Walk down Fiji Way this month and two things look wrong if you have not been down in a while. The patio where Tony P's Dockside Grill poured beer and served fish and chips for 28 years sits quiet, its lease back in county hands. The dirt lot across from Trader Joe's that you have parked in without thinking about it for years is fenced off, torn up, and full of construction equipment. If you have lived in Marina del Rey long enough to remember every version of the "big harbor renovation" that never quite happened, your first instinct might be to lump these into that same old story. That instinct is wrong, and the reason it is wrong tells you something useful about how this waterfront actually changes.
Two different projects are moving on Fiji Way and Admiralty Way right now, and they are moving at completely different speeds because they are controlled by completely different mechanisms. A third project, the one everyone actually wants, has been stuck in the exact same place for over a decade for the same structural reason. Once you see the pattern, you stop waiting for Fisherman's Village to transform overnight, and you start reading the harbor's actual construction calendar correctly.
What replaced Tony P's, and why it moved fast
Tony Palermo and Dan Ringwood closed Tony P's for good on June 29, 2025, after 28 years running the place. The Los Angeles County Department of Beaches and Harbors took the property back and, within about three months, signed a license agreement with the California Yacht Club to convert the space into what the club is calling a sea-to-table restaurant and community gathering space. DBH Director Gary Jones said the county received multiple formal proposals for the site and that CYC's concept stood out. CYC's own president, Jeff Weiss, framed it as continuity rather than a new venture, noting that the club has been part of the marina's maritime identity since it relocated here in 1965.
That framing matters more than it looks. The building that housed Tony P's sits directly next to the California Yacht Club's former clubhouse, a two-story structure on Admiralty Way that had stood since 1967 until it was destroyed in a fire in December 2023. Since that fire, CYC has been running its food and beverage operations out of a temporary pavilion built on part of its own parking lot. The Tony P's deal is not really a restaurant swap. It is one displaced waterfront tenant solving a capacity problem for another, on land the county already controls, with a club that already has decades of standing on the adjacent parcel. That is why it moved from vacant building to signed license agreement in roughly three months. The county was not negotiating with an outside developer starting from zero. It was extending a relationship that already existed next door.
The catch is that "design phase, spring 2026 opening" was the target announced back in October 2025, and spring has now passed without a confirmed opening date showing up in public reporting. In the meantime, CYC members have access to bar service at the site. That is not evidence the deal is in trouble. It is evidence that even a fast-moving license agreement still has to clear design, permitting, and construction before anyone eats there, and those stages do not move at the same pace as the paperwork that got the project started.
Why Lot 4 is fenced off, and what it actually buys you
The other visible construction site is Lot 4, the county-operated surface lot near Admiralty Way and Mindanao Way, across from Trader Joe's. It closed on December 1, 2025, and the county broke ground on a new three-tier parking structure there in early January 2026. When finished, the facility will provide 368 parking spaces, nearly triple the lot's current capacity, and will run 24 hours a day with accessible stalls, EV charging, and a pay-and-display system. A public plaza tied into the project will connect the structure to the Marvin Braude Bike Path and the Marina del Rey Visitor Center, and artist team FreelandBuck is designing an abstract sail-form installation for the Mindanao-facing exterior.
This is part of a broader county effort called Marina del Rey for All, championed by Second District Supervisor Holly J. Mitchell, aimed at consolidating scattered surface lots into modern structures that support public access rather than just holding cars. DBH Director Gary Jones described parking as "the starting point" of a visit to the marina for families coming from inland communities, and the project is explicitly framed around removing that barrier.
Here is the part that actually affects your plans this year. The structure is not expected to be complete until late fall 2026, which means an entire calendar year, roughly December 2025 through late 2026, runs with Lot 4 out of commission. If you are used to parking there for a summer evening at Burton Chace Park or a weekend at the harbor, this year has been the exception, not the new normal. The 368-space number is the payoff on the other side of that year, not something available yet.
The project that hasn't moved since 2013
Now compare both of those timelines to Fisherman's Village, the New England-themed retail cluster at 13755 Fiji Way with its blue-and-white lighthouse and wooden storefronts. Reviews of the site as recently as this year still describe the same lighthouse plaza and weekend jazz sets that have defined it for decades, which tells you the buildings themselves have not changed even as the county worked through two other projects a few hundred yards away.
The redevelopment conversation around Fisherman's Village goes back at least to 2013, when the site's operator unveiled conceptual renderings by Long Beach architecture firm Studio One Eleven proposing a wider retail footprint and a direct promenade connecting shops to the water. County officials called the site outdated and underused even then. By 2019, reporting from The Argonaut described a potential change of leaseholder, with DJM Capital Partners, the firm that manages Runway at Playa Vista and Lido Marina Village in Newport Beach, in talks to take over the lease. Those talks never produced a finalized agreement that surfaced in public reporting, and no ground has been broken on the parcel since.
The difference between these three projects is not luck or neglect. It comes down to who has to commit capital and how many parties have to agree before a shovel moves.
| Project | Who controls the decision | Time from decision point to ground or opening | Status as of September 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tony P's site to California Yacht Club restaurant | County and an existing adjacent tenant, via license agreement | Closure to signed agreement: about 3 months | Design phase, past its spring 2026 target, opening date not yet confirmed |
| Lot 4 parking structure | County, direct public capital project | Coastal permit approval to groundbreaking: about 4 months | Under construction, expected complete late fall 2026 |
| Fisherman's Village redevelopment | County land, but requires an outside private leaseholder to commit capital for demolition and rebuild | Proposals circulating since at least 2013 | No finalized lease or construction date has surfaced since 2019 |
The Tony P's deal worked with an operator already established next door. The parking structure is a public project the county funds and builds on its own schedule. Fisherman's Village needs an outside developer to sign a long-term lease and finance a full rebuild of a 1970s-era retail parcel, and that is the one structural hurdle nobody has cleared in over ten years of renderings.
What this actually means for your year
If you live near the harbor, the practical takeaway is simple. Expect the California Yacht Club restaurant and the Lot 4 garage to eventually open, because both are already past the hardest part, which was getting an agreement signed. Do not expect Fisherman's Village to look different next year just because another rendering circulates. That project needs a different kind of commitment than the other two, and nothing in the last decade of reporting suggests that commitment has arrived yet.
In the meantime, if you are heading to Burton Chace Park or a waterfront restaurant this fall, plan around Lot 4 being unavailable until late in the year, and check the county's alternate lot map before you go. The bar service CYC is currently offering at the old Tony P's site is worth knowing about if you are a member curious about the space before the full buildout opens.
Marina del Rey rewards residents who understand its rhythms, whether that is knowing which lot to use during construction season or reading a harbor announcement for what it actually signals about timing. If you are thinking through what any of this means for your own plans in the neighborhood, from timing a move around construction windows to understanding how these projects might shape the waterfront long term, GlobalPoint is easy to reach and happy to talk through it. Let's Connect.
