Hollywood Riviera

Clifford Reid was a Los Angeles real-estate broker with an office on Western Avenue. In 1926 he bought 640 acres of unincorporated land from the Huntington Land Company, and Torrance's Meadow Park annexation, approved January 18, 1927, put most of it inside the city.

Reid announced a $15 million plan on February 18, 1927, and named it for the view he pictured from the hill, a European Riviera over the South Bay shoreline. An art jury required Mediterranean cottages with red tile roofs, the streets got names from the Spanish coast, and utility wires went underground, unusual for the time. The grand opening fiesta was held on March 4, 1928, with lots selling for about $3,500.

Reid courted Hollywood. Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, and Clara Bow were among the stars who toured the tract, but actress Rosemary DeCamp was the only one who bought a house and stayed. Ownership was restricted, with no minorities allowed, which ruled out MGM's Louis B. Mayer, who was Jewish and reportedly interested.

The Hollywood Riviera Beach Club was the other lure. Ground was broken on March 4, 1930, and the club opened on June 27, 1931, with a 75-foot pool on the bluff above Torrance Beach. It closed in 1942 and burned in the early hours of September 25, 1958, and the beach below picked up the nickname Burn Out Beach. The city dedicated Miramar Park on the site on January 11, 1984.

The Depression stalled sales. By the early 1940s only a few dozen lots had sold, and Reid sold his share in 1947. In the 1950s, builders filled the vacant streets left from the 1920s plan with hundreds of houses, drawn by lots that came with a view. The Riviera Homeowners Association has served the Torrance side since 1945, and in 1977 the city council adopted the Hillside Overlay to keep the hill from being overbuilt.

Most of the Riviera is post-war. County assessor records date about three quarters of its roughly 2,900 houses to the 1950s and most of the rest to the late 1940s. They sit on winding streets, on lots that typically run 6,300 to 7,800 square feet, with a median house of about 1,800 square feet. The higher streets add ocean and city views, and the view is what buyers pay for.

Reid's own era is thin on the ground. Fewer than 40 houses from the 1920s and 1930s remain, mostly on the streets near Palos Verdes Boulevard and the beach, and the art jury's tile-roof rule shows in them. About 370 condos and townhomes, most built in the 1970s, fill in the rest.

Then the bluff. Twenty-eight lots sit between Paseo de la Playa and the sea, all single-family, on a bluff about 150 feet high. They're the neighborhood's trophy addresses and its most regulated, because the California Coastal Commission, not the city, issues permits for work on them.

Start with the address. If the listing says Redondo Beach 90277 but the parcel is in Torrance, you're buying in Torrance: Torrance taxes, Torrance permits, Torrance Unified schools. In September 2026 most active listings inside our map were filed under Redondo Beach. Confirm the city on the county assessor's parcel record and the school with the district's School Locator, not the mailing address.

Next is the Hillside Overlay, Article 41 of the zoning code, adopted in 1977. A new house or addition skips Planning Commission review only if it stays one story and under 14 feet, keeps living area plus garage under half the lot, has no roof deck or rooftop equipment, and draws no neighbor controversy. Anything bigger needs a Precise Plan, judged on neighbors' view, light, air, and privacy. The Riviera Homeowners Association, a voluntary group with $25 dues rather than an HOA, follows these cases, and it notes that state ADU laws have complicated how the overlay applies.

The bluff is unstable in places. A 2025 Coastal Commission staff report on a Paseo de la Playa lot describes hard Malaga Mudstone capped by looser San Pedro sand about 106 feet above the beach, and a 2016 upper-slope failure that caused a major landslide across two lots. Torrance has no certified Local Coastal Program (its 1981 coastal land use plan lapsed), so the Commission issues bluff permits, typically with a 25-foot setback from the edge for structures, 10 feet for decks and paths, and an assumption-of-risk deed restriction. The same report found almost all of the private stairways and paths on the bluff face unpermitted, so ask for permits on anything below the house.

The inland hill has moved too. After the February 2024 storms, a high-pressure water line burst on February 5 and part of a hillside let go, sending mud into the lower Riviera. In March 2024 the city red-tagged two houses on Paseo de las Tortugas, at the southeast corner, for roof and foundation damage. On any hillside or bluff lot, I'd get a geotechnical report.

Check the fire map. CAL FIRE's 2025 map for local responsibility areas, which Torrance adopted by ordinance in June 2025, puts a band of the Riviera along the Palos Verdes Estates line in moderate, high, and very high fire hazard severity zones. By our count of county parcels, about 130 homes fall in the very high zone, most of them on Calle de Arboles, and about 200 more in the high zone. Zamperini Field is about a mile east of Anza Avenue; the city logged about 27,000 noise complaints in 2023, filed by just 54 people, so check the NoiseLab flight tracks for your block too.

The beach, Miramar Park and Riviera Village are on foot from the lower streets. From the upper hill most people drive, and the streets wind.

Pacific Coast Highway and Palos Verdes Boulevard carry most trips out, north to Redondo and Hermosa or east toward Lomita. The 405 is north via Hawthorne Boulevard or Crenshaw Boulevard, several miles inland, which makes this one of the longer freeway runs in Torrance. The county lists bus 225 and 226 stops at Palos Verdes Boulevard and Calle Miramar for the beach, and Del Amo Fashion Center is about two and a half miles northeast.