The Brief

Rancho Palos Verdes life is mostly idyllic and insular. Clifftop ocean views, scenic hiking trails and a thriving equine community mean residents rarely have to go “down the hill.”

But in recent years, multi-million-dollar homes perched atop oceanside bluffs in the Portuguese Bend area have started to succumb to geological forces that — despite millions of dollars and years of efforts — cannot be stopped.

In fact, those forces were accelerated by heavy rains in 2023 and 2024, pulling apart structures, cutting gas and power lines and severing roads. NASA imagery shows that land was sliding at a rate of 4 inches a week during a four-week period last year.

Portuguese Bend is clearly on borrowed time.

Land movement made a section of Narcissa Drive impassable in September.

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Brian Feinzimer

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LAist

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An aerial view of landslide damage at the corner of Dauntless Drive and Exultant Drive in the Seaview neighborhood of Rancho Palos Verdes in September.

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Brian Feinzimer

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LAist

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But people are adaptable, especially when there’s this much to lose. Residents have set up solar panels and generators. The iconic Wayfarers Chapel was meticulously disassembled so it can be moved to more stable ground. The city has increased efforts to pump groundwater away from the slide zone and will use more than $40 million in federal disaster funds to buy properties.

So how did this slow-moving disaster get to this point? Who’s responsible? And where does Rancho Palos Verdes go from here?

Workers dismantle the historic Wayfares Chapel in May after landslides shifted the terrain.

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Brian Feinzimer

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LAist

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Wayfarers Chapel was closed to the public after land movement, clearly visible on the road below the church, that followed heavy rains.

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Patrick T. Fallon

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AFP via Getty Images

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What set off the movement 

According to research from Cal State Dominguez Hills, the Portuguese Bend landslide has been moving for more than 250,000 years. But the more aggressive movement started after World War II, when the peninsula experienced a housing boom.

“Sliding increased as ground water levels rose, the latter due to homeowner irrigation, and installation of pools and septic tanks,” Brendan McNulty, the professor behind the research paper, wrote. “Almost all of these houses have since been destroyed by landslide activity.”

McNulty has since retired and is not available for interviews, a spokesperson for the university told LAist.

The Portuguese Bend area seen from the air in 1955 before many houses were built.

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Howard D. Kelly

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Kelly-Holiday Mid-Century Aerial Collection / Los Angeles Public Library

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Frank Vanderlip, a banker based in New York, purchased the peninsula in 1913 with a vision of turning it into an artists colony, said Palos Verdes Historical Society President Dana Graham. But the Great Depression derailed those plans. Japanese American farmers were forcibly moved off the peninsula when President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066 incarcerated thousands of Japanese nationals and Japanese Americans. When service members began returning from World War II, the peninsula became an attractive option since Vanderlip envisioned more than 50% of the area as parkland.

At the time, Graham said, the roads were mostly dirt and to build a home on the peninsula, you had to pave your own.

But in 1956, Graham said, the fragile geology keeping the bluffs relatively intact took a hit when L.A. County expanded Crenshaw Boulevard.

“ The theory was that the blasting and the digging and the movement of dirt and all that had disturbed an ancient slide that had been at equilibrium,” Graham said.

According to historical documents posted by the city of Rancho Palos Verdes, land moved roughly 22 feet from September 1956 to April 1957.

What happened next

In a report to city officials and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, geologists said a particularly wet winter in 1978 accelerated land movement, at one point up to 40 feet a year in the early 1980s. The city was later able to reduce that movement to 1 foot a year by installing dewatering wells, which pump water out of the ground, but the bluffs never recovered.

Drainage systems in Rancho Palos Verdes were installed in the 1980s as part of a stabilization plan.

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City of Rancho Palos Verdes

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In the geologists’ report, they said that since the landslide was reactivated in the 1950s more than 5.8 million cubic yards of sediment — or enough to fill over 200,000 football fields — had been deposited in the ocean since the land started moving in the 1950s.

