Within just three minutes of meeting for the first time, Huntington Beach restaurateur Alicia Whitney of the Prjkt Restaurant Group and concert and festival producer John Reese, founder and CEO of Synergy Global Entertainment in Laguna Hills, shook hands on a deal to launch an all-new beachfront music venue.

Back in November, the influential Southern California entrepreneurs, who met through a mutual friend, realized that they shared not only mutual love of live music, but that within their respective businesses, they’ve consistently worked to create a good customer experience, Reese said. The pair will turn Whitney’s SeaLegs at the Beach eatery on Bolsa Chica State Beach, located just off of Pacific Coast Highway, into a nighttime 1,200-capacity, rain-or-shine, music venue dubbed SeaLegs Live.

A partnership between Synergy Global Entertainment founder John Reese and restaurateur Alicia Whitney and will bring concerts to the beach starting in July featuring acts like Unwritten Law, Cam, Parmalee, Slaughter, Great White, Richard Blade’s 80s party and more. (Photo by Matt Masin, Orange County Register, SCNG)

SeaLegs Live, a new 1,200-capacity nighttime, beach-front concert venue, will open at SeaLegs at the Beach, located at 17851 Pacific Coast Highway in Huntington Beach, in July. (Photo courtesy of SeaLegs Live)

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A sunset view of the new 1,200-capacity beachfront concert venue, SeaLegs Live, which will open in July. The venue is located at SeaLegs at the Beach, 17851 Pacific Coast Highway, in Huntington Beach. (Photo by Sari Cohen)

A partnership between Synergy Global Entertainment founder John Reese, left, and restaurateur Alicia Whitney and will bring concerts to the beach starting in July featuring acts like Unwritten Law, Cam, Parmalee, Slaughter, Great White, Richard Blade’s 80s party and more. (Photo by Matt Masin, Orange County Register, SCNG)

A partnership between Synergy Global Entertainment founder John Reese, right, and restaurateur Alicia Whitney and will bring concerts to the beach starting in July featuring acts like Unwritten Law, Cam, Parmalee, Slaughter, Great White, Richard Blade’s 80s party and more. (Photo by Matt Masin, Orange County Register, SCNG)



A sunset view of the new 1,200-capacity beachfront concert venue, SeaLegs Live, which will open in July. The venue is located at SeaLegs at the Beach, 17851 Pacific Coast Highway, in Huntington Beach. (Photo by Sari Cohen)

A partnership between Synergy Global Entertainment founder John Reese and restaurateur Alicia Whitney and will bring concerts to the beach starting in July featuring acts like Unwritten Law, Cam, Parmalee, Slaughter, Great White, Richard Blade’s 80s party and more. (Photo by Matt Masin, Orange County Register, SCNG)

A partnership between Synergy Global Entertainment founder John Reese, left, and restaurateur Alicia Whitney and will bring concerts to the beach starting in July featuring acts like Unwritten Law, Cam, Parmalee, Slaughter, Great White, Richard Blade’s 80s party and more. (Photo by Matt Masin, Orange County Register, SCNG)

A partnership between Synergy Global Entertainment founder John Reese, right, and restaurateur Alicia Whitney, left, and will bring concerts to the beach starting in July featuring acts like Unwritten Law, Cam, Parmalee, Slaughter, Great White, Richard Blade’s 80s party and more. (Photo by Matt Masin, Orange County Register, SCNG)

SeaLegs Live, a new 1,200-capacity nighttime, beach-front concert venue, will open at SeaLegs at the Beach, located at 17851 Pacific Coast Highway in Huntington Beach, in July. (Photo courtesy of SeaLegs Live)



A partnership between Synergy Global Entertainment founder John Reese and restaurateur Alicia Whitney and will bring concerts to the beach starting in July featuring acts like Unwritten Law, Cam, Parmalee, Slaughter, Great White, Richard Blade’s 80s party and more. (Photo by Matt Masin, Orange County Register, SCNG)

A partnership between Synergy Global Entertainment founder John Reese, right, and restaurateur Alicia Whitney, left, and will bring concerts to the beach starting in July featuring acts like Unwritten Law, Cam, Parmalee, Slaughter, Great White, Richard Blade’s 80s party and more. (Photo by Matt Masin, Orange County Register, SCNG)

A partnership between Synergy Global Entertainment founder John Reese (pictured) and restaurateur Alicia Whitney and will bring concerts to the beach starting in July featuring acts like Unwritten Law, Cam, Parmalee, Slaughter, Great White, Richard Blade’s 80s party and more. (Photo by Matt Masin, Orange County Register, SCNG)

A partnership between Synergy Global Entertainment founder John Reese and restaurateur Alicia Whitney and will bring concerts to the beach starting in July featuring acts like Unwritten Law, Cam, Parmalee, Slaughter, Great White, Richard Blade’s 80s party and more. SeaLegs at the Beach is redefining beach stand food with its menu. (Photo by Matt Masin, Orange County Register, SCNG)

“It’s important to me that people are entertained, that they are escaping their daily lives and really getting to experience something great,” he said.

