Coronado's new hotel is a maximalist dream — with lush lagoons and iridescent clamshell beds

Brace yourself, Coronado. The hospitality maven who brought San Diego its astir over-the-top maximalist edifice — the Lafayette successful North Park — is backmost with different glitzy project, this clip successful the affluent land metropolis known for its accepted bent.

Opening Thursday, Baby Grand includes a 35-foot faux stone wall, a 20-foot waterfall, a Mediterranean edifice that feels similar a Greek ruin being consumed by a jungle and a hidden oyster barroom afloat of crystal and mirrors. All of this, including the Spanish statuary, Moroccan fixtures and Murano glass, is squeezed onto an Orange Avenue batch that erstwhile held a 1950s motel. If Liberace had tally distant with an creation historian, they mightiness person landed here.

The thought was “to make this small mirage wrong the mirage that is Coronado,” said Arsalun Tafazoli, laminitis of CH Projects, the radical down a multitude of design-intensive establishments crossed San Diego including the speakeasy Raised by Wolves, the hi-fi listening barroom Part Time Lover and the Middle Eastern edifice Leila.

The Baby Grand edifice and its edifice Night Hawk stands on Orange Avenue astir a artifact from the Hotel del Coronado.

The patio eating country of Coronado’s caller Night Hawk includes seating for astir 150.

Baby Grand’s high-density, high-gloss environment, which outgo astir $17 cardinal and took astir 5 years to complete, volition travel arsenic nary astonishment to those who person followed Tafazoli’s earlier ventures.

Asked astir the plan doctrine down the 2023 renovation of the Lafayette — the company’s archetypal edifice — Tafazoli had a elemental answer: “More is more.”

The Baby Grand project, enactment unneurotic successful collaboration with plan workplace Post Company, is chopped from the aforesaid cloth, describing itself arsenic a “polychromatic pastiche” connected its website. The goal, Tafazoli said, is to enrich Coronado’s civilization and springiness radical a respite successful an anxiety-ridden time. But “it is different,” helium said. “I don’t cognize if it is going to beryllium embraced.”

Getting the indispensable metropolis permissions “was decidedly a struggle,” Tafazoli said. “Had I known however hard this was going to be, I don’t cognize ...”

In the days earlier the hotel’s opening, Tafazoli, 44, led a circuit of the site. The entrepreneur, whose practice is Persian, wore his hairsbreadth successful braids and a button-down Supreme garment featuring Barack Obama.

“I person a precise one-dimensional existence. I’m single. I person nary kids. This is what I do,” said Tafazoli, who grew up successful San Diego and studied astatine UC San Diego. He lives present successful downtown San Diego’s East Village, wherever his institution is based and wherever his archetypal CH venture, Neighborhood, opened successful 2007.

Though his institution started with eating and drinking establishments, Tafazoli said, his goals were ever to make and tally hotels, “the pinnacle of hospitality.” As a kid of divorce, helium said, helium whitethorn person a heightened consciousness of erstwhile the vigor feels close successful a country and erstwhile it doesn’t. Creating societal environments, helium said, gives him immoderate power implicit that. Moreover, helium added later, “beauty is important to me, due to the fact that it conveys care.”

To marque the astir of Baby Grand’s compact determination (2/3 of an acre), the CH squad has exported parking. Instead of leaving their cars connected site, guests volition manus keys to valets who volition deposit vehicles successful a Bank of America parking operation a artifact away. That determination freed up abstraction for not lone thenar trees, torches, tables, booths and 21 pieces of statuary from Spain, but besides a small faux formation with a 4-foot-deep wading excavation that tin clasp a fistful of people.

“I can’t archer you however galore iterations of soil were brought successful and taken out,” Tafazoli said. “Sand is its ain universe. You privation section sand. But section soil was not conducive to that feeling.” So the soil is from Turkey.

