When construction started last month on a vacant restaurant site in Coronado, it marked a milestone moment for the Ferry Landing — and the end of a 17-year wait.
By early next year, an expansive indoor-outdoor restaurant will join its next-door neighbor, Il Fornaio, on a site long designated by the Port of San Diego specifically for waterfront dining.
The new restaurant — to be named Maiden Coronado — will be operated by a veteran San Diego hospitality firm, Social Syndicate, which already has about a dozen dining and drinking spots in the county, from Monarch Ocean Pub in Del Mar to Grand Ole BBQ in El Cajon.
Maiden Coronado’s landlord, Ferry Landing Associates, is currently building the shell of the future restaurant, which will encompass close to 12,000 square feet, including a 4,300-square-foot wraparound patio.
It will invest a required $6.4 million in what is expected to be a roughly $10 million project, with its lessee, Social Syndicate, spending $3 million to $4 million on the buildout of the interior and outdoor dining space. The current design of the contemporary-looking restaurant calls for a large, 42-seat indoor bar that opens out onto the patio, and a smaller outdoor that can seat 15.
The structure, which is positioned to take advantage of views of the San Diego-Coronado Bridge and downtown San Diego, has a facade made of engineered teak wood and inside has 22-foot tall ceilings.
Social Syndicate co-founder Brendan Huffman views the restaurant as not only a new destination tailored for Coronado locals, but also a catalyst for invigorating the northern part of the island, which hasn’t attracted the kind of attention that the southern end has received. The Hotel Del Coronado recently completed a multi-year $500 million makeover that included the addition of a Nobu restaurant, and CH Projects’ boutique hotel, Baby Grand, is due to open this year, along with a signature restaurant called Night Hawk, both on the opposite end of Coronado.
“There’s a lot of stuff going on near the Del but we want to make this area more fun and accessible,” Huffman said. “We want to inject some life at this end of the island, to create some balance and also create a good local spot. That’s the goal.”
Ferry Landing Associates’ venture with Social Syndicate follows multiple failed attempts over the years by the port tenant to deliver on the promised restaurant. The original lease, which last year was extended to 2049, encompassed four acres of waterfront land and called for two restaurants to be built there by the end of 2008. One of those, Il Fornaio, was completed in 1999. The other was never built.
As recently as seven years ago, port commissioners approved conceptual plans for Ferry Landing Associates to build a more than 7,000-square-foot dining venue with outdoor seating for 110 and indoor space for 190 diners. But there was no restaurant operator identified at the time.
“After COVID, we restarted conversations with operators, with Social Syndicate being one of them, but those negotiations take time,” said Christian Herrera, vice president of development and operations for the Coronado Ferry Landing. “We were working with an operator before Social Syndicate, and there definitely were a lot of opportunities with sub-tenants, but deals would just die toward the end where a lot of operators would pull away from development. The rent structure is also on the high end, given this is port tidelands.”
The Ferry Landing Associates sub-lease for the Maiden Coronado restaurant is not to be confused with a separate, contentious contract dispute between the larger Coronado Ferry Landing center and the San Diego Unified Port District. While the port agreed last month to evaluate a recently revised lease and renovation proposal from the Ferry Landing tenant, Port Coronado Associates LLC, the board of port commissioners did not consent to a one-year lease extension.
The lease is due to expire in June. The principal ownership for both leases is the same — Art Engel, a longtime player in tidelands real estate. His Ferry Landing Associates also runs Flagship Cruises.
“Il Fornaio has consistently been growing their sales, which is consistent with our expectations,” Herrera said. “Our expectation for this new restaurant is that it will be top-of-the-market performance in terms of sales as it has a good operator behind it. And it should be a good catalyst for any future development at the Ferry Landing.”
Maiden Coronado is expected to be distinct from the other concepts Social Syndicate has taken on, its menu being an “innovative blend of Southern California- and Hawaiian-inspired flavors” with a focus on seafood, said Huffman. There will also be a number of healthy options for children, plus fresh fruits and a beverage program that will feature brightly colored cocktails infused with guavas and margaritas.
“This is definitely a larger footprint than what we’ve done before,” Huffman said, “but this will have something for everyone — for the suits, the family, golfers. And we will have sports viewing in the bar and we will mix in some acoustic music.”