That exact premise was recently explored in an article published by The UCSD Guardian, which described the location as trapped in a seemingly endless cycle of reinvention and collapse. And honestly, it is becoming difficult to argue otherwise. Over the past decade, the sprawling campus venue has burned through an astonishing lineup of operators, including San Diego hospitality powerhouse Consortium Holdings/CH Projects - arguably the city’s most successful and influential restaurant group - as well as the ownership team behind the hugely popular Dirty Birds chain. Neither could make the location stick long term.
For older UCSD alumni, the building still carries the identity of Porter’s Pub, the beloved campus watering hole and live music venue that occupied the space from 1993 until 2015. Porter’s was more than just a restaurant. It functioned as one of the university’s primary social gathering spaces, hosting concerts, comedy, student events, cheap beer nights and countless college memories over more than two decades.
But after UCSD declined to renew Porter’s lease amid complaints over sales performance and accessibility concerns surrounding the venue space, the Old Student Center entered what has become one of the strangest and most unstable restaurant runs anywhere in San Diego County.
In 2017, Consortium Holdings founder and UCSD alumnus Arsalun Tafazoli stepped in with ambitious plans to reinvent the site. CH Projects invested roughly $2 million transforming the 14,000 square-foot building into a lavish location of Soda & Swine, complete with elaborate design elements, expansive patio areas, breakfast service, beer taps and event programming. At the time, Tafazoli publicly expressed hopes that CH would remain part of UCSD “for the next decade or two.”
Instead, the concept barely survived. By 2021, Consortium Holdings abandoned the Soda & Swine brand entirely and reworked the campus restaurant into Uncle Italian, serving Detroit-style pizza and East Coast comfort food. That concept itself quickly disappeared, giving way in 2022 to an elaborate neon-heavy Underbelly izakaya and ramen bar that also failed to survive even a full academic cycle.
The rapid-fire transformations became increasingly surreal considering Consortium Holdings was simultaneously cementing itself as San Diego’s dominant hospitality empire, opening and operating blockbuster concepts including Born & Raised, Morning Glory, Seneca, Raised By Wolves, Fortunate Son and the massively successful revival of The Lafayette Hotel. Yet somehow, the UCSD location remained one of the few spaces the company simply could not solve.
By early 2024, CH Projects finally walked away entirely. That same year, Dirty Birds co-founders Adam Jacoby and Paul Cagnina attempted to stabilize the building with Shores Diner, a retro-inspired American diner designed specifically around student feedback and campus life. The concept aimed to revive the social energy Porter’s once provided, with brunch service, game viewing, events, milkshakes and comfort food classics.
But even Shores struggled to gain traction. The diner quietly announced its closure earlier this year after barely more than a year in operation. Jacoby later told SanDiegoVille that a combination of business expansion priorities, operational bandwidth and the unique difficulties of running a large independent restaurant within a university environment contributed to the decision. Those difficulties are substantial.
Unlike traditional restaurant districts, UCSD presents a uniquely volatile business ecosystem shaped by fluctuating student schedules, summer slowdowns, parking frustrations, commuter habits, limited late-night activity and a relatively small population of legal drinking-age customers. Multiple operators have also alluded over the years to structural financial challenges associated with university lease arrangements and revenue-sharing agreements.
At the same time, the building itself may simply be too large and too operationally demanding for the kind of traffic campus dining consistently generates. Nearly every concept that has entered the space has tried to transform it into a destination social hub. Nearly all have failed to sustain long-term momentum.
Now IPO Fusion BBQ becomes the latest operator willing to take the gamble. The Hawaiian-style barbecue concept quietly assumed control of the former Shores space earlier this spring after Shores ownership reportedly sold the remainder of its lease. IPO BBQ now inherits not just a large restaurant, but one of San Diego’s most notoriously unstable hospitality addresses.
Whether the latest concept succeeds where everyone else failed remains to be seen. But after watching one of San Diego’s most celebrated hospitality groups repeatedly rebrand the space before ultimately giving up, followed by another well-known local operator exiting shortly afterward, the Old Student Center location has undeniably developed a reputation bordering on mythical within local restaurant circles. At this point, calling it cursed may honestly be easier than explaining it any other way.
IPO BBQ is now open at 105 Eucalyptus Grove Lane on the UC San Diego campus in La Jolla. For more information, follow @ipobbqsandiego on Instagram.
Originally published on May 21, 2026.