The City of San Juan Capistrano has been working on significant development projects that will start to come to fruition in the coming year, with the highly anticipated River Street Marketplace in the Los Rios District taking the spotlight. This project, set to open in early summer, is a testament to high quality development, as City Manager Ben Siegel highlighted during his Legislative Lunch at Bad to the Bone BBQ last week.
Siegel also noted plans for a proposed boutique hotel, a mixed-use commercial and residential project of market-rate apartments, and upcoming expansion at Heritage Barbecue, including plans to add square footage and more smokers.
Additionally, the City Council initiated a study of a proposed General Plan Amendment and Rezoning of a 5.61-acre area that includes Historic Town Center Park. The expanded Specific Plan proposal includes a multifamily residential project on privately owned land and a development proposal for a Performing Arts Center on a city-owned parcel of land.
An artist rendering of River Street Marketplace. Photo: Courtesy of ALMQUIST
River Street Marketplace
The River Street Marketplace, a 60,000-square-foot community hub, is a unique addition to one of California’s oldest neighborhoods. The project, which broke ground in early 2022 and has been in the works for about eight years, boasts distinctive agrarian architecture that has been under construction over the past few years. The hub will have bigger barn-type structures designed around a central green park.
The space will feature modern dining concepts, curated retail outlets, local art, a brewery, and a butcher. With varied seating options and shared communal tables for outdoor dining, it will be surrounded by a California-native landscape palette that emphasizes the site's history and provides space for local flora.
Dan Almquist, managing partner of the project’s developer ALMQUIST, said work on the 60,000-square-foot development is projected to finish in the coming months with tenants opening throughout the first quarter of the year.
ALMQUIST signed 21 tenants in March last year. Concepts that will join the lineup include Bred’s Hot Chicken, Capistrano Brewing, Common Thread, Fermentation Farm, Finca by David Pratt, Free People, Gueros Cevicheria, Hudson’s Cookies, Kozan Teahouse & Boba, La Vaquera, McConnell’s Ice Cream, The Meat Cellar Market and Steakhouse, Mendocino Farms, Nana’s Fish Chippery, Nom, SALT, Seager, Shootz Hawaiian, Toes on the Nose, Ubuntu Café and Wildfire Mercantile.
According to city staff and Siegel, the opening of River Street Marketplace was pushed back due to rain delays, but it is set to have its grand opening in June for all to celebrate.
An artist rendering of River Street Marketplace. Photo: Courtesy of ALMQUIST
“The French Hotel” Camino Capistrano Boutique Hotel
The French hotel is a historic rehabilitation project happening in downtown San Juan Capistrano. Again, the ALMQUIST team will be involved with the renovation and preservation of the property.
The French Hotel renovation will include a full spa, sit-down restaurant, and 14,000 square-foot rye distillery. A gravel parking lot and thoughtful landscaping design will preserve the unique ambience and nature of the historic property.
Though the hotel originally planned to have 81 rooms, the city received an updated proposal from the developer (December 15, 2023), which lists the room count at 77. For updated information on the project, visit the San Juan Capistrano- Major Development webpage.
“The current proposal calls for a 77-room hotel and related accessory uses, including a restaurant on the 1.79-acre site currently home to the Domingo Yorba Adobe and Manuel Garcia Adobe,” said Kristen Hauptli, the Senior Management Analyst for City of San Juan Capistrano. “The adobes will be rehabilitated and incorporated into the proposed project. The application has been submitted for review and is anticipated to be presented to the Cultural Heritage Commission, Design Review Committee, and Planning Commission for final approval in Spring 2024.”
Heritage Barbecue Expansion
During a recent San Juan Capistrano Planning Commission meeting on April 10, an expansion for award-winning restaurant Heritage Barbecue was discussed. Plans include the transport of pieces of the historic barn currently located next to El Adobe de Capistrano and the addition of six more smokers.
The members of the Planning Commission voted unanimously to recommend the changes be approved by the City Council at a future meeting. But for now, the restaurant is one step closer to an addition to help with the large crowds they receive on a daily basis.
