Urban Kitchen Group, the San Diego hospitality company led by veteran restaurateur Tracy Borkum and chef-partner Tim Kolanko, has officially signed a lease for the long-vacant former Il Dandy/Civico By The Park space at 2550 Fifth Avenue, directly catty-corner from the group’s highly successful Cucina Urbana. The new all-day dining concept is currently in development and is expected to open in late 2027.
While Urban Kitchen Group is publicly framing the project as a neighborhood-serving expansion within a community they have helped cultivate for nearly two decades, the move also represents a savvy and highly strategic piece of restaurant real estate defense in one of San Diego’s most competitive dining corridors.
For years, the massive ground-floor restaurant space inside the Manchester Financial Centre building has repeatedly attempted to compete directly against Cucina Urbana with upscale Italian and Italian-adjacent concepts, and repeatedly failed.
Now, rather than risk another well-funded competitor opening immediately across the street from one of San Diego’s most recognizable neighborhood restaurants, Urban Kitchen Group has effectively neutralized the corner entirely by taking it over themselves.
The nearly 5,000-square-foot space carries a surprisingly turbulent modern history despite its prime location on the base floor of the iconic Mister A’s building. In 2019, ownership behind Little Italy’s Civico 1845 invested heavily into launching Il Dandy, an ambitious “Calabria meets San Diego” concept developed in partnership with Michelin-starred Italian chefs Antonio and Luca Abbruzzino.
The restaurant reportedly cost approximately $3 million to build and included Arama, an ultra-upscale tasting counter operating as a restaurant-within-a-restaurant. The concept generated enormous PR-fueled publicity and positioned itself as one of San Diego’s most elevated Italian dining experiences. But behind the glossy press coverage, industry chatter quickly suggested the concept was struggling to gain traction.
Less than a year later, Il Dandy abruptly abandoned its fine-dining identity and rebranded into Civico By The Park, essentially importing the more approachable southern Italian model from Civico 1845 into the space. Despite the pivot, the restaurant never fully established momentum and permanently closed in early 2022.
That same year, the property was taken over by Creative House, the hospitality and real estate firm led by Douglas Hamm, founder of Nolita Hall in Little Italy. Hamm publicly teased plans for a completely new restaurant concept in the space and suggested a launch could happen as early as summer 2022. But the project quietly stalled.
Over the following several years, the highly visible Bankers Hill location remained dark while Creative House shifted focus elsewhere. The company ultimately acquired historic diner Hob Nob Hill in 2025, while also continuing work on an evolving hospitality concept inside Coronado Plaza.
Industry observers increasingly speculated the former Civico space had simply become too expensive, too large, and too burdened by prior restaurant failures to make financial sense in San Diego’s post-pandemic hospitality climate. At the same time, Bankers Hill itself has evolved dramatically.
When Cucina Urbana first opened in 2009, the surrounding neighborhood was still transitioning into the high-density, restaurant-forward district it has since become. Over the past decade and a half, the area surrounding Balboa Park has steadily filled with luxury apartment projects, affluent renters, medical professionals, destination dining and increasingly aggressive restaurant competition.
Cucina Urbana not only survived that evolution, it became one of the defining restaurants of the neighborhood itself. The restaurant helped pioneer the now-common San Diego formula of upscale-but-casual dining: polished interiors without white-tablecloth stiffness, chef-driven food without fine-dining formality, and an atmosphere equally comfortable for date nights, business meetings and neighborhood regulars. Long before “California Italian” became ubiquitous across San Diego, Cucina Urbana had already built a loyal following around precisely that style of dining.
The fact that multiple Italian concepts subsequently attempted to open directly across the street was likely no coincidence. But proximity alone does not guarantee success. Restaurants compete not simply on cuisine, but on emotional loyalty, operational consistency, neighborhood integration and long-term brand trust. Cucina Urbana spent nearly two decades building those relationships while its would-be competitors across the intersection cycled through expensive reinventions.
Urban Kitchen Group’s decision to now absorb the corner themselves feels less like ordinary expansion and more like a calculated consolidation of influence within Bankers Hill. The move also arrives during a complicated moment for the company.
Earlier this year, Urban Kitchen Group shuttered its 12-year-old Cucina Enoteca location at Del Mar’s Flower Hill Promenade after citing unsustainable operating costs, soaring property taxes tied to triple-net lease structures and softening post-pandemic sales volumes. That closure underscored the increasingly difficult economics facing large-format restaurants throughout California.
But unlike the oversized Flower Hill footprint, the former Civico space offers something strategically valuable that few restaurant opportunities can replicate: direct adjacency to an already-proven flagship operation with an entrenched customer base.
Rather than building demand from scratch, Urban Kitchen Group now controls both sides of one of Bankers Hill’s most important restaurant intersections. While details surrounding the incoming concept remain tightly guarded, Borkum has stated the restaurant will operate as an all-day concept rather than another direct Cucina Urbana clone. That distinction likely reflects a deliberate effort to diversify daypart traffic while avoiding internal competition between the two restaurants.
Whatever ultimately opens there, the real significance may extend beyond the menu itself. In today’s restaurant economy, survival increasingly belongs to operators who understand not only hospitality, but real estate strategy, neighborhood dynamics and competitive positioning. By taking over the former Il Dandy/Civico space, Urban Kitchen Group is not simply opening another restaurant.
They are effectively ensuring that one of Bankers Hill’s most visible restaurant corners no longer becomes someone else’s attempt to challenge Cucina Urbana across the street.
The forthcoming concept is expected to open in late 2027 at 2550 Fifth Avenue in San Diego’s Bankers Hill neighborhood. For more information, visit urbankitchengroup.com.
Originally published on May 18, 2026.
