Rendering of the new eight-story residential development slated to go in at Beacon and Sixth Street in San Pedro. (Rendering courtesy of Trammell Crow)
Mike Galvin, the Director of Real Estate for the Port of Los Angeles, speaks during a groundbreaking ceremony for the Jules San Pedro residential high rise building in San Pedro, on Thursday, March 5, 2026. (Photo by Raphael Richardson, Contributing Photographer)
Elise Swanson, the president of the San Pedro Chamber of Commerce, speaks during a groundbreaking ceremony for the Jules San Pedro residential high rise building in San Pedro, on Thursday, March 5, 2026. (Photo by Raphael Richardson, Contributing Photographer)
Alex Valente, principal for High Street Residential’s Southern California office, speaks during a groundbreaking ceremony for the Jules San Pedro residential high rise building in San Pedro, on Thursday, March 5, 2026. (Photo by Raphael Richardson, Contributing Photographer)
Los Angeles City Planning Commissioner John Bagakis speaks during a groundbreaking ceremony for the Jules San Pedro residential high rise building in San Pedro, on Thursday, March 5, 2026. (Photo by Raphael Richardson, Contributing Photographer)
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Rendering of the new eight-story residential development slated to go in at Beacon and Sixth Street in San Pedro. (Rendering courtesy of Trammell Crow)
San Pedro’s latest mid-rise in the historic downtown district had its groundbreaking ceremony on Thursday, March 5, with speakers, onlookers and others braving some strong winds at the start of the event to celebrate the moment.
Set to be finished in 2028, before the Olympics arrive that summer, the eight-story, 281-unit building — at 625 S. Beacon St. and named “Jules San Pedro” — is a project of the Trammell Crow Company subsidiary High Street Residential, in a joint venture with Haseko North America. Units will be market rate rentals and the building will include ground floor parking and street-level commercial spaces.
It will encompass a full city block near the town’s historic City Hall and overlook the Piazza Miramare, a new 10,000 square-foot, Italian-style plaza that opened in January, all near Harbor Boulevard and within walking distance of the emerging new West Harbor waterfront set to open this summer. The development will include an open-air amphitheater, restaurants and shops, and a Ferris wheel.
Alex Valente, principal at Trammell Crow, said in a telephone interview later that the area is being discovered — and the demand for housing is there.
The same developer also created Vivo, a similar project that opened a year ago at Harbor Boulevard and Fifth Street, just north of the new site and across from the Battleship Iowa Museum.
Demolition — three buildings will come down, including the one that housed the now-closed Green Onion restaurant — began about three weeks ago, Valente said. An estimated 100 people turned out for the groundbreaking event on Thursday.
Asked before about the name “Jules” for the new development, Valente said it’s nautical.
“We liked the Jules Verne connection with ’20 Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,’” he said.
It also had a “symbiotic connection” to nearby AltaSea and the marine research being done, he said.
Developers have been discovering the working-port town in recent years, especially as plans for the new mile-long West Harbor waterfront have been taking shape. Valente said he’s not aware of other similar structures to Jules currently in the works, but others have been built in the past several years, especially once the waterfront began construction.
One of the first residential developments near the waterfront was The Vue, a $176 million, 16-story glass residential tower, 255 W. Fifth St., that came online with the first generation of downtown San Pedro condominiums in 2008.
San Pedro’s long-vacant courthouse property, which was set to bring multistory housing and a food court, however, is on hold for now. It was to be finished sometime from 2025 to 2026.
But the county-owned parcel at Sixth and Centre streets remains vacant and will now be the focus of a relaunch in planning.
The Centre Street and Bank Lofts also came online in the community’s historic downtown distric in the 2000s.