Heritage Barbecue obtained the necessary applications to improve their restaurant in August of 2022 and has been working through the process ever since. On their original application, they applied for tree removal permits for 15 trees, the construction of a pedestrian stairway and ADA access ramp to the adjacent parking lot, a new trash enclosure, and new landscaping. In addition, the restaurant plans to add the extra barn structure for more seating, more restrooms, and concrete pads to hold the additional six smokers being added.
The proposed barn expansion will allow for Heritage Barbecue, which first opened in 2020, to offer longer hours and seated dinner service while continuing to show off the history of Downtown San Juan Capistrano. On top of extra seating, the barn will have space for cold storage and preparation space.
The barn that is planned on being used for pieces included in the final product will need to be renovated. The nearly 2,000 square-foot barn structure would be partially constructed from materials taken from an existing historic-era barn. Originally built in 1880 with wood planks and a wood shingle roof, the historic-era barn, referred to as the Garage Barn, is an accessory structure located on property listed on the City’s Inventory of Historic Cultural Landmarks and the National Register of Historic Places.
“The most exciting thing is that we are taking the old barn and basically keeping it from being demolished,” said Daniel Castillo, co-founder and the pitmaster of Heritage Barbecue. “The first time I got to see it, it was hidden back in that parking lot, and it was something that I was really interested in. I really like repurposing things, so I thought it'd be great for us to use it on our current property and keep the history.”
According to documents, it is important to note that the Garage Barn is not individually significant and not recognized as an individual historical resource. Although not individually significant, the removal and relocation of the historic-era barn requires Cultural Heritage Commission approval of a Historical and Cultural Landmark Site Plan Review, which was obtained in February.
The plans still have to be approved by City Council, but contingencies are already being made for the restaurant upon approval.
“All of these things we need because we grew out of that space as soon as we opened three years ago, and we've been kind of chasing our tails ever since,” said Castillo. “It probably still won't be big enough for what we need. But we are shooting to have the expansion completed before the holidays, which we would like to break ground somewhere in June to do that.”
Market-Rate Apartments and the Historic Town Center Park Development
At the current site of the El Camino Real Playhouse and the parking lot adjacent to it, there is a proposed development of the site to be mixed-use for commercial stores and residential housing.
The original plan from January of 2021, brought up again in 2023, consisted of a study initiated to look at the space to further develop and rezone the property so it could be used more beneficially for the City of San Juan Capistrano.
“In June 2023, the City Council initiated a study to amend the El Camino Specific Plan to allow for the proposed Forster & El Camino Real mixed-use commercial and residential project,” said Hauptli. “The plan consists of 95 market-rate apartment units, a restaurant and fitness center on the former Kimpton site, as well as a performing arts center proposed for a portion of city-owned Historic Town Center Park.”
The plan would involve the demolition of the current El Camino Real Playhouse to make the transformation.
“We don't know what the future of the (El Camino) Playhouse holds right now,” Artistic Director Leslie Eisner said in a previous interview with The Capistrano Dispatch. “We don't exactly know when our move-out date is. We don't exactly know where we're going to go.”
The uncertainty began roughly two years ago, when the City of San Juan Capistrano, which owns the facility at 31776 Camino Real, sold the building to a developer. Since then, Eisner has reached out to and communicated with numerous local cities to find a new home for the long- standing playhouse.
While the proposed Performing Arts Center, designed by the ALMQUIST team, has long been a topic of discussion for the Historic Town Center, it is not set in stone that it will be built.
“While the Performing Arts Center is a component of the proposed El Camino Specific Plan amendment, I want to clarify that the city is not engaged in negotiations with the developer regarding the potential of a future Performing Arts Center on the City’s Historic Town Center Park property,” said Matisse Reischl, the Assistant City Manager for the City of San Juan Capistrano.
“In March, the City Council took an action to initiate the Surplus Land Act process as a necessary step should the City Council at some point in the future wish to sell or lease any portion of this property for any purpose. In other words, successful completion of the Surplus Land Act process would provide the Council with flexibility with future uses of the site.”