The Biggest Year Bristol Street Has Ever Had, and Why 17th Street Isn't Feeling It

Everyone in Costa Mesa has heard some version of the same claim this year: the food scene is exploding, new spots are popping up everywhere, the city is having a moment. Stand on Bristol Street this month and that story checks out completely. Walk 17th Street the same afternoon and you'd wonder what everyone is talking about. Both streets are real. Both are in the same city. They are not having the same year.

Bristol Street, specifically the stretch running through the SoBECA district, is in the middle of what local business coverage has called the largest single year of openings in that district's history. Two blocks and a couple of properties are absorbing more new business activity in 2026 than the rest of the city combined. Seventeenth Street, meanwhile, is getting one restaurant. That contrast is worth understanding if you actually live here, because it changes what "new in Costa Mesa" means depending on which few blocks you walk most.

What "Largest Expansion in History" Looks Like on the Ground

The LAB Anti-Mall, the 1993 conversion of a former night-vision goggle factory into Costa Mesa's original alt-retail experiment, is adding more than 20 new small businesses across roughly 50,000 square feet this year. That is the biggest single-year buildout the property has seen since it opened, and it is not a slow trickle of one storefront changing hands every few months. A big chunk of that space is coming from the old Urban Outfitters footprint, roughly 12,000 square feet, being split into several smaller units, including one built specifically as a restaurant space with its own patio.

The names filling in so far give a sense of what's actually landing there. The Rooted Home, a home accents boutique that includes an in-store creative studio called The Workshop, has already moved in. So has House of Intuition, an alternative spirituality shop, alongside Stella Jean's Ice Cream and Ruin Bar, a small speakeasy tucked into the property. None of these are chains looking for a Costa Mesa location to check a box. They're independent operators the kind of business The LAB has built its identity around since it opened, just arriving in a volume the property has never handled before.

The CAMP's Own First, Two Blocks Over

Right next door, The CAMP is having its own moment. Maleza, a modern Mexican kitchen and mezcal bar that started inside Drift Palm Springs, opened its first standalone restaurant there this month, with a soft opening September 12 and 13 and full lunch and dinner service beginning September 16. Executive Chef Marco Arreguín, who grew up in Santa Ana and has spent more than a decade in professional kitchens, is leading the food. General Manager Andrew Parish, previously of Porch & Swing and founder of Beveredge, built the drink program, which leans on late-summer produce like grilled peach and tomato and doesn't shy away from lesser-known agave spirits like bacanora.

Maleza's patio is worth noting for anyone who cares about the physical experience of a place, not just the menu. Oversized Gravity Windows open the entire restaurant to the outdoors, and the ipe wood patio is built so a party of two can split between an indoor and outdoor seat without losing the conversation. It's a restaurant designed around the same indoor-outdoor, community-table instinct that built The LAB thirty years ago, just executed with a 2026 budget.

Here's how the picture breaks down across the city right now.

17th Street's One Big Swap

Seventeenth Street's fall story is a single changeover, and it's a meaningful one. Zov's, the Mediterranean restaurant group that's been run by three generations of the Karamardian family for about 40 years, is taking over the former Playa Mesa space at 428 E. 17th St. The family's original flagship opened in Tustin, followed over the years by locations in Irvine and Newport Coast and, earlier this year, San Clemente. No official opening date has been set, but the family has said they're aiming to have the Costa Mesa kitchen running before the end of 2026.

For a corridor like 17th Street, one closely watched restaurant transition carries real weight, because there isn't a second or third opening competing for attention alongside it. If you eat on 17th Street regularly, the entire fall conversation is going to be about what happens in that one space and when the doors finally open. Compare that to Bristol, where a dozen storefronts are turning over inside a single retail complex, and the difference in pace becomes obvious.

Reading the Map If You Live Here

The rest of the city isn't standing still either. Pacific Pearl Café has been announced for The MET on Anton Boulevard, though no opening date has landed yet, and Café Mesa, a project from local roaster Neat Coffee, is in the works for the city-owned park space at Lions Park. Both are real additions. Neither compares in scale to what's happening two blocks of Bristol Street are absorbing this year.

That's the part worth sitting with if your daily routine runs through one part of Costa Mesa and not another. Someone whose loop includes Bristol Street has watched more than a dozen new businesses land within a few hundred feet of each other in a matter of months. Someone whose loop runs through 17th Street has been watching one door, waiting for one sign to go up. Both experiences are legitimate versions of "new in Costa Mesa" this fall. They're just not the same version, and treating the city as one uniform food scene flattens a distinction that actually matters if you're deciding where to spend an evening this week.

The Lake Is Back Too

Bristol Street isn't the only place resetting this season. TeWinkle Park's upper lake, closed since work began in September 2025, reopened this summer after the city replaced the liner and rebuilt the shoreline. Crews moved the resident ducks, geese, and turtles back once the lake was refilled, and by June the upper lake was functioning again even though the city's original project page had targeted a summer 2026 finish for the whole job. The lower lake is next in line, so anyone circling the park for a walk or a jog is currently working with half a functioning lake loop rather than none, which is still a real upgrade over the last year.

It's a small detail next to a 50,000-square-foot retail expansion, but it fits the same pattern. Change in Costa Mesa this fall isn't spread evenly. It's landing hard in specific places, Bristol Street and half of TeWinkle Park among them, while other corners of the city wait their turn.

If you're the kind of person who tracks what's actually shifting block by block in this city, that instinct is worth trusting. It's the same read Zach Mickelson applies to the housing side of Costa Mesa, where value and buyer interest tend to move with the same kind of concentrated momentum you're seeing on Bristol Street right now. If you ever want to talk through what a particular pocket of Costa Mesa looks like from that angle, book an appointment and we'll walk through it together.