San Pedro’s Historic Harbor View House will be converted into apartments

The harborside building, now a mental health facility, will have 100 residential units

San Pedro’s historic Harbor View House, now the state’s largest mental health facility, will be converted to a 100-unit rental property.

Plans for the nearly century-old harborside building also include around 15,000 square feet of ground floor commercial space, according to Urbanize.

The entity filing the proposal to convert the property is Harbor House LLC.

The conversion was filed under the city’s Transit Oriented Communities incentive program, and includes eight units set aside for “extremely low-income” individuals.

The five-story building at 921 South Beacon Street is one of the most sought after properties in San Pedro because of its proximity to the Port of Los Angeles. It hit the market a year ago and was expected to sell for around $10 million.  Listings noted its potential as a boutique hotel or micro-unit apartment building. Local City Councilman Joe Buscaino favored the former. A sale has not been publicly recorded.

The Harbor View House was built in 1925 as a YMCA for soldiers and sailors stationed at nearby Fort MacArthur. It was turned into a dormitory for seniors and young travelers after World War II, and then to California’s largest home for the mentally ill in the mid-1960s, according to San Pedro’s tourism website.

The plan for the property will utilized Los Angeles’ Transit Oriented Communities program, which offers density bonuses and reduced parking requirements, among other incentives, in exchange for the development of affordable housing units. Properties within a half mile of a major transit stop are eligible for the program, which took effect in the fall.

[Urbanize] — Dennis Lynch