Carlsbad Village Picked Up a Grocer and a Bookstore This Summer. Its Two Best-Known Corners Are Still Undecided.

Between late May and early July, Carlsbad Village added a full grocery store, an independent bookstore with a café inside it, a board-game café and a katsu restaurant. All four are places you can use on an ordinary Tuesday. Then on September 22, the long-empty Carlsbad Theatre sold to a buyer who says it wants dinner, drinks and live shows under one roof. A few blocks away, the shipping-container plaza at State Street and Carlsbad Village Drive is waiting on a City Council hearing that has not been scheduled.

So the everyday side of the Village got filled in this summer. The spots where the Village gathers in the evening and on weekends are still being decided. The fall calendar runs through both.

Groceries, Books and a Game Table Within a Few Blocks

Barons Market is the biggest of the new arrivals. The family-owned San Diego grocer, founded in 1993, opened its 10th store and first Carlsbad location at 2800 Roosevelt St. It's a 15,000-square-foot store with organic, natural and specialty foods. The Carlsbad Village Association held a preview on June 25 and 26 and a grand-opening celebration on June 27 and 28.

The store's layout helps explain why it fits the Village. Barons designs every location around a 15-minute shopping trip, and the grab-and-go counters include a salad bar, hot soup bar, olive and antipasto bar, hot food bar and cookie bar. There are also fresh sandwiches and entrées, and an outdoor patio where you can eat. Each Wednesday at noon, the company's taste team samples 80 to 120 products and picks about five to put on shelves. By late August, SVP Rachel Shemirani said the store had been "receiving a fantastic response from our new neighbors."

Carlsbad Village Books opened a week later. The family-owned shop at 640 Grand Ave. opened at 10 a.m. on July 2, selling new and used books, gifts, games and crafts, with Marla's Coffee operating inside.

The other two additions fill different parts of the day:

• The Boarding Home, 300 Carlsbad Village Drive, Suite 103. This board-game café and store is owned by Matthew Young, Evelyn Avanesian and Anthony Boyajian. It held its grand opening on May 23 with a library of more than 200 games, specialty drinks and pastries from local bakers.
• Little Kiki Katsu & More, 2958 Madison St., Suite 101. Chef James Pyo and Jenny Pyo soft-opened on June 15, serving katsu made with premium meats and seafood, Japanese sandos and curated sake pairings. They started with dinner only and planned to add lunch at the July 1 grand opening.

One more restaurant is still on the way. Amor y Magia, from partners Shawn Seaman, Mike Mayaudon and chef Ryan Mencik, was announced for 505 Oak Ave., Suite C, with a mid-June target and a Latin American menu of crudo, ceviche and shareable plates. As of late September, its own website still says "Opening Soon" and isn't taking reservations.

The Theater Sale That Closed on Tuesday

The new businesses cover the daytime and dinner. The Village's best-known night-out building has been dark since 2019. The Carlsbad Theatre opened in the 1920s with the silent film "It," starring Clara Bow. It holds about 300 seats and was for sale for much of the time it sat empty. RAF Pacific Group bought it in 2017 and looked at several uses, none of which went forward.

The long vacancy made people worry the building could be demolished. In 2023, a group called Save the Carlsbad Theatre formed and tried to lease the building, without success. In July, Council member Melanie Burkholder asked city staff, with the full council's support, to look into ways to help preserve it. While staff worked on that, the city learned a buyer was already talking with the owner.

That buyer is Carlsbad Theatre LLC, and its project lead, Kipp Gstettenbauer, described the goal in the sale announcement:

"Our goal is to bring real energy back to this corner of the Village — a place where people can grab dinner, have a drink and catch a show, all under one roof — and honor the historicity of the building."

