Owners of the San Pedro Fish Market and Restaurant, a top-grossing restaurant that once sprawled across a wooden pier in the Port of Los Angeles, have signed a 49-year lease to rebuild at their historic waterfront home.

For decades the Fish Market was part of Ports O’Call, a tourist attraction that was razed in recent years to make way for a new regional attraction called West Harbor that is now under construction.

The restaurant built a loyal following of customers who spent about $30 million a year before the pandemic on its heaping trays of shrimp, lobster and other seafood shared at spare metal tables on the weathered pier.

Members of the Ungaro family, the restaurant’s owners, planned in 2021 to move the operation to another location in the port but have now committed to staying in West Harbor as an anchor tenant.

The restaurant will stand next to the new development’s amusement park, which will include a Ferris wheel that is expected to be as much as 50% higher than the Pacific Wheel at Pacific Park amusement center on Santa Monica Pier.

The Fish Market currently is operating with mobile kitchens in temporary outdoor quarters in the parking lot next to its former site, where it served 450,000 diners and grossed $16 million last year, according to Chief Executive Mike Ungaro.

Before moving into its new digs, the Fish Market will relocate to another temporary space on a part of the West Harbor site that is intended to eventually hold a hotel. It will operate there for about three years, serving 1,600 people at a time, while the market’s permanent home is built.

Eventually it will be one of the largest restaurants in the United States, Ungaro said, spanning 55,000 square feet and capable of serving 3,000 diners at a time — about the same capacity as its original location. Nearly 90% of the dining space will be on an outdoor patio overlooking the waterfront.

Planned features include event spaces, private dining options and areas for podcasters and other content creators to conduct live broadcasts, Ungaro said. The market has appeared on lists of the most Instagrammed restaurants in the U.S., with posts typically showing people tucking into mammoth trays of seafood.

“They’re an institution in San Pedro,” said Eric Johnson, senior project executive for the West Harbor development. “It’s really important that we’ve been able to provide them a long-term home.”

The $155-million first phase of West Harbor, which will include restaurants, bars and shops, is set to open late next year. Its developers announced in October plans to expedite construction of the next phase, which calls for the amusement park, more food tenants and an array of outdoor pickleball and padel courts. The permanent home for the Fish Market will be part of the second phase.

The Fish Market also announced that it will open a 17,000-square-foot restaurant at Old Fisherman’s Wharf in Monterey in Northern California in 2026.

Beverly Hills-based Virgin Music Group on Monday said it will acquire Downtown Music Holdings for $775 million, boosting its capabilities in the independent music industry.

Virgin Music Group, the independent-music division of Universal Music Group, said the acquisition of the New York-based publishing and royalties company will bring a “broadened and enhanced suite of services to clients,” including in areas such as physical and digital distribution, business intelligence and royalties and rights management.

“It´s an exciting time for Virgin as we continue to build a next-generation music company for independent artists and labels,” said Nat Pastor, co-CEO of Virgin Music Group, in a statement. “We aren’t just making an acquisition; this is an investment into the global independent music ecosystem and a commitment to nurture current and future creators and entrepreneurs with world-class support, services, and capabilities they require at any phase of their careers.”

Downtown Music represents more than 50 million songs and 4 million creators in at least 145 countries. Core divisions of the company, which has about 600 employees globally, include publishing, distribution, artist and label services, as well as royalties and financial services, according to its website.

Justin Kalifowitz, founder of Downtown Music Holdings, said he believes the service his company provides to clients will be strengthened by working with the Virgin Music team.

“This is a tremendous recognition of the importance and vitality of independent music, and the value that our company brings to its clients every day,” Kalifowitz said in a statement. “Downtown was established with the belief that artists and entrepreneurs everywhere and at every stage are entitled to the same tools and opportunities to succeed.”

The deal is expected to close in the second half of next year.

The acquisition is the latest sign of consolidation in the music industry, raising concern among some critics.

“It is vital to uphold a true choice of partners for artists and labels and ensure that negotiating power does not become unbalanced,” Gee Davy, CEO of the Assn. of Independent Music, told Variety. “Only in this way can homegrown artists and businesses access fair deals, investment and growth.”

Baristas at a handful of Starbucks around Los Angeles as well as in Chicago and Seattle went on strike Friday, kicking off a work stoppage that union officials said would include hundreds of the coffee giant’s stores by Christmas Eve.

