The team behind downtown San Diego's The Keating Hotel is jumping on board the food hall phenomenon with the impending opening of Horton Plaza Food Hall, a multi-stall dining hub and bar debuting as part of the impending revitalization of Horton Plaza.
From Edward Kaen, the founding force behind The Keating Hotel Group and other area property investment companies, Horton Plaza Food Hall will eventually be constructed on the ground floor area currently marked by an optometrist's office off Broadway Circle in downtown San Diego. Details are still very much in the works, but the dining destination is expected to house a variety of hand-selected food stands made up of purveyors from San Diego and beyond, as well as offer a full bar with cocktails, beer and wine.
Horton Plaza opened in 1985 to national acclaim but has become a blighted complex over the last decade with many retailers abandoning it for brighter pastures. Last summer, Stockdale Capital Partners purchased the site for $175 million from Westfield with plans to transform the 900,000 square-foot area into a modern retail and business community dubbed "The Campus at Horton". The Campus at Horton will create a retail and office campus with an open boardwalk ornamented with boutique retail, green space and public seating areas. This boardwalk will run through the complex and spill out onto a reinvigorated Horton Plaza Park, which will house multiple food and beverage options utilizing San Diego’s local talent. The first phase of construction is expected to begin in early 2019 and be completed by fall 2020.
"We’re excited to create an iconic destination that will leverage the best of Downtown San Diego to create something high impact and truly unique," said Steven Yari, Managing Director of Stockdale Capital. "The Campus at Horton will be a thriving innovation hub, comprised of creative office space, captivating entertainment options, urban lifestyle retail choices and contemporary food and beverage experience, catering to leading technology and biotechnology employers, locally and nationally."
The food hall sensation has transcended trendiness in America's Finest City in recent years. The ahead-of-its-time San Diego Public Market couldn't last in the first half of the decade but that hasn't stopped others from succeeding. Blue Bridge Hospitality embraced the trend early with the opening Liberty Public Market in 2016. Next. the Little Italy Food Hall unveiled last summer, with many other local food halls announced in the past year.
Carlsbad's Windmill Food Hall will be a 14,000 square-foot indoor/outdoor gathering space with 11 restaurant vendors, a central bar, games, and frequent events - set to open soon. Whisknladle Hospitality is in the process of putting the finishing touches on Park Commons - a 10,000 square-foot food hall and event space opening this year in Sorrento Valley. The company behind The Barrel Room and Urge Gastropub are also working The Outpost Urban Food Hall, a two-story project in Poway that will house 15 artisan food tenants. A 20,000 square-foot, bi-level, multi-restaurant food hall called The Sky Deck is also in the works as part of the $100 million redesign of the Del Mar Highlands Town Center. It is also rumored that Tijuana's Telefonica Gastropark was looking for a site to launch a San Diego outpost.
Horton Plaza Food Hall will sit at 55 Horton Plaza in downtown San Diego. There is no concrete timeline on when it will open.