What's actually settled is narrow. The next steps are getting permits and finding a tenant to build out the space. The exact use, tenant mix and daily operations will be worked out through the city's entitlement process. The owners say they'll keep working with the Boys & Girls Club of Carlsbad, which has had its Village clubhouse on Roosevelt Street since 1952. They'll also work with the 43-year-old Carlsbad Community Theatre, which currently stages its shows at the Community Cultural Arts Center at Carlsbad High School on Lancer Way.

The theater's location puts it at the center of the new errand map. It's a half-block from the Coaster station and across the street from New Village Arts, which runs a 100-seat theater and a 60-seat cabaret in a renovated hardware and lumber building it leases from the city. Nate Larson of Save the Carlsbad Theatre said he was surprised and pleased by the sale, and that he hopes the building "will continue to serve the community as it always has, as a theater."

State and Carlsbad Village Drive, Still Waiting on the Council

The other undecided corner is only 0.17 acres, at the northwest corner of Carlsbad Village Drive and State Street. It holds a Choice Juicery and a Crackheads in modified shipping containers, set in a plaza with plank decks, artificial turf and outdoor seating. The Union-Tribune calls it one of the busiest intersections in downtown Carlsbad.

On August 5, the Planning Commission voted 6–1 to recommend that the City Council approve Carlsbad Village Square. The four-story building would have seven condominiums, one of them deed-restricted for a low-income household, over ground-floor retail. The council turned down a five-condo version on the same lot in 2018, finding it incompatible with the one- and two-story buildings around it. Since then, new state housing laws have limited the city's options, and several commissioners said they had no choice under those laws. The one commissioner who voted no, Kiley Fitzgerald, raised concerns about the lack of parking for people with disabilities.

Some other details from the hearing:

1. State law would let the project skip parking entirely because it's within half a mile of the Carlsbad Village Coaster Station. The applicant plans nine resident spaces anyway, eight of them in four garages with hydraulic car lifts.
2. The site was a gas station and auto service center from the early 1920s to the mid-1980s. The city's community development director said the underground fuel tanks came out in 1998 and that soil tests showed no further cleanup was needed.
3. The applicant, Leor Lakritz, has owned the property for at least 25 years, along with other lots on the same block of State Street.

The project hasn't appeared on a council agenda yet. It wasn't on the September 1 or September 15 agendas, and the September 29 meeting lists a different project for its public hearing. For now, Choice Juicery and Crackheads are open for business. Neither has said anything publicly about what it will do next.

A Fall Calendar That Runs Through the New Map

This fall's Village events mostly happen on the blocks that changed this summer. More of them are also moving toward the Village Faire Shopping Center at 300 Carlsbad Village Drive, the same address as The Boarding Home.

• Wednesdays, 2:30–7 p.m. The State Street Farmers' Market runs on State Street between Carlsbad Village Drive and Grand Avenue, which is also the block where the container plaza sits.
• Thursday, Oct. 8, 5–8 p.m. Taste of Carlsbad Village is a self-guided tasting route through the Village.
• Oct. 16–Nov. 29. New Village Arts stages the musical "As You Like It" on the Ray Charles Stage in the Conrad Prebys Theatre. Previews run Oct. 16 to 23, and opening night is Oct. 24.
• Saturday, Oct. 31, 11 a.m.–4 p.m. Halloween in the Village includes trick-or-treating at businesses across the Village and a costume contest at the Village Faire Shopping Center.
• Sunday, Nov. 1, 8 a.m.–4 p.m. The Carlsbad Village Street Faire.
• Saturday, Nov. 28, 11 a.m.–4 p.m. Small Business Saturday, which the Village Association plans to move to the Village Faire courtyard, with more details to come.

"As You Like It" runs through the weekend after Thanksgiving, directly across the street from the theater that just sold. Next fall, the Village may have two stages on that block or still just one. That depends on permits and a tenant search that started this week.

If you own a home near the Village, a new grocer on Roosevelt and a possible revival of the theater both belong in how your home gets described and priced. FW Property Group tracks these block-by-block changes for sellers across Carlsbad. Request your free home valuation, and we'll show you where your address sits on the Village's new map.