La Plaza set to transform downtown Atascadero, with rooftop bar and luxury apartments
A big piece of Atascadero’s long-planned downtown revitalization will open soon — bringing housing and space for restaurants and retail to the heart of the city.
Construction on the La Plaza mixed-use project — situated on El Camino Real between Entrada Avenue and West Mall across from the Sunken Gardens — is nearly complete.
One of the two buildings will likely open in May or June, said Zoe Zappas of Z Villages, the family-owned development company behind the project. The second, larger building is slated to open in October or November.
La Plaza — which cost more than $10 million to build — will bring dozens of units of housing, thousands of square feet of commercial space and a rooftop bar to a downtown that’s beginning to see the fruits of the city’s economic development efforts.
One edge of the property will also feature a new 15,000-square-foot city-owned plaza near the tunnel connecting downtown to Atascadero High School.
“We’re really looking forward to it,” Zappas said of the project. “This is a lot of retail commercial space. It’s adding from open fields to now it’s commercial usable space. It is kind of huge.”
La Plaza project was 5 years in the making
The La Plaza development has been in the works since 2017, when Mike Zappas purchased a group of downtown parcels and combined them into nearly an acre and a half of buildable land.
Zappas envisioned constructing a development that pays homage to the original 1917 Mercantile/La Plaza building, the city’s first shopping center.
One of the properties he bought was an empty field that had been vacant for years after a thrift store that previously occupied it burned down. A closed Jack in the Box took up another property on the north side, while Malibu Brew Coffee and a retail shop were located to the south. Malibu Brew relocated to a spot across the street, facing Sunken Gardens.
“It’s very unusual for an acre and a half to be available downtown,” Zappas told The Tribune in 2017.
The City Council approved the project in 2018, and Z Villages began demolishing the Jack in the Box and the other two businesses in 2019.
Downtown revitalization efforts
While La Plaza has been under construction, Z Villages has been expanding its footprint throughout downtown Atascadero. The company converted a vacant former gas station at the intersection of Traffic Way and El Camino Real into Colony Market and Deli.
Next door, the company is finishing a development made of shipping containers that will feature an ice cream shop, a beer garden and a boutique hat store.
During the past few years, a group of new businesses have also opened nearby on Entrada Avenue. And the City Council in 2020 approved plans to narrow a portion of El Camino Real through downtown from four lanes of traffic to two, hoping to add parking and make the area more walkable.
“All of this is happening at the same time,” Zoe Zappas said. “It’s a critical mass — you couldn’t plan it any better.”
Development to feature housing, retail and more
Now, after Z Villages has weathered the pandemic for more than a year, La Plaza is nearly ready for its big debut.
The three-story brick and stucco buildings are close to completion across from Atascadero’s ornate City Hall, and the company has secured leases or letters of intent for about one-third of its commercial spaces, Zappas said.
Those businesses — which Z Villages has not yet announced — will occupy 18,000 square feet on the ground floor of the buildings. The spaces will range from 4,000 to 160 square feet, depending on the businesses that will occupy them.
One of the buildings will also have a rooftop bar with food, Zappas said.
Zappas is interested in offering smaller space to local makers who may not have brick-and-mortar locations — the setup could be market-style, similar to the Paso Market Walk.
“We have a lot of those users,” she said. “Why not have the opportunity for a smaller space?”
Zappas is also interested in bringing a restaurant with more upscale dining options to La Plaza.
“I think something that’s missing here is a nice, high-end, quality experience,” she said.
The housing component of La Plaza will be located on the upper floors. The development will have 42 units of mostly one- and two-bedroom apartments, with one studio and four “high-end, penthouse-style condos” from 2,100 to 2,800 square feet.
The penthouses feature elevators that open directly into the units, as well as big windows with views of downtown.
“I think we have a total of like 10 livable units in downtown, and we’re adding 42 units,” Zappas said. “That means that’s at least 80 more people that will live here, servicing these shopping areas and just generally giving it a more ambient vibe of wanting to live and move through the spaces.”
A gift to Atascadero
The Zappas family went into building La Plaza not knowing how the development would turn out. Zappas said it’s been “gratifying” to see it nearly finished.
“This was a significant investment for us,” she said. “It was pretty risky — we didn’t know if the community would support us or not.”
Zappas said her father, Mike Zappas, sees La Plaza as part of his legacy in Atascadero.
“From our perspective, we feel like it’s a gift,” she said.
This story was originally published April 2, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