Residents sue the city to develop land

When the land movement started accelerating in 1978, city officials banned new construction in the Portuguese Bend area, saying they had to “conduct extensive geological studies to determine the stability of the land.” For years, the development moratorium held, until 15 property owners sued the city in 2002, arguing that development had become too restrictive over the years.

The city’s position, city manager Ara Mihranian told LAist, was to allow improvements on homes built prior to the city’s incorporation.

Sliding land damaged homes in Rancho Palos Verdes, like this one seen in 1984, before the stabilization plan went into effect.

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City of Rancho Palos Verdes

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A trial followed, and the judge ruled in favor of the city, claiming the development moratorium was justified. But the property owners won on appeal, with the ruling stating that the moratorium was an “unconstitutional taking of property” and the city had to either allow the plaintiffs to build on their vacant lots or buy them at fair market value. This paved the way for the development now being slowly crippled and rendered uninhabitable for the landslide movement

Mihranian said three of the homes built as a result of the court ruling are now red tagged.

Where things stand today

Today, unstable land movement has left hundreds of residents without power or gas after above average rainfall over the last two winters accelerated movement in the landslide complex rendered dozens of homes unliveable, according to officials. At one point last year, land was moving up to 1 foot a week in some areas. That has since slowed with around-the-clock dewatering wells, but experts say it can’t be totally stopped.

NASA’s UAVSAR airborne radar instrument captured data in fall 2024 showing the motion of landslides on the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Darker red indicates faster motion.

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NASA Earth Observatory

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Which leads to the current conundrum.

Mihranian told LAist that the long term plan is for the city to look at opportunities through FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant program to buy back homes in the landslide complex.

Land movement caused a water main to break in the Portuguese Bend area last year.

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Brian Feinzimer

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LAist

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Portuguese Bend resident Gordon Leon shows where he has installed a generator at his home due to electrical service being cut off.

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Brian Feinzimer

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LAist

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As property owners wait for funding for the buyouts, others are trying the real estate market. On Zillow, a home on Vanderlip Drive is listed for more than $2 million with a note that states: “The home is offered for a fraction of its pre-movement value...and will offer a buyer a unique blend of elegance, comfort and breathtaking beauty, making it a true treasure to be loved by the next family lucky enough to call it home.”

According to the listing, the homeowners have “fought back” against the land movement by installing helical piers, or foundations screwed into the ground.

The listing agent, Charlie Raine, told LAist there's been interest in the place for its character and history. But in general, he said news of the landslides hasn't helped in generating prospects.

" We've had people who have mentioned the fact that, you know, how close is it to the landslide? And these are houses that are nowhere near the landslides," he said. "It's something that's on buyers' minds, and it certainly must have a negative effect on some people that maybe won't look in the area."

Landslide damage at the corner of Dauntless Drive and Exultant Drive in the Seaview neighborhood of Rancho Palos Verdes in September.

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Brian Feinzimer

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LAist

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Another listing for a million-dollar home in the Seaview area states: “Don’t miss this opportunity to own a slice of coastal paradise in one of Southern California’s most desirable neighborhoods. Schedule your private showing today and experience the allure of seaside living at its finest. Property located in the neighborhood impacted by LAND MOVEMENT and affected by it.”

Mihranian said the city can’t step in to halt those sales since they are privately owned parcels.

Other property owners have filed lawsuits against the city. Two filed last year allege the city of Rancho Palos Verdes, Rolling Hills, L.A. County, CalWater and the Klondike Canyon Landslide Abatement District failed to properly manage the landslide or take adequate precautionary measures ahead of wet winter seasons. The lawsuits also allege that improperly maintained water and sewer lines contributed to the recent acceleration in movement.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

The contract Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium was built on is void, a judge ruled, upending a 10-year-old deal at the center of a larger fight between the city and the stadium developer.

Companies tied to Stan Kroenke and his Hollywood Park stadium property say Inglewood owes them about $400 million under the agreement that had the companies pay for the development’s infrastructure up front in exchange for future reimbursement.

