From most of Cliff Haven, Mariner's Mile is a middle distance. You catch it through the pepper trees on Kings Place, or from a driveway on St. James, or on the walk down to 16th Street: a thin ribbon of Pacific Coast Highway wedged between the bluff and the harbor, punctuated by yacht masts and the occasional Maserati flag. For years the view from the top was largely stable. Car showrooms, brokerage offices, a few durable restaurants, the low white profile of Balboa Bay Resort holding the water's edge.
That view is changing this year, and the change is more coherent than a scattering of new signs suggests. If you live above it, the strip below is starting to work less like a highway you drive past on the way to somewhere and more like the neighborhood's ground floor.
What's actually going in
The headline is Uchi. Tyson Cole is opening Uchi's eighth location at 2510 West Coast Highway on Mariners' Mile, the brand's first Orange County restaurant, and the space sits inside a new mixed-use building with 36 residential units directly above the restaurant. That last detail is the one to hold onto. It is not a standalone pad. It is a ground-floor tenant with neighbors upstairs.
A few doors east, The Nice Guy, an Italian-inspired restaurant and lounge from West Hollywood, will open a new location at 2607 West Coast Highway. Between those two anchors, Nēsos Newport Beach is opening on Mariner's Mile in early 2026 as an ode to family, tradition and philoxenia, offering rustic Greek cuisine from recipes passed down from generation to generation.
The most useful opening for a Cliff Haven weekday is probably the smallest one. Birdie's Bodega is opening its newest location at 2700 W. Coast Hwy, Suite 100, in the Mariners Mile area, with the construction project officially approved in March. The original at 333 E 17th St in Costa Mesa focuses on seasonal goods sourced from nearby farms, along with fresh-baked bread and dairy products, and the Mariner's Mile location also plans to feature locally grown flowers. A produce stop that opens at 10 a.m. inside a five-minute drive is a genuinely new fact for the neighborhood.
At the eastern edge of the corridor, the existing high end is being reworked rather than replaced. Mastro's at 8112 East Coast Highway is undergoing a full interior renovation and patio enclosure. And Woody's Diner, the retro breakfast concept, is eyeing a Newport Beach location.
| Address | Concept | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 2510 W. Coast Hwy | Uchi (Tyson Cole) | Under construction, 2026 opening |
| 2607 W. Coast Hwy | The Nice Guy | Announced |
| Mariner's Mile | Nēsos (Greek) | Opening early 2026 |
| 2700 W. Coast Hwy, Ste. 100 | Birdie's Bodega | Approved March 2026 |
| 8112 E. Coast Hwy | Mastro's | Renovation underway |
The pattern underneath the openings
Read on its own, that list is a run of announcements. Read together, it is a template. Newport Beach is executing a three-zone development strategy in 2026 — Newport Center around Fashion Island, Uptown Newport with 1,244 new residential units and 11,500 square feet of ground-floor retail, and the Mariners' Mile corridor along West Coast Highway — and the pattern is the same across all three zones: put residents on top, put restaurants on the bottom.
That template rewires how the strip functions. The standalone restaurant pad is becoming less common. Mixed-use is the default. The Uchi building is the clearest local example. At 2510 West Coast Highway, a bold new mixed-use development is coming, built by WJK Development, with 36 beautifully designed rental residences currently under construction, and Uchi Newport Beach anchoring the space in 2026. Thirty-six households will be walking out their front door into a Tyson Cole restaurant. Everyone else, including the Cliff Haven bluff, gets the second-order effects: more foot traffic on the water side of PCH, a reason to cross Dover on a Wednesday, and a stretch that begins to feel like a district rather than a drive-through.
The economics behind the shift are not subtle. Mariner's Mile Plaza sits on PCH across from Newport Harbor with traffic counts of over 53,000 cars per day, surrounded by platinum demographics with high disposable incomes. Operators are not guessing. They are moving into a corridor where the household spend is already there and the density above them is being manufactured.
What was already there, and still is
None of this replaces the strip's existing character. It layers on top of it. The bellwether options in the Westcliff neighborhood include A Restaurant, a perennial favorite, or the casual but equally delicious A Market next door, The Winery, Louie's by the Bay, and Rusty Pelican. Those are still the reflex answers for a Sunday lunch or a birthday.
The retail spine is intact too. Mariner's Mile is home to the renowned A'MAREE'S, a family-owned store set in a historic Ladd and Kelsey-designed building stocking high-fashion brands like Céline and Balenciaga. Hidden pieces of the corridor include Penelope Pots for home goods, Love Lola for globally curated women's clothing, and Yokishop, a locally owned sustainable apparel brand. And on the water, Balboa Bay Resort sits on the harbor's edge with 159 contemporary guest rooms, a sea-to-table restaurant, a full-service spa and on-the-water activities.
The useful way to read the corridor now is in layers. The bottom layer is the durable one: A Restaurant, A'MAREE'S, Balboa Bay. The new layer is the mixed-use one. They are not competing. They are describing two different kinds of evening.
A weeknight loop from the top of the hill
Because the geography is what it is, a Cliff Haven resident can string most of this together on a single early-evening loop that never leaves a three-mile radius.
- Down Riverside or Tustin Avenue to PCH.
- Produce and flowers at Birdie's Bodega at 2700 W. Coast Hwy for the week ahead.
- Golden hour at the bar at A Restaurant, or a walk-in seat at A Market next door.
- If the plan tips longer, a dinner reservation at Uchi at 2510 W. Coast Hwy or The Nice Guy at 2607.
- Back up Irvine Avenue before the bar traffic peaks.
The point of the loop is proximity rather than novelty. Almost none of it existed in the same shape three years ago.
Two things to plan around while it gets built
The first is traffic. Mariners Mile is undergoing significant transformation with new residential, dining, and retail spaces, and construction timelines and potential access changes are worth watching. The Dover-to-Newport Boulevard stretch already carries a full day's freight of harbor visitors, and stacking construction on top of a mid-summer weekend closes lanes in ways that can turn a ten-minute errand into a thirty-minute one.
The second is the way the corridor will read at night once the residential piece is finished. Thirty-six units at 2510 is not a scale that changes the character of Cliff Haven itself. It is, however, a scale that changes what Mariner's Mile sounds like at 10 p.m. on a Friday, in a way that is easier to plan around now than to react to later.
The wider Cliff Haven radius, still uncrowded
If the new corridor gets too busy on a given evening, the surrounding radius has quieter counterweights. The Lido Theater has been a Newport Beach landmark since 1939 and, meticulously restored with state-of-the-art projection and sound, remains a place to catch a flick in a vintage room near Lido Marina Village. Sherman Library & Gardens sits on 2.2 acres with winding brick walkways, blooming flower beds and lush gardens, and hosts lectures and classes. The Corona del Mar Farmers Market runs every Saturday from 9 a.m. None of that is new. All of it is easier to appreciate when the newer parts of the map are working overtime.
The through-line for anyone reading this from a St. James Road driveway is straightforward. The strip below the bluff is being rebuilt into something that behaves more like a neighborhood than a highway. The names to know for the next twelve months are Uchi, The Nice Guy, Nēsos, and Birdie's Bodega. The names to keep are A Restaurant, A'MAREE'S, Balboa Bay Resort, and the low white line of the harbor behind all of it.
If you own a home in Cliff Haven and want to talk through what a shifting Mariner's Mile means for the value of the block you actually live on, bouHAUS is a good conversation to have before the next round of ribbon cuttings. Get in touch when you're ready.
