Walk behind Metlox Plaza on any weekday and you will pass a flat, sun-bleached lot with 69 numbered spaces and two pay stations. Two years ago this was a three-story concrete parking structure. Six blocks over, on Manhattan Beach Boulevard next to Vons, a vacant building with boarded windows still wears the ghost of a US Bank sign. Both sites have sat like this for a while now, waiting on a decision that has taken the city almost two years to reach.

That decision is close. City Council is scheduled to review final concepts for both properties in September, the next stop in a planning effort the city calls Project Pulse. What's interesting isn't just what's on the table. It's how far the actual designs have drifted from what residents said, in writing and in numbers, that they wanted.

How Two Empty Lots Turned Into One Planning Problem

Lot 3, at Morningside Drive and 12th Street, was built in 1971 and held 145 metered spaces until a 2024 seismic evaluation found the third level unsafe. The city declared a local emergency that September, demolished the structure that fall, and opened a temporary 69-space surface lot the following June. The following spring, the city closed on a second property: 400 Manhattan Beach Boulevard, the former US Bank site, purchased in April 2025 for more than $13 million using tax-exempt Certificates of Participation. Rather than plan the two sites separately, the city folded them into a single engagement process, reasoning that whatever goes into one should work with whatever goes into the other.

That process ran for nearly a year: community meetings at Manhattan Heights Park, focus groups in December 2025, a council study session in January, design workshops at the Joslyn Community Center in May. All of it built toward a set of conceptual designs the city unveiled in mid-July.

What the Numbers Actually Said

At the January study session, city staff shared how residents had voted when asked to pick uses for each site. The tallies aren't close to unanimous, but they aren't ambiguous either.

At both sites, a hotel, a social club, and a visitor center ranked at the bottom of resident preference. Open space led decisively at 400 MBB. At Lot 3, it finished a close second to parking, well ahead of mixed-use.

Here is what the city actually unveiled in July. For 400 MBB: a two-story "anchor hub" building with three food and beverage spaces on the ground floor, a plaza that folds in the little-used stretch of Morningside Drive using retractable bollards, 5,400 square feet of second-floor office space, and a 3,000-square-foot patio with potential ocean peeks. For Lot 3: two options, both built around parking. Option A pairs underground parking with three above-ground levels of retail, restaurant space, and a community patio, contingent on council approving a height override. Option B skips retail entirely in favor of 200 parking spaces across five levels, three of them underground, with a rooftop community patio as the only non-parking element.

The site where residents most clearly asked for a park is getting a restaurant plaza. The site where they nearly tied open space with parking is getting two versions of a parking garage, one with a side of retail.

The Math Nobody Voted On

None of this happened because the city ignored its own survey. It happened because two structural constraints did most of the deciding before residents ever filled out a workshop ballot.

The first is a state rule. Lot 3 sits in the Coastal Zone, and the California Coastal Commission is expected to require that any redevelopment account for close to all 145 of the original spaces, unless they're replaced somewhere else downtown. A park doesn't generate parking. So unless the city finds 145 spaces elsewhere first, a straightforward green space at Lot 3 isn't really on the table, regardless of how residents voted.

The second is a height limit. The Local Coastal Program caps buildings in this zone at 26 feet. Getting to the three above-ground levels in Lot 3's Option A means asking the Coastal Commission to approve an amendment, a process that adds time and uncertainty the city may not want on a site that, by staff's own accounting in a December 2024 presentation, already generates about 10 percent of the city's total parking revenue.

That same December 2024 presentation, prepared while staff studied Lot 3's alternatives, is also where the financial logic underneath a plaza full of restaurants starts to show. One comp sits at 401 Manhattan Beach Boulevard, essentially across the street from the 400 MBB site itself, achieving $145 per square foot on a triple-net basis. Other nearby comps ran close to $120. A plaza lined with restaurant space generates that kind of income. A park does not. The city financed the $13 million purchase of 400 MBB with bonds it now has to service, and its FY2026 budget for the site already set aside $784,000 for design work and $216,000 for demolition once the council orders it. None of that math shows up in a community survey. All of it shows up in the final concept.

The Hotel Pitch That Didn't Make the Cut

Not every private interest got what it wanted, either. At the January study session, Shade Hotel owner Mike Zislis, whose property sits directly across from Lot 3 and has run at 96% occupancy while generating more than $10 million in transient occupancy tax for the city, made his own pitch. "I proposed a Shade Hotel expansion on that parking lot," he told the council, floating subterranean parking connected to the Metlox garage with hotel rooms above.

It's a proposal built on real numbers, and it ran directly counter to what the survey said residents wanted. Hotel use polled at the bottom of both site rankings. When the city unveiled its final two concepts in July, neither one included a hotel. On that count, at least, the resident vote held.

Why This Feels Bigger Than a Parking Lot

Part of why this matters to people who already live here is that downtown hasn't held still while Project Pulse has worked through its process. Kelly Stroman, executive director of the Downtown Manhattan Beach Business and Professionals Association, described the current churn of openings and closings along Manhattan Beach Boulevard as "unprecedented," adding that it's something the whole business community has been talking about. Two years of storefront turnover, paired with two years of an unresolved gap at the center of downtown, has a way of making residents pay closer attention to what fills that gap next.

What Happens Next

City Council reviews the final concepts and remaining public feedback in September. Development on 400 MBB, the site with bond financing already in place, could begin as early as 2028, with Lot 3 following on a staggered timeline rather than running concurrently.

If you want a say before the vote:

• Comments can be submitted through the city's eComment system up to 12:00 p.m. the day of the meeting
• Public comment is also accepted in person or via Zoom during the meeting itself
• Project updates and the full concept gallery are posted on the city's Project Pulse page

Whichever way the council leans, the two lots that have sat empty since 2024 are finally about to become something. Given how far the current concepts have moved from what the surveys said, it's worth watching how much of that final decision reflects the vote, and how much reflects the constraints that were already baked into the site before anyone picked up a ballot.

Downtown's shape is changing block by block, and the value of a home nearby often tracks with decisions like these long before they show up in a listing description. If you're weighing a move in Manhattan Beach and want a read on how a specific street or section is likely to be affected by what's coming to the Lot 3 and 400 MBB sites, Liz Bird Fine Homes is always happy to talk through what we're seeing on the ground. Let's connect.