But Inglewood said it shouldn’t have to pay, and claimed the agreement was not enforceable, prompting several businesses that operate SoFi, YouTube Theater and other real estate developments on the site to sue in December 2025.

The city claimed that the process used to greenlight the stadium construction in 2015 was no longer legitimate after a court ruled a similar development agreement in the Inland Empire was void a couple of years later.

Now, Superior Court Judge David Reinert has not only agreed with the city, but said in a Sept. 1 ruling the process leading to the contract had been problematic from the start. Developments similarly based on signature-gathering campaigns that skirt voter feedback had been overturned in the 1990s, according to his ruling.

The order calls into question the future of the financial arrangement the city and the stadium developer have maintained for more than a decade, one that promised Kroenke’s companies reimbursement for the infrastructure and services they paid for and that has generated millions in tax revenue for the city.

It’s also the latest public signal that the once-friendly relationship between Kroenke and Mayor James Butts, which paved the way for the NFL’s return to LA, has grown increasingly tumultuous.

A spokesperson for Hollywood Park said they could appeal the order but haven’t yet done so.

“We respectfully disagree with the Court’s ruling,” they said by email. “Hollywood Park has fulfilled every one of its commitments under an agreement that the City unanimously adopted, described as ‘the best [stadium deal] ever’, and benefited from for more than a decade. We remain hopeful that the City and its leadership will reverse course from their unilateral decision to abandon their commitments under the agreement and will honor their part of the deal.”

An attorney representing Inglewood described it as an important win for the city.

“This decision has huge repercussions for the 300-acre SoFi Stadium/Hollywood Park development,” Skip Miller, lead counsel for the city of Inglewood, said in a press release. “It means that without a valid development agreement, Hollywood Park/SoFi Stadium no longer has vested rights and that the City has no further obligations under the 2015 Development Agreement.”

Butts told The LA Local he wants to negotiate a path forward with the stadium developer but didn’t say if those talks have been scheduled.

“I look forward to talking with them and seeing what we can do to move forward as partners,” he said.

The backstory 

The arrangement that cemented the development agreement in 2015 was: Kroenke’s companies would pay up front for the infrastructure needed to build Hollywood Park, and Inglewood would reimburse them later.

The deal landed Kroenke a new home for the Rams and the opportunity for more real estate development on the site in the future. And it helped the city move forward with reworking the site of the former Hollywood Park Racetrack into one of the nation’s premier stadium complexes.

The reimbursements were designed to be delayed until the city could afford them: When the city earned $25 million in tax revenue from the development in a given year, it would pay down the debt.

Kroenke’s companies say Inglewood owes them about $400 million for those improvements and other investments they made. They claim that the city began surpassing the $25 million revenue threshold in 2022 and each year since.

Butts first told Hollywood Park that he believed the development agreement was void in letters he wrote to Kroenke and his employees last year. He was frustrated that the stadium businesses were fighting the city’s plan to work with an LA advertising agency to install dozens of digital billboards near the stadiums.

The city’s lawyers had found that a similar development agreement had been voided in 2018 and asked that the city be paid back the $20 million in reimbursement payments it made, Butts wrote Kroenke.

The stadium companies sued soon after.

The judge’s ruling

Public projects on the scale of SoFi Stadium typically require a series of hearings, reviews and voter approval — which can take years to achieve. Instead, the stadium developer and city truncated that process by collecting more than 22,000 signatures supporting it.

The City Council voted unanimously in favor of the stadium development in February 2015, and the project broke ground not long after. Butts was a booster of the plan, the LA Times reported at the time. “Now we can celebrate,” Butts said after the winning vote to a cheering crowd in Rams jerseys.

Hollywood Park’s lawyers said in interviews and court filings that the city never questioned the validity of the subsequent contract until last year.

“Its announcement that the Development Agreement is void comes only after the Project was painstakingly built in reliance upon the [agreement], and after the City has reaped enormous benefits from the economic boon created by the project,” Hollywood Park’s lawyers wrote.

