The San Diego hospitality company that reimagined the city’s historic Lafayette Hotel with ornate furnishings, Murano glass chandeliers and an Oaxacan restaurant reminiscent of a Mexican church is now ready to deliver on its promise to create an equally unique — and highly designed — luxury hotel in Coronado.
Just steps from the Hotel del Coronado, the 31-room Baby Grand will open Thursday, about a year later than originally anticipated.
Conceived six years ago by CH Projects — known more widely for its iconic dining and drinking venues — the $18 million project may not have a bowling alley and 24-hour diner like the Lafayette, but it has plenty of “maximalist” design touches like marble statues and vintage tapestries that are meant to transport guests to a different time and place.
The front entrance and host stand for the Night Hawk restaurant at the Baby Grand hotel in Coronado. (Kristian Carreon / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
The new two-story hotel occupies the site of a former 1950s-era motel, pool and sprawling parking lot, a relic of America’s now faded roadside motels that once were ubiquitous along the country’s highways. With today’s lodging destinations now increasingly focused on the experience of a hotel or resort stay, as opposed to a place where you simply sleep for the night, CH is taking that mission to a whole new level — as it did with its $31 restoration of the Lafayette on El Cajon Boulevard.
Given CH Projects’ signature focus on meticulous custom work and what often feels like over-the-top design, it’s no surprise that its projects are costly. The Baby Grand started out at a budget of around $17 million and is now up to $18 million.
Tapestries inspired by Pompeiian wall paintings line the walls of the lobby, which features a huge chandelier fashioned from 1930s art deco light fixtures from France. Guest rooms feature bespoke touches like iridescent clamshell headboards for the beds. Outdoors, lush landscaping and floral lawn chairs sitting on a sandy area surrounding a lagoon and wading pool suggest a nod to Coronado’s island setting.
And true to CH’s deep bar and restaurant roots, the hotel will have an outdoor Greek restaurant and an elegant Champagne and oyster bar, cleverly concealed behind the lobby.
The bar at the Night Hawk restaurant, a Greek open-fire dining venue at the Baby Grand hotel at Coronado. (Kristian Carreon / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
The opening of the hotel marks a rare occasion in Coronado. A year ago, The Bower, a 39-room boutique hotel also near the Hotel del Coronado, made its debut, becoming the city’s first new lodging property in more than three decades.
CH co-founder Arsalun Tafazoli had expected the Baby Grand to open first, but that was wishful thinking. The long delay in completing the hotel was largely due to the bureaucratic challenges of working with a municipality that CH had never dealt with before, Tafazoli said. He called it a “steep learning curve.”
What emerged, he says, is an amalgam of art and beauty that he hopes will define what is CH’s second hotel project — and lure locals and out-of-towners to return again and again.
The Baby Grand, Tafazoli points out, is the polar opposite of the type of lodging that had defined the Orange Avenue space previously.
Fallen Empire, a hidden oyster and champagne bar within the lobby, features mirrored walls and solid brass booths at the Baby Grand hotel in Coronado (Kristian Carreon / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
“We’re sort of taking an era of development and reformatting in a way that is repurposing it more for humanity and less for cars,” he said. “So you have this great portal like Orange Avenue, and over the years, it’s been optimized for cars versus people. We just thought, we want to create something more aspirational, immersive, an amenity for this neighborhood. And we obviously have a strong opinion about what good art is.”
Some of the hotel’s decor, most notably the antique statues sourced from Italy, Spain and Turkey, and the lobby’s vintage tapestries, suggest a trip back to ancient times. Tafazoli, though, says the design’s visceral messaging is really in the eye of the beholder.
There is no specific era or centuries-old civilization CH and its designer, Post Company, were trying to replicate. In fact, Tafazoli, who describes himself as a huge fan of science fiction, suggests that parts of the Baby Grand may even feel futuristic.
A guest room that utilizes an eclectic and Maximalist style inspired by the history of Coronado features a clamshell bed and tropical wallpaper at The Baby Grand in Coronado. (Kristian Carreon / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
“When you look at the built environments that have endured, I feel like our contemporary, modern structures are dictated by the market economy,” he said. “The reason why Rome is the most traversed metropolis in the world is because there are structures and built environments that were designed to commemorate a higher purpose. And there’s character, and there’s craftsmanship.
“Beauty is important to me, and without sounding pretentious, this is our art, and I think good art sort of immerses you and helps you forget and makes you feel less alone.”
Brooklyn-based Post is the same design firm CH used to reinvent the Lafayette.
“We approached the Baby Grand as a deliberate departure from the casual, beachy aesthetic typical of Southern California hospitality,” said Leigh Salem, partner at Post Company. “From mosaic floors and mirrored walls to iridescent clamshell beds, each element contributes to a rich, cohesive world that feels assembled over time. The design is theatrical, but never overly choreographed.”
Guest rooms feature animal-print stools, marble tables, and a mix of vintage artwork and sculpture, but it’s the bathrooms that CH says received even more attention. They occupy nearly half of each room’s square footage and are designed with intricate mosaic tile flooring that leads to fluted marble wash consoles, glass-enclosed shower rooms and clawfoot soaking tubs. Each is accented with wallpaper, marble, jewel-toned mirrors, and custom light fixtures.
The Baby Grand — like the Lafayette — is also meant to attract people who have no intention of staying overnight. Its signature dining venue, Night Hawk, is an entirely outdoor Greek open-fire restaurant that mimics the exterior landscape via rock-formed booths and banquettes. A special wood-fueled grill and oven will be used to cook the food over open flames. Among the menu selections are an assortment of skewers, lobster squid ink linguini, and a “grand” souvlaki platter.
The bathroom of each guest room features mosaic tiling and clawfoot soaking tubs finished with bold wallpaper. (Kristian Carreon / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Fallen Empire is the name of the hotel’s hidden Champagne and oyster bar, ornately decorated with mirrored walls, solid brass booths upholstered in red mohair with built-in Champagne buckets. Along one of the walls, a painted bar inspired by “The Raft of the Medusa” will focus on both cocktails and raw seafood selections, such as Kumamoto oysters, scallop crudos and uni tartares, all displayed on heaped ice. The Champagne selection will include grower Champagnes, rare vintages and Champagne cocktails.
And in the lobby, a back-bar provides coffee during the day and cocktails in the evening.
With the Baby Grand project now completed, CH Projects has reached a pivotal moment in its evolution as a hospitality company. While it’s known for such dining and drinking mainstays as Born & Raised, Ironside Fish & Oyster and Raised by Wolves, CH has decided to focus exclusively on hotels. It’s currently working on a 68-room hotel and wellness center planned for Little Italy.
Restaurants and bars, of course, will still be key components of whatever new hotel CH pursues.
The sign of the Baby Grand hotel at Coronado. (Kristian Carreon / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
“Hotels incorporate all of life’s rituals, whether it’s eating, sleeping, working, having sex, hanging out,” Tafazoli said. “Because hotels are usually corporate pursuits and the dollars are so big, I never thought we would be in a position to be able to do it. So you start with restaurants and bars because the dollars are less, and you can do it independently, but you can’t bootstrap a hotel project the same way you can a restaurant.
“We’re now fortunate enough to have the capital in a way that allows us to do this like that, but from our inception, that was always the goal. We just never thought it would be reachable.”