The property’s main restaurant, Night Hawk, is Mediterranean, with cooking by unfastened fire, a Greek ruins vibe and seating for astir 150. The 2nd edifice lurks down the lobby — a hidden oyster-and-Champagne barroom that holds astir 35 people, preservation only. The space, called Fallen Empire, features reddish mohair booths, built-in Champagne buckets, mirrored walls and chandeliers, sconces and lamps from the Italian glass-blowing land of Murano. The level is simply a customized mosaic of oversea creatures.

There are 31 impermanent rooms, opening astatine $350 per night. Each is dominated by a custom-made clamshell headboard (fiberglass). Beds are surrounded by animal-print seating, parquet oak flooring, marble tables, mirrored cabinets and customized wallpaper. The rooms measurement astir 300 quadrate feet each, astir fractional of that abstraction taken up by their elaborate bathrooms, each with abstracted tub and shower, sinks from Morocco.

Now representation each of that placed successful the bosom of Coronado (population 20,192), which sits adjacent to Naval Air Station North Island and is known for attracting well-heeled retirees. The median location worth is $2.5 million.

Up the artifact from the Baby Grand is the expansive dame of San Diego County tourism, the Hotel del Coronado, which went up successful 1888, completed a $550-million renovation past twelvemonth and starts its rates northbound of $600. Another enactment is the Bower Coronado, besides a dramatically upgraded motel that reopened successful 2025 with prices akin to Baby Grand’s but a overmuch much buttoned-down style.

This presumption from supra astatine the Night Hawk edifice abstraction shows a chromatic booth, elaborately patterned cushion and array top.

All of those properties basal adjacent to Coronado’s wide, sandy beaches — which means they each look challenges arsenic waters are often fouled by the northward travel of untreated sewage from greater Tijuana. The longstanding occupation has worsened successful caller years, and Coronado’s Central Beach was closed to bathers connected 129 days successful 2025 due to the fact that of unsafe bacteria levels. The U.S. and Mexican authorities accidental they person sewage-treatment projects successful progress, with improvements expected by the extremity of 2027.

“We are, unfortunately, not marine scientists conscionable a radical of profoundly overcaffeinated hoteliers with beardown opinions astir lighting, linen textures, and bully design. So delight cheque section h2o conditions earlier swimming,” Tafazoli wrote successful a statement.

Asked his people marketplace for the caller hotel, Tafazoli said helium was looking adjacent to home.

“I spot this arsenic a staycation for locals” from San Diego County, Tafazoli said. “The large hazard is that we don’t get locals and it doesn’t resonate with tourists who similar the presumption quo.”

That said, Baby Grand and Coronado mightiness beryllium a amended lucifer than immoderate imagine. Christine Stokes, enforcement manager of the Coronado Historical Assn. and Museum, sees astatine slightest a fewer parallels to Baby Grand successful section history, opening with the humanities association’s ain building. From the 1950s into the 1990s, Stokes noted successful an email, Marco’s Restaurant operated successful the space, with a “Roman Room” barroom — “a acheronian and immersive hidden gem wherever bartenders performed sleight-of-hand magic tricks.”

Guest rooms, including No. 103, are labeled with inscribed brass clamshells.

Then determination was the Hotel del Coronado’s Circus Room restaurant, unfastened from the 1930s into the 1960s. That was “an immersive environment, utilizing specialized murals and striped tents connected the walls,” Stokes wrote. It’s besides where, successful 1950, the manager of an L.A. TV presumption spotted a promising young soft subordinate and decided to springiness him a accidental connected screen. The pianist’s sanction was Liberace.

However radical respond to the particulars of the caller hotel, Tafazoli said, helium knows that the larger mounting of Coronado is simply a peculiar place.

From his bureau successful San Diego’s East Village, “it’s a six-minute drive,” helium said. “I travel disconnected that bridge, and I consciousness similar I’m successful a antithetic place.” It’s amazing, helium said, “to beryllium truthful adjacent and consciousness truthful acold away.”