State law requires legitimate development agreements to meet various standards. They need to be negotiated between the involved parties, for example, and subject to voter referendum. But the initiative process the city and the developer pursued did not meet those standards. California courts had already found similar agreements “wholly void” dating back to the 1990s, Reinert wrote in the Sept. 1 ruling.

“Therefore, here too, the Development Agreement must be set aside,” he wrote.

Butts said the city was not aware of the legal issues the development agreement could face back in 2015, but he declined to talk more about it because the case could be appealed.

“This is the ruling right now, and we agree with it,” Butts said on Friday.

What happens next

Lawyers for both Hollywood Park and the city released statements saying they remained committed to the success of the stadium development. But how they will arrive at or proceed with a new framework remains unclear.

Hollywood Park said it is exploring its legal options and could appeal the decision. If the ruling stands, the city and Hollywood Park will have to determine what, if anything, replaces the agreement that governed their financial relationship for more than a decade.

The timing adds urgency. SoFi Stadium is set to host the 2027 Super Bowl and the Opening Ceremony of the 2028 Olympics.

Meanwhile, the disagreement over the city’s and stadiums’ digital billboard programs continues. The competing billboard networks have sparked an advertising turf war that has jumped from the courts into the Nov. 3 election.

Ballmer Group is a funder of The LA Local, but their support doesn’t influence our coverage. To learn more about our funders and commitment to editorial independence, click here.  

Los Angeles County has exotic wild animals roaming about, such as wild parrots and peacocks. But what about camels?

No, we’re not talking about that ancient camel found in the La Brea Tar Pits — these animals were brought over for a U.S. Army experiment.

How camels got into our military

We’re going back to the mid-1800s, before gas-powered automobiles changed the way we travel. The U.S. was on the brink of civil war and in the middle of westward expansion.

Typically, the army relied on mules and horses as beasts of burden, but in the new states and territories, they had a hard time hauling supplies over long distances. That was especially true for the Southwest’s dry deserts and mountains.

Meanwhile, camel brigades (also known as Camel Corps) were already in use in armies around the world. These were made up of camel drivers who ferried supplies, transported troops and conducted military cavalry operations.

Great Britain and India used the animals in the 19th century, according to London’s National Army Museum. The Imperial Camel Corps was also established during World War I, with British, Australian and New Zealand forces in the Middle East.

The Camel Corps caught on in America around the 1850s, according to the Army Historical Foundation. The idea bubbled up to Maj. Henry C. Wayne — a camel fan himself — who recommended their use to a skeptical War Department and Congress.

After some years of political finagling, they gave the experiment $30,000 in funding in 1855 (about $1 million today). The money was used to buy 74 camels from the Mediterranean and put them into military service.

The Los Angeles arrival

They were brought over on the Navy store ship USS Supply and went to Texas first, to Camp Verde. As the camels got used to their new home, the time came for one of their first test missions. The federal government planned to build a wagon road to connect the eastern U.S. to the California/Arizona border.

The Secretary of War at the time required the land surveyor to take 25 of the camels on the expedition in 1857, according to the foundation. These “ships of the desert” ended up thriving where horses and mules couldn’t.

The camels could carry a 700-pound load with ease, traveling up to 40 miles a day. They ate off the land and could go over a week without water. After the camels completed the job, the army sent them to L.A. in 1860.

This was for another test to see if camels could be used for mail delivery. They were essentially racing against mules to see who could get from Camp Fitzgerald (a short-lived Civil War camp in L.A. County) to the Colorado River fastest. What the army didn’t realize was that speed wasn’t the camels’ strong suit — several died from exhaustion.

A historic marker on the L.A. Times' old building in downtown Los Angeles on September 30, 1967. The plaque mentions that the area was used as a "corral for camels from Fort Tejon", which is one of the places the animals were sent to in California.

