If you drive West San Marcos Boulevard with any regularity, you know the fence. Green mesh, wrapped around the lot between the Regal Cinema and the Buffalo Wild Wings that went up there in 2016, sealing off a strip that once held up to fifteen businesses at a time. For most of the last several years, that fence has been the one constant on an otherwise changing block. Behind it, San Marcos has watched Old California Restaurant Row wind down one lease at a time since it first opened under developer Jim Eubank in the 1970s.
The story most people already know goes like this: a developer bought the land, the restaurants left, and townhomes are going up. That part is accurate. What the fence doesn't tell you is that the site plan drawn up to spare a handful of restaurants from demolition didn't actually spare the one most people assumed was safest.
Restaurant Row, by the numbers
The project that broke ground this year is bigger than what the San Marcos City Council originally approved in December 2023.
| Approved December 2023 | Current plan (2026) | |
|---|---|---|
| Residential units | 202 | 261 |
| Ground-floor commercial space | 10,400 sq ft | 13,300 sq ft |
| Outdoor dining space | not itemized | 17,000 sq ft |
| Neighborhood park | 1.5 acres | 1.5 acres, now named Old California Row Park |
That jump from 202 to 261 units didn't come from redesigning the original parcel. It came from folding in the long-vacant Sears building next door at 1100 West San Marcos Boulevard, empty since the store closed in 2009. Lennar picked up that lot too and added 71 townhomes and just under 3,000 square feet of commercial space to the same construction timeline, according to the city's own Restaurant Row Specific Plan filing.
The businesses that didn't make it
Restaurant Row's decline started well before Lennar showed up. San Marcos Brewery and Grill closed in 2020. Sublime Alehouse followed in 2021. Katsu Seafood and Steakhouse closed in early 2022, before any redevelopment plan was public.
Once the project became official, the pace picked up:
- Landon's East Meets West, a global fusion restaurant, closed in March 2023.
- The 55 Yardline Sports Bar and Grill shut its doors for good on August 18, 2023, after 18 years on the site. Owner Jim Hadly told The Coast News that the cost of building out a new space elsewhere made relocating a non-starter.
- Fish House Vera Cruz, a mesquite-grilled seafood restaurant that opened in 1979, closed in June 2025 after 46 years, following a settlement with the developer over an access easement.
Not every longtime name is gone. Old California Mining Co. secured a spot inside the new project, though owner Nick Ceko described getting there as a fight, not a formality.
"We got ahead of it and we were able to secure that spot, but it's taken us a lot longer than we expected. It's been quite an adventure. We've kind of persevered through, at the point where we're gonna start construction hopefully soon."
Ascend Coffee, known for decades as Old California Coffee Company, was still running on a month-to-month lease as of mid-2023 while owner Erin Harper negotiated a new San Marcos location, according to The Coast News.
What the map actually promised
Here's the part the surface-level version of this story leaves out.
When the city and Lennar first drew the project boundary, three businesses were explicitly placed outside the demolition footprint: Fish House Vera Cruz, Buffalo Wild Wings, and Cocina Del Charro. On paper, sitting outside that line meant a business wasn't part of the redevelopment at all. Buffalo Wild Wings and Cocina Del Charro are still standing today, exactly where the boundary map said they'd be.
Fish House Vera Cruz is not. Despite being outside the footprint, the restaurant ended up in litigation with the developer over an access easement. That dispute ended in a settlement, and Fish House Vera Cruz closed in June 2025, 46 years after it opened, a closure confirmed by both The Coast News and later reporting from Hoodline.
The takeaway for anyone watching a redevelopment unfold near their own block: a boundary line on a site plan tells you what's scheduled for demolition. It doesn't tell you what will still be standing in three years. Shared driveways, parking easements, and access rights can undo a business that was never on the wrecking-ball list to begin with.
The park arrives before the patio
Lennar isn't erasing the site's history so much as boxing it up and reinstalling it. Architecture firm KTGY's design plan calls for aged stucco, clay tile roofs, and salvaged timbers pulled from the original buildings, with some reclaimed materials offered back to the community rather than hauled off, according to KTGY's own project page. The new two- and three-bedroom townhomes are also designed to line up with the city's San Marcos Boulevard Complete Street Project, meaning better sidewalks and crossings along the corridor, not just new buildings behind a fence.
The park comes with a name now, too. In July 2025, the San Marcos City Council voted to call the site's 1.5-acre park Old California Row Park, a deliberate nod to the strip it replaces, according to The Coast News. Plans call for a "rolling plaza" open to skateboards, scooters, and roller skates, four pickleball courts, a small amphitheater, two playgrounds split by age group, and two dog parks.
Here's the detail worth knowing if you're waiting for new restaurants to open: the park is expected to open in 2027, while tenant improvement work for actual dining tenants isn't slated to go out to bid until 2027 into 2028. In practical terms, San Marcos residents will likely get pickleball courts and a dog park a full year or more before they get a new place to eat on the site. A separate, unrelated park called Sky View Park, near other Lennar and Shea Homes construction in North City, is expected to open sooner, in 2026, so don't confuse the two if you see "new park opening" headlines this year.
Where construction actually stands this summer
As of February 2026, Lennar had crews grading the site and installing underground utilities, with vertical construction targeted to start that spring and townhome sales slated to begin in late spring. The reported schedule has the first residents moving into finished units as early as late 2026 or early 2027, with the full project, both the main Restaurant Row parcel and the former Sears lot, wrapping around mid-2028.
The most recent public description of the site, from late July, still referenced grading crews rather than framing crews, which suggests the original spring construction start may be running a bit behind that schedule. If you're driving past the fence this fall expecting to see framed buildings, don't be surprised if it still looks like earthwork for a while longer. A two-year build spread across 261 units rarely moves in a straight line, and a few months of slippage on a project this size isn't unusual.
What is fairly certain: the fence stays up for a while yet, the park lands before the patios do, and the businesses that survive this rebuild will be the ones that found a new lease, not necessarily the ones the original site plan promised to protect.
We've spent more than four decades watching blocks like this one change in San Marcos, Vista, and the rest of North County, and we've learned that a construction fence rarely tells the whole story of what a neighborhood is becoming. If you're curious what a changing corridor like West San Marcos Boulevard means for your own home's value, Cristine Clark & Jamie Gilman can walk you through it with the same attention to detail we just gave this fence line. Get a Free Home Valuation whenever you're ready to talk specifics.
