If you have driven Leucadia Boulevard toward the coast any time since March 2024, you know the drill. Cone shift here, lane closure there, a flagger waving you into whatever lane is open that week. The deep trench work behind that mess, laying 60-inch, 66-inch, and 36-inch storm drain pipe under the roadway, has been the background noise of daily life on this stretch for two years. The water main is now in from Jupiter Street up to Avocado Street, with the final run toward La Costa Avenue underway, and at the end of June southbound traffic finally shifted onto a freshly paved lane next to the median. That shift matters because it is the first visible sign that the part of this project nobody could see, the part under the asphalt, is nearly finished. What comes next is surface work: sidewalks, curbs, a pair of new roundabouts at Jupiter Street and Moorgate Road, and a pedestrian signal at Avocado Street.
Here is the part that would be easy to miss if you only think about this corridor as a commute. While the pipe was going into the ground, three different business owners were quietly building toward the same finish line, and none of them coordinated with each other.
Three bets on the same stretch of road
Chick & Hawk opened at 145 Leucadia Boulevard in late 2025, the fried chicken concept from skateboarder Tony Hawk and Michelin-recognized chef Andrew Bachelier, built around a skate-park-inspired patio. It has become the kind of place where parents doing weekend errands on the north side end up meeting each other by accident.
A few blocks away at 466 North Coast Highway 101, chef Claudette Zepeda has opened Leu Leu, a 65-seat lounge with a tiny kitchen, a wine list built around women winemakers, and a patio with trellised arches and vines. Zepeda is known locally from Top Chef and Iron Chef Mexico and from her time as executive chef at El Jardin in Liberty Station. Her partners in the project are landscape architect Jason Janecek, a co-owner of Corner Pizza, and Brittany Corrales, whose family has grown flowers in Leucadia for generations and who runs Mariposa Events Co.
Then there is Encinitas Brewing Company, headed toward 1588 Leucadia Boulevard, in the long-vacant former Islands Restaurant space at the Encinitas Ranch shopping center. The Encinitas Planning Commission approved the project unanimously on March 8, 2026. Co-owner Brian McBride, who previously ran Priority Public House in Leucadia, told the commission the shopping center is a bit quiet but works for what the team is trying to do. His partner Ryan Van Biene has lived in Encinitas for more than a decade and spent years as a co-founder of Pinthouse Brewing in Austin before coming home. The team was targeting a September opening this year, with the caveat, repeated more than once in local coverage, that construction timelines like this one tend to move.
"There is something about having the city's name in the name of the business that creates a little bit more of a desire to treat it well."
The Coast News reported McBride making this remark to the planning commission.
The parking question, answered before anyone asked it
Anyone who has circled the Encinitas Ranch lot looking for a spot near REI or Walmart might assume adding a brewery patio would make that worse. A parking study submitted to the city in December 2025 found the lot was only 44 percent full during peak hours on the days data was collected, with projected peak demand reaching 69 percent of capacity even after the patio expansion. The lot currently has 610 spaces. That is not a marketing number, it is a filing requirement, and it happens to answer the question most residents would actually ask before deciding whether to bike over for a pint.
The new brewery will sit down the road from Fox Point Brewing, which opened in 2024 as San Diego County's first organic farm-to-tap operation, growing its own hops and integrating them into the beer within hours of harvest. Encinitas Brewing Company is not trying to replace that model. It is a more traditional brewpub, with a 10-barrel brewhouse and a small-batch distillery for vodka and gin, aimed at being the kind of neighborhood tap room Leucadia has not had before.
Two blocks off 101, a quieter shift
Not everything landing in Encinitas this year is on Coast Highway. Coffee Dose, the Encinitas-based coffee shop known for rotating specialty drinks and rare sourced beans, recently moved into a larger space at 687 2nd Street downtown. The move roughly doubled the shop's footprint to about 1,100 square feet and added a full kitchen, which means owner Jon Runion can now serve small plates and tapas alongside coffee, plus beer and wine into the evening. He did not open a second location somewhere flashier. He expanded on the same block he already had.
