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Punch Bowl Social Rolls Into East Village With Retro Concept

The northeastern quadrant of downtown San Diego’s East Village — a.k.a. the I.D.E.A. District — continues to attract new projects and tenants aiming to make people forget that neighborhood’s long history as a faded hub for under-used warehouses and auto repair lots.

Denver-based hospitality group Punch Bowl Social, which operates restaurant-entertainment centers that include bowling lanes and other games, plans to open a new location at the Makers Quarter mixed-used development. It is planned for the building that once housed the historic Coliseum Federal Athletic Club, at 1485 E St. in East Village, and more recently has served as a creative events space.

Punch Bowl Social plans a new entertainment center at Makers Quarter in the East Village building that once housed Coliseum Federal Athletic Club. Historical photo courtesy of Makers Quarter

Makers Quarter’s developers said Punch Bowl Social will renovate the approximately 20,000-square-foot building, after signing a lease in July. Building improvements are expected to begin in September, with an opening slated for the third quarter of 2017.

The building, starting in 1924, housed the athletic club, which was one of three major boxing gym and fight clubs in Southern California. Boxing talent appearing there during the 1920s and 1930s included Henry Armstrong, Archie Moore and Jimmy Braddock.

According to developers, the club survived a 1938 fire but shut its doors in 1974 due to debt issues. The property was later acquired by the Navarra family, which used the building for its Jerome’s Furniture warehouse and other subsequent uses.

“When we opened our first Punch Bowl Social in Denver in a former brick warehouse, in a then-unpopular part of town, we realized what a positive impact we could have on the community around us and also in preserving and giving new life to the building itself,” said Robert Thompson, founder and CEO of Punch Bowl Social.

Michael Burton of brokerage firm Cushman & Wakefield represented the developers in the retail lease, for which a dollar value was not disclosed, with the new tenant represented by Dan Nesson of True North Real Estate Property Management.

Punch Bowl Social has six current U.S. locations, with other upcoming openings planned in Brooklyn, N.Y., and Sacramento. The San Diego location will include a restaurant with bowling and other games such as pinball, skeeball, shuffleboard, ping-pong and vintage video games.

Makers Quarter is a multiblock, mixed-use community being developed by L2HP, which includes Lankford & Associates, HP Investors and Hensel Phelps. The new entertainment center will be the latest of several new elements recently falling into place, including new apartments under construction and creative office spaces either already established or in the works.

Developers of Makers Quarter and another nearby mixed-use project in East Village — IDEA1, being developed by Lowe Enterprises and I.D.E.A. Partners — have both experienced a slower-than-desired sign-up of office tenants over the past three years, to meet their goal of adding new jobs to the neighborhood. Still, tech firms such as Fuse Integration and Underground Elephant have recently located there, along with a coworking space set up by Moniker Group.

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Temporary Parks Have Staying Power: Makers Quarter and its surroundings have become popular with residents and visitors as a social hub, due in large part to event spaces like Silo and Quartyard — the latter of which was put together by the student-led Rad Lab with shipping containers and includes its own beer garden and dog park. Those spaces have generally proven successful as examples of tactical urbanism, where cities and developers set up “pocket parks” and other temporary elements to demonstrate the livability and commercial viability of a project site.

The mixed-use development has also garnered favorable media coverage outside the local region. That includes a late July piece by The New York Times in which writer Lauren Herstik pointed out that Makers Quarter and northeastern East Village could soon be reaching a crossroads of sorts, where those temporary elements may need to make way for permanent projects attracted by the civic experiment.

For instance, developer Holland Partner Group of Vancouver, Wash., has submitted plans to the city for a 34-story, 427-unit residential tower, proposed for the city-owned site that now houses Quartyard. According to the Times, more than 2,800 have signed a petition to save or relocate Quartyard. Stay tuned.

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Downtown Vehicles Start Circulating: The city of San Diego has launched its previously announced downtown circulator program using all-electric vehicles. And it now has its own friendly-sounding acronym — FRED, which stands for Free Ride Everywhere Downtown.

Initially funded through downtown parking meter revenue administered by Civic San Diego, the program uses five-passenger vehicles — similar to long golf carts — that downtown visitors can catch or hail for short trips throughout all of downtown’s seven neighborhoods.

The program is starting with 15 advertiser-supported vehicles, with the fleet expected to grow to 20 within the first year. Civic San Diego has budgeted $500,000 initially from downtown parking revenue, to cover startup costs in expanding a previously existing five-vehicle service that was already being operated by The Free Ride, a Florida-based company.

The circulator vehicles are part of larger efforts by local officials to ease mobility, while cutting down on car trips, congestion and pollution in the downtown area.

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Local Eateries Reach Beyond San Diego: Puesto, a popular San Diego-based Mexican restaurant operator with full-service eateries in La Jolla and downtown’s The Headquarters, is the latest locally headquartered restaurant company to spread its base beyond San Diego County.

At press time, Puesto was in the process of setting up shop at Los Olivos Marketplace, a retail center in Irvine that is owned by the Irvine Co.

Send commercial real estate and development news to Lou Hirsh via email at lhirsh@sdbj.com. or call 858-277-8904.

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