The Riviera Village Shopping Center in Redondo Beach got its official name during the 1950s, but the open-air South Redondo retail area near the beach had been around for decades by then.
It developed not unlike Westwood Village did, and at about the same time. Westwood Village and UCLA both opened in 1929, with the modest open-air small businesses arriving to help serve the retail needs of the university. (Especially Stan’s Donuts, which sadly closed in 2020.)
The Riviera Village businesses arose in the late 1920s in response to the new housing tracts being built in the nearby area, most notably the Hollywood Riviera development, which officially opened in 1928.
Developer Clifford Reid hoped to attract Hollywood celebrities to the development, and the Village shops and boutiques were meant to appeal to upper crust shoppers who theoretically would be living nearby.
The open-air small business district lies between Avenue I on the north and Palos Verdes Blvd. on the south, and mostly between Pacific Coast Highway on the east and Catalina avenues on the west.
Hollywood Riviera was a very successful development, but most of its denizens turned out to be upper middle class regular folks and not Hollywood elites. The shopping area still thrived during the next two decades.
The success of suburban shopping malls easily accessible by the new freeways being built during the post-World War II era began to have a threatening impact on more modest shopping areas such as Riviera Village, drawing customers away from city centers to the suburbs.
Business owners in Riviera Village decided in the early 1950s that they needed to organize in order to compete. They hired Victor Gruen Associates to help formulate a design plan for their outdoor shopping area.
Gruen plotted the triangular structure of Riviera Village, creating an outdoor shopping zone spanning several blocks with room for more than 300 mostly small shops that would also include ample parking, a necessity for suburban shopping centers.
Building contractor Forrest B. Yoder was chosen to be the business group’s president, and its members decided to make the informal name of their shopping area, the Riviera Village Shopping Center, its official name as well. The name has stuck for 71 years.
In December 1954, the Village business group held a meeting at the Windjammer restaurant at Catalina Ave. and Avenue I to plot their future course. Calling themselves the Hollywood Riviera Village Association, they held a second meeting on Feb. 10, 1955.
Space for parking would still be a front-burner issue as recently as 2019, when the center’s management contemplated building an underground auto garage beneath its main parking lot. (The idea was tabled due to its prohibitive expense.)
Dozens of small businesses have come and gone in the center over the years. One of the more significant changes occurred in 1995, when Winchell’s Donuts was replaced by Starbucks Coffee.
The then-trendy, now-ubiquitous Seattle chain had just begun national expansion, and the addition signalled a forward-looking approach by the formerly staid, mom-and-pop Village. Its arrival is credited for paving the way for the arrival of trendier shops and eateries.
Hennessey’s Tavern is the oldest still-operating business in Riviera Village. Paul Hennessey’s bar and restaurant opened in June 1976, and celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2026. It’s still going strong, as is the shopping center as a whole.
It hosts the annual Riviera Village Summer Festival, known as Frontier Days when it first began in the 1950s, which has become one of the city’s most popular events.
Sources:
Daily Breeze archives.
Palos Verdes Peninsula News archives.
Redondo Reflex archives.
“This Town Within a Town in the South Bay Was Made for Meandering,” by Chris Nichols, Los Angeles magazine, Sept. 25, 2018.
