"We have absolutely no affiliation with the company planning this project."
That's what Jon Bell, who spent three decades building the Deep Roots Garden Center brand on Sepulveda Boulevard, felt he had to tell his customers this spring. His nursery had already relocated to Hawthorne Boulevard south of the Galleria. But the entity behind a new seven-story, 60-unit apartment building proposed for his old address took the name anyway, filing as Deep Roots MB, LLC. Bell had nothing to do with it. He just had to say so, publicly, because the confusion was already spreading.
It's a strange footnote, and it's also the most concrete way to understand what's actually happening to a narrow slice of Manhattan Beach right now. If you've shopped for property here recently, you've probably absorbed some version of the standard line: the city stopped building up decades ago. Height limits. Mansionization rules from the 2000s. A zoning code that requires a citywide election before anyone can loosen setback or lot-area standards. All of that is true, and none of it applies to the stretch of Sepulveda Boulevard, Rosecrans Avenue, and Artesia Boulevard where Bell's old garden center used to sit.
The 43 acres the state carved out
In 2022, Manhattan Beach adopted its state-mandated 6th Cycle Housing Element. To get that document certified by the California Department of Housing and Community Development, the city had to show where several hundred new housing units could realistically go. Its answer, adopted in March 2023 through Ordinance No. 23-0006, was a Residential Overlay District covering roughly 43 acres, concentrated almost entirely along the commercial spine of Sepulveda and Rosecrans.
Inside that overlay, the rules are genuinely different. Multifamily housing is allowed by right at 20 to 60 dwelling units per acre. At the low end, the city's own math works out to about 850 units, enough to cover its required housing target with a buffer. At the high end, the same 43 acres could theoretically hold more than 2,550 units. Layer in California's Density Bonus Law, which lets developers add height and unit count in exchange for setting aside affordable units, and the outer ceiling on paper climbs past 5,100 units. The city calls that scenario highly unlikely. But the incentive is real, and it explains exactly why the filings started arriving the way they did.
What's actually been proposed
Here's what's currently in the pipeline along that corridor, based on project filings and city notices from the past year:
| Address | Project | Scale |
|---|---|---|
| 1440 Rosecrans Ave | Fairfield Residential's proposal to raze a 78,000 sq ft office building | 500 apartments, 100 income-restricted, six to seven stories |
| 1500 Rosecrans Ave | An entity affiliated with Lincoln Property Company, replacing another office complex | 550 apartments, 110 income-restricted, eight stories |
| Former Fry's Electronics site | Multifamily redevelopment | Roughly 273 apartments |
| 201-207 N. Sepulveda Blvd | Deep Roots MB, LLC, on the former Deep Roots Garden Center site | 60 apartments, 12 income-restricted, seven stories |
| 2301 N. Sepulveda Blvd | Moore Real Estate Group, designed by DE Architects | 40 apartments, seven stories |
| 250-400 N. Sepulveda Blvd | Sunrise Senior Living, already under construction | 95 to 111 assisted-living and memory-care units |
| 1701 Artesia Blvd | Mixed-use building with ground-floor commercial | 12 residential units |
None of this is happening on the Strand, in the Sand Section, or up in the Hill Section. It's happening on a commercial frontage most buyers drive past without registering as residential real estate at all.
The reason these projects moved fast has to do with how the approval works. Projects that include deed-restricted affordable units qualify for state density bonuses and, in many cases, by-right review at the staff level rather than a public hearing. That's a genuinely different approval track than the one most Manhattan Beach homeowners are used to watching from the sidelines, and it's part of why resistance has organized quickly. One petition aimed at the 2301 N. Sepulveda project put its objection plainly:
"While we support affordable housing, this proposal is not the right fit for Manhattan Beach."
That petition and a separate one targeting the Deep Roots MB project had gathered more than 1,600 combined signatures as of this spring, according to Manhattan Beach News. Whether that pressure changes any specific outcome remains to be seen. What it confirms is that the by-right pathway is working as designed, and the corridor's neighbors know it.
What doesn't change
This is worth saying clearly, because it's easy to read a list like the one above and assume the whole city is up for grabs. It isn't. The Strand, the Sand Section, the Tree Section, and the Hill Section sit within Area Districts I and II, governed by the bulk-volume and mansionization standards the city built out between 2002 and 2015. Manhattan Beach's own zoning code contains a specific protection here: any amendment that would increase maximum height or buildable floor area, or reduce minimum setbacks and lot dimensions, has to go to a citywide vote before it can take effect. The Residential Overlay District didn't touch that provision. It couldn't. It applies only to the parcels the city mapped into the overlay, and those parcels are commercial, not the residential streets where luxury inventory sits.
That distinction matters if you're weighing Manhattan Beach against other South Bay markets on the question of future supply. The city isn't quietly opening up. It drew a very specific, very small line on a map, and almost everything happening inside that line is a direct response to a state mandate rather than a shift in local appetite for density.
What this means if you're buying, selling, or holding here
A few practical takeaways, depending on where you sit:
If you own or are evaluating a commercially zoned parcel inside the mapped overlay, the land value math has changed. Pricing it against the existing building's rent roll or square footage misses the entitlement value a by-right multifamily project can unlock. That's true whether you're the seller or the one doing the underwriting.
If you're buying a home in East Manhattan Beach, particularly within a few blocks of Sepulveda or Rosecrans, budget for construction activity and a different traffic pattern over the next several years. Several projects remain in preliminary planning review as of this fall, so timelines are not fixed, but the entitlement pathway is largely already secured.
If part of your interest in Manhattan Beach is the idea that it "still has room to grow" compared to a fully built-out neighborhood, this corridor is where that growth is legally allowed to happen. It's not a citywide story. It's a 43-acre one, and knowing the boundary changes how you read every other parcel in town.
Check the zoning map before you price anything near this corridor. The city's Residential Overlay District page shows exactly which parcels are included, and that single lookup will tell you more about a property's upside than any comp pulled from outside the overlay.
Will this affect home values in the Sand, Tree, Strand, or Hill sections? Not directly. Those neighborhoods sit outside the overlay entirely, and any change to their governing height or setback standards would require a citywide vote under the zoning code's own amendment rule.
What is California's Density Bonus Law actually doing here? It lets developers who reserve a share of units for low or very low income households build taller and denser than the base zoning allows, often with staff-level review instead of a public hearing. Every project listed above uses that mechanism to get to its proposed scale.
Could my own property qualify for this treatment? Only if it falls within the mapped 43-acre boundary along Sepulveda, Rosecrans, and Artesia. That's a five-minute check against the city's zoning map, and it's the first thing worth confirming before comparing your parcel to one just outside the line.
Manhattan Beach's appeal has always rested on a kind of built-in scarcity, and for most of the city that scarcity is still fully intact. But a serious buyer or a small investor needs to know where the exception lives, not just that one exists. If you're weighing a purchase near this corridor, holding a commercially zoned lot that might sit inside the overlay, or simply trying to understand what a listing near Sepulveda is really worth before you make an offer, the Manhattan Beach neighborhood page is a good place to start, and Thompson Team can walk you through what a specific parcel or address is actually entitled to build. Get a Free Home Valuation and we'll tell you exactly where your property sits relative to the overlay line, not just what the last comp said.
