Redondo Beach hopes to recapture pier s glory days [turn]

the dining room at old tony's is a testament to its status as a survivor. its aging green carpets and tan leather booths have overlooked redondo beach pier for more than 60 years.
inside, not much has changed.
the tiki bar and musty-gray fishing nets hanging from the ceiling are the kitsch of decades past, and some of the waitresses have been around since the nixon administration.
in its heyday, throngs of visitors packed the pier, even on weekdays, catching movies at the stately fox theater or fishing off the horseshoe-shaped pier. business was brisk enough to support a second restaurant, tony's fish market, and still, dinner waits on a saturday stretched into the hours.
"you saw kids running around with their cotton candy and ice cream till late at night. it was always so busy and alive," says michael trutanich, whose father, tony, opened the popular restaurant in 1952 that still serves as the pier's anchor tenant.
these days, though, the crowds have thinned. after a devastating fire in 1988, many of the businesses closed; some that remain don't even bother to open on cloudy days.
now, after two decades of stagnation, redondo beach is on the move with a $300-million plan to redevelop the ailing waterfront district. where there are now dated office buildings and t-shirt shops, developers envision a boutique hotel, green space and a san francisco-inspired market hall.
but wary of the legacy of unfulfilled promises and development blunders, they are proceeding with caution. the last major effort to revitalize the area was abandoned amid protest from locals who hold a fierce loyalty for a place once considered the jewel of the south bay.
fred bruning, chief executive of centercal properties, the developer the city has chosen to spearhead the new project, is a longtime south bay resident and has his own childhood memories of fishing on the pier. he said he wants to restore it to its former glory.
"there's got to be a bit of that majesty, that magic that used to be on the waterfront," he said.
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today, the tired facades and crumbling asphalt along the international boardwalk offer few clues of redondo pier's past glamour.
after abandoning its ambitions as a deep-water port in the late 1800s, redondo beach remade itself into a premier resort destination — "the gem of the continent," proclaimed an advertisement that ran in the los angeles times in 1881.
the iconic red cars carried beachgoers from downtown los angeles. parasol-toting ladies strolled the waterfront's "endless pier" or bathed in what was billed as the world's largest saltwater plunge. some tried their nerves on the lightning racer, a massive wooden roller coaster that towered above the sand.
but lightning-stoked fires and savage storms routinely battered the seaside resort, scattering pier lumber like matchsticks.
a black-and-white photo hangs over a table at old tony's, depicting the toll of the winter of 1915. "citizens worked all night jan. 7th to rebuild sea wall," the caption reads, "which was promptly washed out jan. 10th."
in 1988, a fierce winter storm and subsequent fire reduced a third of the businesses to ash.
"all of this was gone," says trutanich, looking toward the pier. it took six years to repair the damage and, he says, remaining storefronts were left to languish wholesale hoodies.
the man-made disasters haven't helped matters.
seeking a way to finance construction of the adjacent king harbor, the city auctioned off control of the pier into separate leases. owners had little incentive to make piecemeal investments on their own plots without knowing their neighbors' intentions.