Long-standing plans by the prolific restaurant and hospitality group CH Projects to bring a hotel and wellness center to Little Italy remain on track, with a possible groundbreaking as soon as late summer.
The proposed hotel project, which got the green light from the San Diego City Council in mid-2024, is making its way through the city’s development review process, with no date provided online as to when that will be completed. CH Projects co-founder Arsalun Tafazoli said last week that he’s hoping all required city permits will be issued by June, which would allow for the start of construction by August.
While CH has already taken on two other hotel projects, the Little Italy development will be the first ground-up hotel building in its hospitality portfolio.
The still unnamed hotel, planned for the northeast corner of Kettner Boulevard and West Juniper Street, encompasses 68 guestrooms, a wellness center, an athletic club and a full-service restaurant that will be open to the public.
In anticipation of eventually building a hotel in Little Italy, CH Projects, under the name Inside Voice Ventures, acquired in 2023 six properties on Kettner, Juniper and India at the northern end of Little Italy for $13 million. Since then, it bought one more adjoining parcel on Kettner, currently occupied by an office tenant, for $2.2 million, according to the county Recorder’s Office.
It’s too early in the process, Tafazoli says, to calculate exactly how much CH will be investing to develop the project.
The project application submitted to the city of San Diego says little more about the project, other than it’s a hotel atop a basement, a membership-only bath house, an office and two restaurants.
Tafazoli offered more details, stressing that his project is very much about wellness.
“The rooms will be designed to optimize sleep, and we’ll have an athletic club, bath house with hot and cold therapy, sauna, steam,” he said. “It’s very all-encompassing. The idea is to bring people together around healthier social habits.”
There will be one full-service restaurant and bar that will be open to the public, but the hotel also is designed to have a membership component that will include drinking and dining options for members. Tafazoli said he’s also planning to include a tea bar that would be located inside a house. CH, he said, is still about a year out from selling memberships.
Still a work in progress is the design, which Tafazoli promises “will be one of our most developed and interesting designs and concepts yet.”
CH is known for its no-holds-barred take on interior decor, which is especially evident in the firm’s ambitious makeover of the Lafayette Hotel on El Cajon Boulevard where the look varies dramatically from one space to the next.
While CH Projects has spent much of the past two decades amassing a robust portfolio of restaurants, it is increasingly moving into the hotel space. Soon to open is the $20 million Baby Grand Crown City , a 31-room boutique hotel located across the street from the Hotel del Coronado. It’s taking the place of the former La Avenida Inn, a 1950s-era motel.
Tafazoli said he expects the Baby Grand hotel to be open for business by April. CH is in the midst of city inspections, he said. Opening with the hotel will be Night Hawk, a 6,000-square-foot modern Greek and seafood-focused restaurant, and Fallen Empire, a reservations-only Champagne and oyster bar. A third venue, an as-yet unnamed omakase restaurant, will open later in the year.
“We are trying to move the restaurant space in many ways,” Tafazoli said, “and find more interesting ways to bring people together.”