The union, Starbucks Workers United, said the strike was necessary after they failed to reach a deal in negotiations with the company over what would be a first contract for Starbucks workers. By walking out from five locations in the Los Angeles area and other key markets, workers are hoping to pressure Starbucks during the busy holiday season, when its frappuccinos and themed drinks are in high demand.

The union said it plans to spread the work stoppages to potentially hundreds of stores over the course of the five-day action that will conclude on Christmas Eve. It is looking to extract from Starbucks a more robust wage proposal and an agreement to quickly resolve outstanding unfair labor practice charges filed by workers in recent years.

A Starbucks tucked into a strip mall on Alameda Street in Burbank that typically opens at 4:30 a.m. stayed closed Friday. At 10 a.m. a crowd of about 30 Starbucks workers, union organizers and supporters walked a picket line outside, chanting, “No contract, no coffee,” and, “Hey, Starbucks, you can’t hide, we can see your greedy side.”

Kai Krawczeniuk, 25, a shift supervisor at the Burbank store, said Starbucks “made an economic offer that was unacceptable.”

“It was insulting, frankly. That made us feel like we have to act, we have to show them we mean business,” Krawczeniuk said.

In a statement, the union said Starbucks had proposed an economic package earlier this month “with no new wage increases for union baristas now and a guarantee of only 1.5% in future years.”

Starbucks said about 10 of its more than 10,000 company-operated stores in the United States did not open as planned today.

“There has been no significant impact to our store operations. We are aware of disruption at a small handful of stores, but the overwhelming majority of our US stores remain open and serving customers as normal,” Starbucks spokesperson Phil Gee said in an emailed statement.

The company criticized the union, saying it had proposed an immediate 64% wage increase that “is not sustainable” and prematurely ended bargaining sessions this week.

“It is disappointing they didn’t return to the table given the progress we’ve made to date,” the company said in its statement.

Besides the Burbank location, four other stores in Southern California, including in Van Nuys, Santa Clarita, Highland Park and Anaheim, were also hit with strikes, said Evelyn Zepeda, organizing director in California for Workers United.

Former Burbank Mayor Konstantine Anthony, who currently is a member of the City Council, joined the Starbucks picket line Friday morning and said the company was “nickel-and-diming” workers. It was “no coincidence,” he said, that the Starbucks strike coincided with work stoppages by Amazon warehouse workers and delivery drivers in the run-up to Christmas.

“Workers have shown up at the exact moment where these two companies make their biggest profits, Christmas season,” Anthony said. “Power lies with the people, people who make the drinks, people who deliver the packages. If you want to give a good product to your customers, you need to treat the people delivering that product well.”

The new work stoppages mark a major turning point for Starbucks Workers United, which formed in 2021 and steadily has made headway in its campaign to persuade baristas at Starbucks around the U.S. to join. Hopes that the two sides would be able to hammer out a deal had been high since February, when the company pledged publicly to work with the union and take a more neutral approach toward the drive to organize workers.

The conciliatory stance was an about-face for a company that previously had intensely resisted the campaign to organize its workers. Federal regulators found Starbucks repeatedly violated labor laws by disciplining and firing workers involved in unionizing activity, shutting down stores and stalling contract negotiations.

The National Labor Relations Board has conducted a total of 647 union elections at Starbucks stores, with 109 of them falling short, several others with challenged ballots and 528 currently with certified bargaining units, according to NLRB spokesperson Kayla Blado. In California, 66 stores have held union elections and 44 of them have had their bargaining units recognized by the labor board.

Blado said workers have filed more than 700 unfair labor charges against Starbucks, its subsidiary Siren Retail Corp., or its law firm Littler Mendelson, alleging a range of violations. The union has not filed any new charges against Starbucks since late February.

In March, the federal board ordered Starbucks to stop threatening and interrogating employees at a store in Cypress Park about union organizing efforts and to post a notice of workers rights. In September, the board ordered Starbucks to stop threatening workers with the closure of a store in Los Angeles if organizing activity continued. And in October, the board found that Starbucks’ former chief executive, Howard Schultz, violated labor law by encouraging a Long Beach employee to quit after they raised issues related to unionization in 2022.