Drive down Paseo del Mar past Point Fermin Park on a weekday afternoon and you will still see the neon sign at 700 W. Paseo del Mar, dark now for the better part of five years. Across the street, the lighthouse and the bluffs look exactly like they did when bikers used to park their Harleys three deep outside and order a burger from the counter. Walker's Cafe has been closed since October 2021.
A separate dispute over the empty lot behind the cafe remains ongoing.
The Cafe's History and Closure
Walker's opened in 1946, founded by Raymond J. Walker and Bessie Mae Petersen. Petersen ran the place herself from the day it opened until 1994, when she stepped back at 82. For decades it was the only place to grab a sandwich near the lighthouse, a spot generous enough that Petersen reportedly fed people who could not pay and gave work to customers who needed it.
By 2021 the cafe was being run day to day by a local manager. It closed in October of that year. When the first landmarking hearing came around in January 2022, the closure was discussed.
A Landmark Plaque and an Off-Market Sale
San Pedro noticed the closure immediately. According to Save Walker's Cafe, a grassroots push gathered more than 3,000 supporters and won Walker's a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument designation in 2022, HCM #1267.
Two months into that campaign, in March 2022, the property sold off-market for $650,000 to Prospect Group, a Burbank-based investment firm. From that point forward, Prospect Group owned the property. The Los Angeles Times covered the Walker's story the following year, and the Daily Breeze and Random Lengths News have also tracked it.
A Proposed Residence Behind the Cafe
Prospect Group proposed a roughly 3,500 square foot, two story residence with an accessory dwelling unit on the undeveloped portion of the same parcel, directly behind the landmarked cafe building. Preservation advocates have raised concerns that a structure of that size could limit space for deliveries, storage and cafe operations.
There is a detail here that gives the fight extra weight in San Pedro. Walker's appeared in Chinatown, and Robert Towne, the film's screenwriter and a San Pedro native, was reportedly a regular. The cafe sits inside the Point Fermin Historic District, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2021, the same year the doors closed. For a neighborhood that has spent decades hearing that the waterfront is about to change, Walker's became one example of how waterfront changes can intersect with existing landmarks.
Prospect Group has said publicly it wants to see the cafe reopen. Preservation advocates who tried to connect the firm with prospective operators have said those conversations never went anywhere. Both things can be true at once: a property owner with real financial obligations on a parcel it paid for, and a community that has watched a beloved building sit empty for years with no operating tenant in sight.
The Notification Issue and Appeal
Dozens of residents attended a City Planning hearing on October 30, 2025, to argue the proposed residence was too large for the lot, even while saying they were not opposed to new housing generally. The city approved the project. A few months later, a longtime Walker's supporter found the decision letter sitting on a city portal and discovered that neither the neighbors, the neighborhood council, nor anyone who had submitted comments had been formally notified before the approval, a step Random Lengths News reports the process requires. The Planning Department acknowledged what it called an administrative issue and reopened the appeal window.
Friends of Walker's Cafe filed that appeal for a hearing that was scheduled for June 2, 2026, asking for three things: a smaller footprint for the residence, a condition requiring the cafe remain operational, and a hold on building permits until real progress is made restoring the cafe. As of early summer, the cafe's listing status had not changed. It was still marked closed.
A timeline is easier to hold in your head than a case file:
- 1946 — Raymond J. Walker and Bessie Mae Petersen open the cafe
- October 2021 — the cafe closes
- 2022 — a grassroots campaign wins Historic-Cultural Monument status; the property sells to Prospect Group for $650,000
- October 30, 2025 — the City Planning hearing on the proposed residence
- June 2, 2026 — the date set for the rescheduled appeal hearing, following the city's acknowledged notification error
Recent San Pedro Restaurant Reopenings
Recent downtown San Pedro openings also provide context for Walker's story. The Trani family, whose original Majestic Cafe opened on these streets in 1925, opened two new restaurants in the same year. Trani's Dockside soft-opened in May 2025. The Majestic followed that December, rebuilt inside a restored 1926 building that had once been the Army and Navy YMCA, using marble tables salvaged from the old steam room downstairs.
The San Pedro Fish Market also returned to the waterfront. Founded in 1956 and still run by the Ungaro family, it spent two years serving its shrimp tray out of a parking lot while Port of Los Angeles construction displaced its original site, then came back to the water in October 2025 with an expanded 1,500 seat deck as part of a 49-year anchor lease inside the new West Harbor development.
At Walker's, ownership and operation were separate in 2022. The cafe's future remains tied to a zoning case.
What's True This September
San Pedro's waterfront is in the middle of its busiest stretch in decades. West Harbor's Building A restaurants have been opening on a rolling basis through the year, the Fish Market has a permanent 55,000 square foot building targeted for late 2026, and the Jules development is under construction two blocks from where Trani's Dockside now serves dinner. Almost everything around Point Fermin is either newly reopened or under active construction.
Walker's sits inside that same wave without moving. The appeal outcome from June has not been reported publicly as of this writing, and the cafe remains dark. If you want to follow the case directly, it is filed with the city under case number ZA-2023-7218-CDP-CU-CUB-MEL-HCA, and the community group tracking it publishes updates and hearing notices at savewalkerscafe.com.
For a neighborhood that keeps its history close, that is the part worth understanding. Walker's remains closed while the appeal remains unresolved.
San Pedro has a way of holding onto its landmarks even when they sit quiet for a while. If you live near Point Fermin, or you are thinking about what a neighborhood like this looks like a few years from now, the Elmer Team keeps a close eye on stories like this one because they tell you as much about a place as any listing sheet can. If you are ever curious what your own San Pedro home is worth in a market this active, our instant home valuation tool is a good place to start.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