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Mildred L. Harris

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Los Angeles Public Library/L. Mildred Harris Slide Collection/Los Angeles Photographers Collection

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As the Civil War continued, the camels’ future became uncertain. The army was tired of the experiment and the money it cost. The camels were never officially designated as the U.S.’s “Camel Corps” and thus given no real purpose. In California, they essentially floated around L.A.-area outposts, such as the Los Angeles Quartermaster Depot in downtown, Culver City’s Camp Latham and the Drum Barracks in Wilmington.

The U.S. Army eventually sold the camels in California for about $50 each ($1,000 today) in 1864, according to the foundation. These noble animals, roped into what many called a failed military experiment, ended up as circus attractions and on ranches as pack animals. Some were even let loose.

The last of California’s “Camel Corps” is believed to be Topsy. After the experiment shut down, she was used in the Ringling Brothers Circus and movies.

Topsy was eventually sold off to what’s now the Old Zoo in Griffith Park, according to the Natural History Museum, which found her bones. She died there in 1934 at approximately 80 years old.

A new space celebrating the art of autistic and neurodiverse youths has opened on Abbott Kinney Boulevard in Venice, amid the trendy coffee shops and boutiques.

Called “Limitless,” the space is a project of Help Group, a nonprofit that has served people in Los Angeles with autism and mental health challenges for 85 years.

“What art does is it allows people to have a voice who can’t communicate typically. It gives you an insight into who they are as a being,” Susan Berman, CEO of Help Group, told LAist.

Berman said the prime Abbott Kinney real estate was a gift from a board member. Help Group is using the square footage for a community space and gallery to feature neurodivergent artists.

Among the artists included is Noah Remis, 15, whose piece “I <3 NY” incorporates watercolor over the titles of famous musicals like Hamilton and Sweeney Todd.

“Those are different musicals that I know and love,” Remis said.

“Some I saw on Broadway. Just so you know, I also put Cats on there just to anger my dad,” he joked. He said his dream is to act on Broadway.

Noah’s dad, Rich Remis, might not be a fan of Cats, but he is a fan of seeing his son’s love of theater expressed in his painting.

“To hang it up in a gallery with everyone else’s work, it just really adds a special weight to it that I think is certainly not lost on Noah,” he said.

Noah, in response, added: “Don’t get emotional.”

Noah said he hopes other kids will be inspired by his work and maybe even take it home.

Berman, who’s been with Help Group for more than four decades, said she has big plans for the space, which opened last week.

“Our plan is for the community to see the gifts that our neurodiverse artists have, not only in their art but as human beings,” Berman said.

Tanaka Day, an epic meet-and-greet of people with the Japanese surname, is happening the weekend of Sept. 19 and 20 at — wait for it — Tanaka Farms in Irvine.

"I'm the idea guy around here," said proprietor Glenn Tanaka — aka Farmer Tanaka — who dreamed up the inaugural event. "Some of them [were] pretty good, some turned out OK."

For this one, 400 people from across the country RSVP’d, bonded by a Japanese surname that is one of the most common in the U.S. — and one that speaks to the history of Japanese immigration that first brought laborers here starting in the late 1800s.

Glenn Tanaka runs the family Tanaka Farms in Irvine.

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Courtesy Tanaka Farms

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One of them was Glenn's grandfather, Takeo Tanaka, who put down farming roots in California that span four generations and counting — Glenn's father George Tanaka, Glenn himself, and Glenn's son Kenny, whose three children are a regular presence at the farm.

"Tanaka literally means middle of the rice field," he said — farmers, essentially. And because many early immigrants were from farming villages, he added, "a lot of Tanakas came over."

The 69-year-old figured, why not bring as many of them together as possible — to hang out, tell family stories and help fill in the tapestry of the Japanese American immigration experience united by the surname.

One example is how the incarceration of Japanese Americans in camps during World War II had touched those who worked and owned farms — and ended up having to sell their holdings on the cheap.

Already, stories are flooding in. Tanaka said different siblings from one Tanaka family had sent in their experiences.

One brother read them and wound up learning new things about the family.

"What's really good to know is I've helped create families that talk," Tanaka said. "Because now they're asking, 'What did, you know, great-grandmother do?'"