While that development is pursued, the property could support temporary festivals, community events, markets and appropriately managed parking. Interim use can create activity while preserving flexibility for the permanent project.
Supporting POLAHS and preserving this site for a broader downtown purpose are compatible positions.
The Chamber already publishes an official visitors guide and operates a Tourism Ambassador Program. Downtown and waterfront organizations already promote events, attractions and local businesses. The BID already runs free trolley service between downtown and the waterfront.
I see Before You Sail. Stay After. as a way to organize and extend the tourism work already underway.
A passenger arriving the night before a cruise should receive a clear San Pedro itinerary. Someone leaving a ship before a late flight should have luggage storage and a practical way to spend several hours locally. A family visiting West Harbor should know what is happening downtown that afternoon.
The trolleys, visitor guides, hotel partnerships, ship schedules and business calendars should support the same journey.
Participating businesses need to know when visitors are arriving, what nearby institutions are offering and where to send a guest next. Someone leaving Battleship IOWA should be shown what they can do afterward. A West Harbor restaurant should be able to direct guests toward a downtown performance or gallery. Hotels should be able to package San Pedro experiences before sending visitors somewhere else in Los Angeles.
Attendance alone won't tell us whether San Pedro is benefiting.
No business needs to publish private sales figures. We can learn a great deal from pedestrian counts at key crossings, trolley boardings, hotel activity, visits to cultural institutions, local-offer redemptions, visitor surveys and anonymous business trend reports.
If waterfront attendance rises while downtown foot traffic stays flat, the connection is failing. If trolley use, hotel stays, museum visits and downtown activity rise together, the strategy is working.
That information should be published through a quarterly Waterfront Dividend Scorecard.
Every report should end with the route, schedule, program or investment decision the data changes. Otherwise, the scorecard becomes another document instead of a management tool.
A useful 90-day commitment would be one shared visitor map, a baseline scorecard, a twelve-month pilot calendar and an accountable lead institution for each major intervention.
The Los Angeles World Cup 26 Fan Zone at West Harbor on July 14, 15, 18 and 19 gives us an immediate opportunity to test this approach if the participating organizations collect the data. We should know where visitors came from, how they arrived, whether they entered downtown, what else they visited and what might have persuaded them to stay longer.
We have invested too much and waited too long to leave the rest of San Pedro to chance.
Success should show up in downtown foot traffic, hotel stays, cultural attendance, occupied storefronts and stronger local businesses. It should also be visible in the simple experience of walking from the waterfront into downtown without getting lost, giving up or turning back.
I don't need every recommendation in this essay to be adopted exactly as written. I do want us to agree on the standard and begin testing what works.
People are coming. Our responsibility is to make sure the opportunity travels with them.
The waterfront is opening. Now we have to finish the connection.
If you own a business, lead a nonprofit, invest in San Pedro, serve the public or care about what happens next, where do you believe the connection is breaking today? Name the street, crossing, stop or missing amenity. That is the conversation worth having next.
Anthony A. Luna is a San Pedro native, local business owner and Chair of the Board of the San Pedro Chamber of Commerce. This essay reflects his personal views. References to Chamber positions or initiatives are limited to actions the Chamber has formally adopted or publicly announced.