After Lengthy Delays, the Project Will Turn Hundred Year Old Buildings into ‘Hospitality Complex’ With Restaurant, Marketplace, Game room and Wedding Venue
By Lori Weisberg / San Diego Union-Tribune / August 21, 2026
When restaurateur Ryan Thorsen, fresh off the acquisition and remodel of Mister A’s, began raising funds a couple of years ago for an ambitious makeover of the long vacant officers quarters at Liberty Station, he expected to have the $15 million project finished by this summer. Summer has nearly come and gone, and the now $20 million hospitality complex known as The Admiral at Naval Training Center has yet to break ground. But the good news, says Thorsen, is the project remains very much alive, with financing nearly secured and an expected groundbreaking before the end of this year.
The Arts District Liberty Station, the major leaseholder and overseer of 26 of the 45 historic buildings at Liberty Station, is much encouraged by the progress Thorsen and his team have made — so much so that it expects to have a critical lease with the city signed in the coming months that would clear the way for the redevelopment to move forward. No longer a pipe dream, the admittedly challenging project is well on its way to becoming a reality, says Lisa Johnson, CEO of the Arts District. That’s a promising prediction given that so many other skilled developers predating Thorsen have failed, she said, in their efforts to revive the 7-acre site fronting on Rosecrans.
“Everybody at Liberty Station is excited about it, and the city is excited as well,” she said. “Ryan is still the right guy. We really have had so many people who’ve tried to do something with this site, and I’ve been in this role almost 12 years. Some people have brought forward visions, renderings, ideas, and we’ve gotten pretty far down the road with at least a couple other developers, and then they get to a point where it was just too heavy a lift.”
Thorsen, who says he’s assembled a group of investors he calls his silent partners, has been able to look past the decaying Spanish Colonial buildings whose only residents now are the occasional vagrant or vandal looking for temporary refuge. And the grand gardens that once were the setting for outdoor galas attended by visiting dignitaries and diplomats? Thorsen is unfazed by the current landscape, which has been reduced to stretches of bare dirt strewn with weeds.
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