A Winning Blend of the Old and New
Beachwalk is a new neighborhood shopping center on Highway 101 in Solana Beach that blends images from Southern California’s architectural past into a fresh but familiar new whole.
Frog’s is a new fitness center next door that makes ingenious use of a friendly old building originally occupied by a bowling alley.
Together, these developments illustrate how the old and the new are vital to preserving local identity as communities mature. The projects also bring a significant economic and aesthetic boost to a city struggling to revitalize its ragged coastal strip.
Beachwalk, a $14-million, 55,000-square-foot mix of restaurants and shops that opened last month, was designed by Solana Beach architect Tom McCabe. McCabe earned his retailing design stripes working with Los Angeles architect Jon Jerde on Del Mar Plaza, which opened in 1989 and is both a commercial and design success.
Although Del Mar Plaza draws heavily from nearby buildings, Beachwalk takes its cues from a broader Southern California beach context. Small, peaked roofs around the food court recall tiny beachfront cottages. Elsewhere in the project, broader roofs with deep eaves supported by hefty beams hark back to the Craftsman era. Beachwalk even has its own boardwalk.
McCabe’s layout for the project follows classic Mediterranean-Southern California precedents, with buildings arranged around an open-air plaza that functions as an inviting “front porch.”
Wit is as essential as logic to McCabe’s design. If you don’t know the inside line on the architect’s intentions, you see well-proportioned buildings gracefully crafted from basic materials such as stucco, wood, asphalt shingles and brick. But McCabe also hopes you will notice a pair of facades at opposite edges of the site that resemble human faces. Look closely, and you can see “Gladys” (so-named by McCabe) raising her eyebrow (a lintel over a window) at her hubby, “Stan” who has window eyes and greenish-gray stucco stubble.
McCabe’s plan successfully resolves the conflict between pedestrians and autos, not an easy feat along this strip of Coast Highway where cars zip by at 50 to 60 m.p.h.
Two separate buildings at the front corners of the site give Beachwalk a strong presence along the highway. The central, main portion of the mall is set back from the street with room for parking in front, but most of the parking is concealed in back of the mall, along Sierra Avenue.
Within Beachwalk, McCabe has created lively pedestrian-oriented spaces. This is a great place to stroll as you munch a fish taco from the new Rubio’s, which opened earlier this month, or a slice of pizza from California Pizza Kitchen, which will open Monday.
Two levels of shops are strung along a wide, curving pedestrian promenade and side tributaries. A food court will include several fast-food outlets (many are not open yet) arranged around a square, brick-lined courtyard.
Like Del Mar Plaza and Horton Plaza--both colorful, energetic places designed by Jerde--Beachwalk is a great place for people watching. The second level affords great views across and down into the project. A pedestrian bridge crosses from the second level into the central plaza for an added dynamic punch.
In keeping with Beachwalk’s light spirit, McCabe incorporated sculptures by San Diego artist Michelle Barbesino into the design. He liked Barbesino’s small, whimsical wire figurines and had several pieces fabricated life-size from steel. These are mounted on buildings or suspended from steel cables, and one pair even dances in a fountain at the center of the project.
Beachwalk is 20% leased, and the developer, Robert Irish Inc., hopes to have leases signed for 50% of the space by September. With Del Mar Plaza, Flower Hill Mall in Del Mar and The Lumberyard shopping center in Encinitas all near capacity, Beachwalk is a strong draw for new tenants.
Next door to Beachwalk, three partners who developed Frog’s hope to tap a growing demand for fitness facilities in the coastal North County area. They wanted a large, high-ceilinged space, and this former bowling alley--at least 30 years old--perfectly fit the bill.
At 16,500 square feet, Frog’s is not the largest gym in the county, but it is the largest in its coastal area. Most recently the building housed a video company, which divided the space into smaller offices and a production studio. But the owners of Frog’s and their architect, Victor Dominelli of Architectura in Sorrento Valley, immediately saw exciting potential and remodeled extensively at a cost of $550,000 (not counting exercise equipment).
“They wanted a light-hearted but very industrial kind of space,” Dominelli said. “Funky is what I was continually referring to it as.”
The result is an industrial-strength building well-suited to its purpose of building stronger bodies.
Rugged, overhead steel-and-wood trusses support a vaulted roof that spans 120 feet without columns. As part of the remodel, these trusses were exposed as important design elements.
Old interior walls were cleared out to open a huge central space now filled with about $400,000 worth of new exercise equipment. An aerobic dance room is separated from the main space by a dramatic, curving wall. New windows and motorized skylights, an industrial roll-up door and several ceiling fans keep Frog’s cool, even on hot days.
Atop a second-level mezzanine ringed by a Cyclone fence railing in keeping with the industrial aesthetic, exercisers aboard stair-stepping machines and stationary bikes watch television monitors or observe the sea of straining bodies below. Adding to the visual cornucopia are assorted Frog-erabilia and a changing collection of paintings by young artists on loan from Gargoyle Gallery in San Diego, whose owner, Dino Cresci, helped with the interior design of Frog’s.
Cresci chose vibrant colors--yellow, blue, peach--that were uncovered on one of the old bowling alley’s original block walls and which subtly link the present to the past.
Both projects have their faults. Frog’s could use more pizazz on its plain, light brown exterior. Beachwalk’s backside presents a bland, institutional-type blank wall to the large condo community across the street.
Nonetheless, Solana Beach Planning Director Steve Apple is extremely pleased with both of the new projects, which he says are generating their own synergism as patrons migrate between them.
The city adopted a redevelopment plan in 1990 and hopes to approve a specific plan for the coastal strip later this year. But, with the recession, major projects have been slow to materialize.
A new mixed-use transit station/retail/residential project on Cedros Avenue, designed by San Diego architect Rob Quigley, has been approved by the city but has not yet started construction.
One of the largest projects to come to town in years, a restaurant and night club originally known as Club Diego’s, closed for good last year after neighbors continually complained about noise and traffic. The city may buy the building and convert it into a city hall.
At the intersection of Lomas Santa Drive and Highway 101, slated to become the pedestrian-oriented focus of the redevelopment effort, no new projects have emerged, and one prominent corner is occupied by a closed gas station.
Beachwalk and Frog’s, both competently developed and well-designed, should help spur the city’s revitalization in the right direction.