Over on El Camino Real, chefs Brandon Jennings and William Treff opened Pastaria Vivi this spring inside the Encinitas Village Shopping Center. Before going permanent, they tested the concept at the Cardiff Farmers Market, and they still keep that market tent running. The shop is four things at once: a specialty Italian retail counter, a daily handmade pasta bar with more than 75 rotating pasta-and-sauce combinations, a sit-down dining room, and a monthly pasta subscription box, the first of its kind in the area. A subscription model like that only works if enough people nearby are willing to commit to it every month, which says something about how much repeat local business the owners are counting on.
The Stand, a Southern California burger and sandwich chain, was aiming to open its third San Diego County location at 267 El Camino Real during the first week of August, joining locations in Carmel Mountain Ranch and Mission Valley.
Farther south, the same pattern
Rosemarie's Buns & Brews opened at 608 South Coast Highway 101 in late 2025. Owner Nick Balsamo built the concept around Wagyu sliders with onion confit and Kewpie mayo, starting as a food truck outside Harland Brewing before opening in Mission Beach and Ocean Beach. San Diego Magazine named Rosemarie's the best burger in San Diego in 2024, and Balsamo picked Encinitas for his permanent flagship over either of his existing spots.
At 476 South Coast Highway 101, Craft Coast Beer & Tacos is taking over the former Filiberto's, a building that sat vacant for years after a 2021 fire, right next to Modern Times Beer. The Oceanside-born brewery, founded by Blake Masoner, Brian Gillen, and Lars Erickson, three lifelong North County locals, will bring flame-grilled carne asada and birria tacos alongside its house-brewed lagers and IPAs.
Chef couple Aron and Pam Schwartz, who previously ran Ranch 45 in Solana Beach, are opening Blank Slate at 101 North Coast Highway 101 in the former Chiko space, with a 12-seat chef's counter and community dinners planned for under $30 a plate on nights without private events. And at 806 Coast Highway 101, brothers Travis and Andrew Brummett were building out a 6,500-square-foot dining room and a 1,500-square-foot rooftop bar for The Brant, expanding their Huntington Beach concept south with a late July or early August target.
Nobody planned this, and that is the point
Compare all of this to Dana Point Harbor, forty miles up the coast, where a $610 million developer-led revitalization is hand-selecting restaurants to open before the 2028 Olympics. That is a curated dining district, built top down on a timeline set by a real estate company.
What has happened in Encinitas this year is the opposite. Six independent operators signed six separate leases with no master plan connecting them. Several already live in the zip code. Van Biene has been in Encinitas for over a decade. Corrales comes from a family that has been growing flowers in Leucadia for generations. Balsamo picked this town over two other beach neighborhoods where he already had a following. That is not a coincidence engineered by a leasing office. It is what happens when enough people who already live somewhere decide, independently, that the place deserves a little more.
What to do with a finished sidewalk
If the surface work on Leucadia Boulevard wraps up on the city's projected late summer to fall timeline, this is the first season in two years where walking the corridor makes more sense than driving it. A few dates worth putting on the calendar while that finishes:
- The Encinitas 101 MainStreet Association's Halloween celebration on October 31, with downtown shops staying open late, live music in the Lumberyard Courtyard, and free family activities at Pacific View Arts Center, sponsored by Lazy Acres Market.
- The LeucadiART Walk, now in its 20th year, drawing an average crowd of 7,500 to 8,000 for what organizers call the largest free community event of the year.
- The Annual Fall Festival in downtown Encinitas each November, held in what locals still sometimes call New Encinitas.
None of this required anyone to move here to notice it. It just required paying attention to a stretch of road most people have spent two years trying to avoid.
If you already call Encinitas home and you are weighing what your next move looks like, whether that means more space, less upkeep, or simply a different corner of town closer to the parts you actually use, the team at Nova Luxe Real Estate knows this coastline block by block. Let's Connect.