SeaLegs Live will officially launch on the Fourth of July with rapper Sir Mix-A-Lot. They’ve also teamed up with Southern California radio stations KLOS/95.5FM, GO Country/105.1 FM and Jack/93.1 FM – to curate a robust and diverse roster of talent, which will eventually include a total of up to 60 shows between the venue opening and the season end date on Nov. 15.

For now, the first batch of shows, all of which are currently on sale at sealegslive.com, includes performances by rock band Unwritten Law (Thursday, July 6) singer-songwriter Anthony Green of Circa Survive (Friday, July 7), hip-hop star Waka Flocka Flame with DJ Whoo Kid (Saturday, July 8), ‘80s metal band Slaughter and rock band Great White (Sunday, July 30), rising country acts like Parmalee (Thursday, Aug. 10), Cam (Thursday, Aug. 31) and former “American Idol” contestant Kellie Pickler (Friday, Oct. 20).

SeaLegs Live has also commissioned multiple evenings with British DJ Richard Blade, who will host his themed Jack FM 80’s Beach Bash (Friday, July 28; Sunday, Aug. 27; Sunday, Sept. 24).

The shows will typically take place from 7-11 p.m. on Thursday-Sunday nights with ticket prices of about $10-$50 per show (various upgraded VIP packages and amenities will also be available for an additional charge). Most of the time, these will be shows for guests 21 and older, however some may be open to all-ages, but that will be determined on an event-by-event basis.

Even with a 1,200-capacity there is ample parking as SeaLegs at the Beach is located in between two large parking lots, which charge $15 to park Friday-Sunday and $5.50 for the first two hours and $2 for each additional hour Monday-Thursday. SeaLegs at the Beach will still be open during the day without a cover charge for patrons and will resume its daytime local artist and DJ showcases and its popular regular reggae Sunday programming, Whitney said.

Last year, Whitney won the bid to create four distinct dining venues along a 3-mile stretch of coastline at Bolsa Chica State Beach. With the success of her SeaLegs Wine Bar locations on Beach Boulevard in Huntington Beach and at LAX, as well as her SeaSalt Woodfire Grill (also located on Beach Boulevard), and with the blessing and cooperation from the California State Parks, she created a series of eateries with upscale concessions that also serve alcohol along the beach, including SeaLegs at the Beach, SeaSalt Beachside Burger, Pacific Kitchen and Beach City Provisions.

“We’ve really upgraded the beach concessions and it’s really beach food elevated,” Whitney said.

Though there will be a condensed version of the existing menu – including Korean asada tacos ($8), Mexicali chicken tacos ($8), elote corn ($8) – available on show days, Whitney is working with her team to create a menu that can be served faster to the larger group of patrons. The drink menu, she said, will mostly stay the same and include Corona, an array of beach-themed cocktails and SeaLegs’ locally famous Frosé (frozen rosé).

“We really don’t have entertainment here in Huntington Beach, but we’ve had this crazy boom of businesses and everyone is really dying for the good old says of the Golden Bear,” Whitney said of the legendary venue that hosted shows by artists such as Jimi Hendrix, Neil Young and the Doors before closing in 1986.

“No one has been able to successfully revive it,” she continued. “The closest thing you’re going to get to live music is maybe going to Hurricane’s in downtown. So this venue is going to be huge for Huntington Beach. We’ll have a live music venue right on the water that’s going to be like a modern-day version of the Golden Bear.”

On April 20, SeaLegs at the Beach hosted a full-fledged, sold-out concert with Sublime with Rome, a show that served as the announcement of one of Reese’s other festivals, the Sublime with Rome and Dirty Heads-curated High & Mighty Festival, which will take place in August. It was also a trial run for the new space, which will be modified to include professional staging, lighting and LED screens for visuals. Reese and Whitney agree that show’s success was the complete confirmation that they needed to forge forward with their plans for a venue.

“There are four fire pits in there, two cabanas, and swings that people can sit on,” Reese said. “It was all about the vibe. You can smell the burning firewood, you feel the wind in your hair, the sand on your feet and your eyes are on the band and ears on the music, and during the breaks you can hear the ocean waves. It’s complete sensory stimulation and it’s an incredible experience. I’ve been doing shows since 1979 and this is the greatest place to watch a show and to have an experience than anywhere I’ve ever been.”

Reese said that the sealegslive.com website will be updated with more hip-hop, indie rock, country, ‘60s and ‘70s rock, electronic and pop music shows, stand-up comedy acts and more in the coming weeks and that in the future, SeaLegs Live will be up and running from about March 15 to Nov. 15, but if weather permits, other shows could be announced during the off-season. Since Whitney’s coastline concessions expansion grants her rights to the sand, she and Reese have also been looking to plan larger-scale themed festivals and events that would make greater use of the beach and parking lots and could have a capacity up to 15,000.

“It’s like we’ve been given this blank canvas and we have this incredible opportunity to offer beautiful memories and unique experiences to people,” Whitney said. “This partnership between the two of us, the (concert promoter) and the restaurateur, we’ve put our creative minds together to create something that’s outside of the box and I think people are going to be blown away by it.”