Two corners near Petco Park changed hands in the past two years, and if you only clocked one of the closures, you probably filed it under bad luck for a beloved local business. Put both stories side by side and a different pattern shows up: in each case, the person who owned the real estate looked at the business renting it and decided they could run it better themselves.
That is not a story about restaurants closing. It is a story about who ends up controlling the storefronts that get the most foot traffic in East Village, and it explains why the two most recognizable pregame spots near the ballpark both disappeared within roughly the same stretch and came back as something the landlord built.
The corner that used to be City Tacos
City Tacos opened its East Village location at 323 Seventh Avenue in March 2020, days before California's statewide shutdown order, and somehow turned that timing into a five-year run steps from Petco Park's Gaslamp Gate. The shop operated under a sublease from J Street Hospitality that was originally set to run through 2026. It never got the chance to finish that lease. On May 1, 2025, the San Diego Padres exercised a buyout of the lease rights and chose not to renew the taqueria's tenancy. Founder Gerry Torres closed the doors for good on June 30, 2025, after one final homestand against the Royals and Nationals.
Torres took the news the way you would hope a hometown business owner would.
"We were given minimal notice, but it's hard to be too upset at our hometown team."
The space, inside the historic 1913 Simon Levi Building, spent the rest of 2025 hosting short-term pop-ups, including a Labubu boutique and a Pac-Man Cafe during Comic-Con, before opening in January 2026 as The Diamond Room, an upscale cocktail lounge built as a joint venture between the Padres' own hospitality arm, Finest Collective, and Patina Group, the Delaware North division that already runs premium dining inside the ballpark. The menu leans into shareable small plates rather than tacos: a Korean-style corn dog made with Snake River Farms wagyu beef, kimchi, and spicy mayo runs $16, fondue for two is $24, and deviled eggs with caviar land at $18. It is open year-round with no game ticket required, which is a meaningful shift from a taqueria that lived and died by the Padres' home schedule to a lounge that the Padres now own outright.
Two blocks over, a different kind of buyout
The other corner tells a version of the same story with a private landlord instead of a professional sports franchise.
Basic Bar & Pizza opened at 410 Tenth Avenue in 2006, when East Village was still mostly warehouses and Petco Park was two years old. Under founder Jon Mangini, Basic built a nearly two-decade reputation as the pregame stop for New Haven-style pizza, including a mashed potato and bacon pie that became something of a local legend. The building itself, a 1912 structure originally built to manufacture airplane parts, had been owned by the Senescall family since the 1980s. When Basic's lease came up, the family chose not to renew it. Instead, Maxwell Senescall, a chef with kitchen experience at Bar Boulud in New York and Juniper & Ivy in San Diego, opened his own pizza and cocktail concept in the same building.
Far Corner Bar & Pizzeria opened on March 27, 2025, timed deliberately to coincide with the Padres' home opener. The 4,000 square foot space was divided into a sunlit dining room, a DJ-equipped bar, and a leather-lined lounge, and the pizzas moved from Basic's New Haven style to 15-inch pies built on dough that rises 48 hours. The local food blog SanDiegoVille noted that the opening "comes with controversy," pointing out that the family effectively displaced a loyal tenant to launch a strikingly similar concept in the same room.
Basic did not disappear. It relocated to a new ground-floor unit inside the Park 12 high-rise at 100 Park Plaza, a few blocks from its original address, targeting a reopening timed to the start of the 2026 Padres season. On its own website, the team behind Basic put the move plainly, noting they were not happy about leaving their spot at Tenth and J after twenty years but were glad Park 12 gave them a new home on the other side of the ballpark.
The pattern underneath both moves
Line the two stories up and the mechanism becomes obvious.
| Address | Former Tenant | Current Tenant | Who Controls It Now |
|---|---|---|---|
| 323 Seventh Ave, Simon Levi Building | City Tacos (2020 to 2025) | The Diamond Room (opened January 2026) | Padres' Finest Collective and Delaware North's Patina Group |
| 410 Tenth Ave | Basic Bar & Pizza (2006 to 2024) | Far Corner Bar & Pizzeria (opened March 2025) | The Senescall family, the building's own landlord |
Neither the Padres nor the Senescall family were dissatisfied with what their tenants were selling. Tacos and pizza both work fine as a business model within a hundred yards of Petco Park. What changed is who wanted to keep the margin. A sublease and a rent check both hand a chunk of the upside to whoever runs the kitchen. Once the landlord already controls foot traffic that reliable, becoming the operator instead of the property owner starts to look like the better trade. Delaware North already ran concessions inside the stadium. The Senescall family already owned the building outright. Neither had to build new relationships with East Village regulars. They just had to stop collecting rent from someone else and start collecting revenue directly.
What it actually means if you eat there
For a resident who walks past both corners a few times a week, the practical differences are worth knowing before you show up expecting the old menu.
The Simon Levi Building corner has gone from a counter-service taco stop to a sit-down cocktail lounge. Diamond Room does not require a game ticket, but it is built for lingering rather than grabbing a quick bite on the way to your seat, and the price point moved up with the concept.
The Tenth Avenue corner still functions as a pizza-and-bar pregame spot, just under new ownership and a new name. Far Corner kept the same basic job the building has done since 2006, pizza, cocktails, walking distance to the gate, while changing almost everything about the execution, from the dough to the room layout to who owns the register.
If you were loyal to the old Basic recipe specifically, it is not gone. It moved to Park 12, close enough to walk from most of East Village, and reopened under the same ownership that built the original following over twenty years.
What to watch next
Two corners is not a citywide trend, but it is a pattern worth noticing if you live in the neighborhood long enough to watch it happen a third time. When a location generates that much reliable walk-up traffic, whoever owns the real estate underneath it eventually has to decide whether collecting rent is worth less than running the business themselves. Petco Park has answered that question twice in the same stretch of blocks. Given how much of East Village's retail sits inside buildings owned by long-term local families or entities with existing hospitality operations nearby, it would not be surprising to see the same calculation play out again somewhere else within walking distance of the ballpark.
If watching your neighborhood's ownership shift like this has you thinking about where East Village fits into your own plans, whether that means buying here, selling a place you've owned since before Petco Park's expansion, or just understanding what these changes mean for property values on your block, San Diego's Favorite Team has been tracking these patterns across the city's neighborhoods for exactly this reason. Start your San Diego home plan and get a tailored consultation whenever the timing makes sense for you.
