Entertainment juggernaut Live Nation is expanding its San Diego footprint with the purchase and planned conversion of San Diego’s 102-year-old Wonder Bread Building into a 4,000-person music venue.
The concert promoter and venue operator purchased the property at 171 14th St. in downtown’s East Village neighborhood in late June.
The publicly traded company is now seeking permits from the city of San Diego to preserve and rehabilitate the historic bakery portion of the site for use as a box office, entrance, lobby and bar. Live Nation also plans to erect a second-story premium level, as well as demolish the southern portion of the property to make room for a state-of-the-art, ballroom-size attraction for concerts, comedians and podcasts.
“We’ve been looking for a venue of this size for close to a decade,” John Schalk, Live Nation’s vice president for the San Diego market, told the Union-Tribune. “We don’t have a 4,000-capacity venue in the market that’s indoors (or) state-of-the-art. And what that allows us to do is to help a band’s trajectory.”
Acts that typically play at iconic venues like the Hollywood Palladium or the MGM Music Hall at Fenway will now have a landing spot in San Diego, Schalk said.
Live Nation anticipates opening the yet-to-be-named downtown entertainment venue in the fall of 2028 and expects to host 85 to 90 shows per year, he said. The company declined to share the project cost.
The Wonder Bread Building at 171 14th St., as seen on Aug. 13, 2026. (Meg McLaughlin / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Built in 1924, the Wonder Bread Building was designed by noted architect Eugene Hoffman and consists of four interconnected buildings. The property served as the bakery and warehouse of Southern California Baking Company until 1952. The bakery first opened at a location across the street in 1894, with the year emblazoned on the historic building’s facades.
Continental Baking Company, the producers of Wonder Bread, occupied the property from 1953 to 1988, according to city records. Current tenants include Mission Brewing and Outside The Lens. The brewery’s forced exit from the property as a result of the building’s sale was first reported by San Diego Beer News.
The city designated the Wonder Bread Building as a local historic landmark in 2001 at the request of then-owner Sinclair Properties. The designation includes the site and exterior of the building.
On June 23, PVVN, LLC, a Delaware-registered limited liability company, purchased the property, on the east side of 14th Street between L Street and Imperial Avenue, for $16.8 million from Sinclair-affiliate Modern Machinery LLC, property records show. Live Nation confirmed that it is the buyer.
The music venue project has been in the works for some time. The company, which first became interested in the site 18 months ago, was attracted to the Wonder Bread Building’s history, its red brick facade and its location near Petco Park, Schalk said.
In May, the entertainment giant’s architect, Gensler, formally submitted an application for permits. The project, which requires approval from a city hearing officer, needs a conditional use permit for live indoor entertainment, a neighborhood use permit to expand a previously conforming structure and install a theater marquee, and a neighborhood development permit for deviations from development regulations.
The company’s goal is to appeal to history buffs and live music junkies alike.
“We’ve been working extremely closely with the city and preservation organizations in order to be respectful to the building and pay homage to the history of the building,” Ruthie Embry, an executive with Live Nation’s in-house design team, told the Union-Tribune.
The company is repurposing the bakery portion at the northern end of the property and will keep all four walls. It will also reconstruct two additional historic facades to extend the famous red brick exterior of the building along 14th Street. Live Nation is also preserving the visible grain silo and the barrel vaulted trusses with skylights on the inside of the building. The remainder of the site, or around two-thirds of the property, will be demolished and replaced with the music venue and the reconstructed facades.
“The historic portion of the building will be our lobby. It’ll be the first part you move into. We are putting a small addition on the top to house our premium club, the Vinyl Room, and then the remainder of the building … is the new purpose-built music venue,” Embry said. “We’re really excited to use that one-of-a-kind building as the impetus for the design of the whole venue.”
The Wonder Bread Building, as seen on Aug. 13, 2026. (Meg McLaughlin / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
The ground-floor entertainment space is being designed as a standing-room, general-administration area where temporary seats can be added as needed. The Vinyl Room, built directly atop the historic structure, will serve as a VIP-like area with fixed seats, box or suite areas and elevated food options. The company has been rolling out the upscale product, inspired by Japanese listening lounges, at its other venues.
In San Diego, Live Nation owns or books venues of varying size, including The Observatory North Park and House of Blues San Diego, which are on the smaller side and have capacity for 1,200 people and 1,100 people, respectively. The company also owns the North Island Credit Union Amphitheater in Chula Vista and is the primary booking partner at San Diego State University’s Viejas Arena and Cal Coast Credit Union Open Air Theatre.
The concert promoter’s local portfolio leaves a gap in the market for acts that have graduated beyond the smaller venues but aren’t yet drawing arena-sized crowds, Schalk said.
“Most acts need that stepping stone to grow, and so this is that stepping stone to where we’re not waiting for two or three years for an artist to return (to San Diego) because we don’t have that middle ground,” he said. “Now, we have it.”
The project is scheduled to be presented Wednesday to the Downtown Community Planning Council, the city-recognized advisory board for downtown. The permits will eventually go before a city hearing officer for a decision, although no date has been set. The hearing officer’s decision is appealable to the Planning Commission.