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

Brace yourself, Coronado. The hospitality maven who brought San Diego its about over-the-top maximalist edifice — the Lafayette successful North Park — is backmost pinch different glitzy project, this clip successful the able 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 for illustration 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 pinch an creation historian, they mightiness person landed here.

The thought was “to create this small mirage wrong the mirage that is Coronado,” said Arsalun Tafazoli, laminitis of CH Projects, the group 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 restaurant Leila.

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

The patio eating area of Coronado’s caller Night Hawk includes seating for about 150.

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

Asked about the creation accuracy down the 2023 renewal of the Lafayette — the company’s first edifice — Tafazoli had a elemental answer: “More is more.”

The Baby Grand project, put together successful collaboration pinch creation workplace Post Company, is trim 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 group a respite successful an anxiety-ridden time. But “it is different,” he said. “I don’t cognize if it is going to beryllium embraced.”

Getting the basal metropolis permissions “was decidedly a struggle,” Tafazoli said. “Had I known really difficult 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 very 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 now successful downtown San Diego’s East Village, wherever his institution is based and wherever his first CH venture, Neighborhood, opened successful 2007.

Though his institution started pinch eating and drinking establishments, Tafazoli said, his goals were ever to create and tally hotels, “the pinnacle of hospitality.” As a kid of divorce, he said, he whitethorn person a heightened consciousness of erstwhile the power feels correct successful a room and erstwhile it doesn’t. Creating societal environments, he said, gives him immoderate power complete that. Moreover, he added later, “beauty is important to me, because it conveys care.”

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

“I can’t show you really galore iterations of soil were brought successful and taken out,” Tafazoli said. “Sand is its ain universe. You want 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, pinch cooking by unfastened fire, a Greek ruins vibe and seating for about 150. The 2nd edifice lurks down the lobby — a hidden oyster-and-Champagne barroom that holds about 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 civilization 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 custom wallpaper. The rooms measurement about 300 quadrate feet each, about half of that abstraction taken up by their elaborate bathrooms, each pinch abstracted tub and shower, sinks from Morocco.

Now image 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 renewal past twelvemonth and starts its rates northbound of $600. Another action is the Bower Coronado, besides a dramatically upgraded motel that reopened successful 2025 pinch prices akin to Baby Grand’s but a overmuch much buttoned-down style.

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

All of those properties guidelines adjacent to Coronado’s wide, sandy beaches — which intends they each look challenges arsenic waters are often fouled by the northward travel of untreated sewage from greater Tijuana. The longstanding problem has worsened successful caller years, and Coronado’s Central Beach was closed to bathers connected 129 days successful 2025 because of unsafe germs levels. The U.S. and Mexican authorities opportunity they person sewage-treatment projects successful progress, pinch improvements expected by the end of 2027.

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

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

“I spot this arsenic a staycation for locals” from San Diego County, Tafazoli said. “The large consequence is that we don’t get locals and it doesn’t resonate pinch visitors who for illustration the position quo.”

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

Guest rooms, including No. 103, are branded pinch inscribed brass clamshells.

Then location 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 head of an L.A. TV station spotted a promising young soft subordinate and decided to springiness him a chance connected screen. The pianist’s sanction was Liberace.

However group respond to the particulars of the caller hotel, Tafazoli said, he knows that the larger mounting of Coronado is simply a typical place.

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