Bloodbath in Paradise: Commercial Real Estate in Solana Beach CRE

Due to overwhelming demand for our Del Mar CRE series, we've decided to expand to the neighboring town of Solana Beach. Solana Beach is less pretentious and more laid back than Del Mar, but the CRE scene is equally ugly.

We start with a couple of medical offices on Lomas Santa Fe, a half-mile uphill from the beach:





Then across the street, there's this huge, new office building, apparently totally vacant:



"New Ocean View Suites Available 2008." I can't wait!

And just a little further downhill toward the beach:



Further down the hill, we get to this place, which has been a lot of things over the years: a liquor store, a Greek restaurant, etc. Most recently, it was a high-end home electronics store. You can guess how well that worked out.



And next door, in the old Napa Auto Parts, more recently a home furnishings store:



A couple vacancies in the tacky strip mall across the street:





Now we arrive at the Cedros Design District, which has held up remarkably well, given that the premise for its existence is that people will always be able to suck out home equity to buy overpriced home furnishings. Nevertheless, things are starting to crack here. An upstairs office:



And some Cedros Design District retail stores:













Then there's this old house on the edge of a residential neighborhood that borders the Design District, which they are trying to rent out as commercial space:



Between here and Via de la Valle, there are plenty of For Rent signs on dumpy old houses in this neighborhood of drifters and rogues, but this post is already pretty graphic-intensive, so we'll skip those. On the corner of Cedros and Via de la Valle, though, it's always a sign of a motivated apartment complex when they welcome pets:



Now cruising up Old Highway 101:









This place not only has 78,000 square feet of dirt available, they've also been trying to give away this old trailer for months:






WTF is this next one supposed to be, a knocking shop?



Back at the corner of Lomas Santa Fe and Highway 101:







Bad karma!

Now circling back into town from the north on Highway 101:











And because there's obviously not enough commercial space in Solana Beach, they're putting up this big new building next to Pizza Port. Rented already? Nope. Available.



And back on Cedros, across from the train station:



That's just a small portion of a small beach town. All those pictures were within a mile of the interesection of 101 and Lomas Santa Fe, and most of them were within a half mile. We didn't include the giant vacant Jenny Craig building, any of the office and retail space along Stevens Avenue, or anything east of the freeway.

This is a microcosm of California under Schwarzenegger's oppressive regime and in the aftermath of Greenspan's bubble. Bloodbath in paradise.