A long shuttered visitor center on Mission Bay that for decades welcomed tourists and locals will be transformed into a waterfront restaurant and event center that will preserve the seashell-shaped building’s distinctive profile.

Earlier this month, the San Diego City Council gave its blessing to a new long-term lease with a San Diego development team to redevelop a 2.6-acre city-owned site on East Mission Bay Drive near the Clairemont Drive freeway off ramp. While the 4,600-square-foot building will primarily function as a casual, counter-service eatery, the redeveloped area will also offer outdoor seating, a children’s play area, public information services, and beach and bike rentals.

The redevelopment is a long time coming, following two earlier failed efforts, starting in 2011, to attract capable developers willing to remake the prime bay-view locale.


The proposed $3 million project, known as Shoreline Mission Bay, will be undertaken by a relatively new hospitality firm, San Diego-based Playground Concepts. It was among six firms that responded to a 2015 city solicitation for proposals.

Envisioned is a “vibrant, architecturally-significant hub for waterfront dining,” states a report prepared by the city’s Real Estate Assets department.

Under the terms of a 25-year lease negotiated with Playground, the city can expect revenues of more than $7.2 million over the term of the agreement, after taking into account a $450,000 rent credit to help cover the cost of public improvements.

Yearly lease payments, which will be tied to varying percentages of food and beverage sales and other commercial activities, will start out at $230,000, gradually escalating to nearly $415,000 by year 20.


Playground Concepts, which hopes to complete the development within the next 12 to 18 months, is a collaboration of a local husband-and-wife boutique design firm and restaurateur Greg Van de Velde, a partner in the downtown Bottega Americana restaurant and former general manager of Mister A’s.

Kristine Schnell, creative director of Playground, said she and her husband were drawn to the project not only because of its unique architectural design but also its prime location in Mission Bay Park.

“My husband and I spent many days walking our dog by the site, we thought it was a cool building, a great area and it was a shame to see it sitting empty,” she said. “So we came to Greg with this crazy idea of doing a project there, and he has experience in the restaurant business.”

What appealed to Van de Velde, he said, was the rare opportunity to develop a dining venue so close to the waterfront.


Still, the path that led the city to the current project was not a smooth one. Its first effort to remake the site was in 2011, a year after the then visitor center operator terminated his lease five years early.

The center had relied heavily on advertising revenues from hotels and tourist attractions, but the growing popularity and ease of online bookings and reservation services ultimately rendered the center obsolete.

The Cohn Restaurant Group was the successful applicant in 2011 to redevelop the center site, but later opted out during the course of lease negotiations, said Vladimir Balotsky, the city’s supervising property agent.

Two years later, a second city solicitation yielded three proposals, but none met the city’s criteria for development.


The third time proved to be the charm, but only after the city considered — but then rejected — demolition of the late ‘60s-era building and decided instead to upgrade it to make it accessible under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Still, the building, with its sloping floor and curving facade that its original architect, Richard Lareau, likened to a “sculptured seashell,” is not without its challenges, said Kristine and Bradley Schnell.

They addressed the sloping floor by creating a tiered dining experience in which customers will go up a ramp to order at a counter, with seating below and outside. They also had to eliminate the building’s spiral staircase.

“We’re told the visitor information center is the highest point on Mission Bay, so we’re utilizing that hill it sits on to have terraced dining seating that extends from the ordering counter and radiates out,” Bradley Schnell said. “This speaks to the importance of this site being a really public location, and the counter-service model really opens it up so that on a Fourth of July weekend, we don’t have to turn anyone away because they don’t have a reservation.”


Van de Velde pointed out that by choosing not to make Shoreline a full-service restaurant, it will remain affordable, with menu items priced between $10 and $20.

San Diego-based Eat Drink Sleep, a local hospitality firm that had competed with Playground to redevelop the Mission Bay site, said it too was drawn by the beauty of the site, which it felt merited a more ambitious redevelopment.

“We had proposed a 16,000-square-foot building with a wedding venue on the top floor with a deck overlooking the bay,” said Brett Miller, CEO of Eat Drink Sleep, responsible for developing the newer restaurants at Belmont Park. “The city wanted the building remodeled, so we stepped away.

“But this is a beautiful site and they have chosen a good operator.”


Business

lori.weisberg@sduniontribune.com


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Twitter: @loriweisberg