There is a photograph from the early 1960s of a garden party at the Naval Training Center. Guests stand on a lawn, and behind them is the two-story house that was once the base commander's home. Today that same house sits on high ground above Rosecrans. The grand gardens that held events like that one are now, in the Union-Tribune's words, "stretches of bare dirt strewn with weeds."
The four officers' houses went up in 1923 in the Spanish Colonial Revival style. For more than 75 years, they and their terraced gardens were home to Navy leadership and their families. Each house runs 3,200 to 3,900 square feet. As of 2024, all but one had been vacant for nearly three decades. The rest of Liberty Station filled with restaurants, galleries and a performing arts center over those years. These houses didn't, and the reason has less to do with lack of interest than with what each proposal asked the site to become.
Every Earlier Plan Tried to Add Something
People started looking for a use early. In 2005, a work group guided by the NTC Foundation studied public reuse of the Officers' Quarters. The city's plan required at least one house to serve as a public museum. The group also weighed a bed-and-breakfast, a retreat and conference center, a wedding venue, an artist residency and outdoor performances.
The proposals that came after got bigger. In 2016, Scott and Andy McMillin of the Corky McMillin Companies, the master developer of Liberty Station, teamed with Untitled Hospitality on a Barracks Hotel. It would have turned the nearby Navy barracks into a hotel, with lodging and events in the officers' houses. The McMillins eventually pulled out. Scott McMillin later said the project largely fell through because he believed it would require a commitment to union labor, and that would have made it too costly.
Other pitches pushed the same way:
- Container-style Airbnb units behind the houses, to add rooms
- Pickleball courts
- A professional sports team's practice field on the old garden, with the historic homes used as locker rooms
The most recent attempt before the current one ended more quietly. An operator Lisa Johnson described as very skilled let its option run out without raising the capital it needed. Johnson, CEO of the Arts District Liberty Station, has been in her role for almost 12 years. In August she summed up what happened each time:
"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."
The Plan That Builds One New Thing
Ryan Thorsen bought and remodeled Mister A's in Bankers Hill. His project, The Admiral at Naval Training Center, works in the opposite direction from the earlier plans. It covers the four houses plus a fifth building, a 1,600-square-foot former gatehouse at Rosecrans Street and Roosevelt Road. According to Thorsen, the only new construction in the whole complex is a kitchen building placed between the restaurant and another of the houses.
"I'm not trying to come in with my own veneer. I'm trying to let the history design it," Thorsen told the Union-Tribune. Four of the five buildings are themed to different eras of the Navy's time on the site, and the gatehouse is the one exception. Here is the August 2026 version of the plan, which updates the one first described in 2024:
| Building | Planned use | Era it evokes |
|---|---|---|
| Two-story former commander's home | Events venue with lawns and gardens, plus a small bed-and-breakfast with a two-bedroom suite upstairs | 1920s |
| Quarters D | All-day marketplace with a wine bar, bakery and floral shop; prepared food for picnics on the grounds | 1950s, with a Portuguese mercado feel |
| Quarters C | Game room with pool tables and jukeboxes; bocce and cornhole outside | 1960s counterculture |
| Restaurant house | 162-seat indoor-outdoor restaurant, "approachable upscale," name not yet announced | World War II |
| Gatehouse | Fully indoor speakeasy | Not tied to one decade; the building dates to the late 1930s or early 1940s |
Some of the details reach back into Point Loma itself. Designer Jason St. John of the Los Angeles firm Bells + Whistles grew up in Point Loma. He said he wanted the marketplace to draw on the community's Portuguese heritage, adding that "all the kids there were Portuguese, and their dads were fishermen." The restaurant's American menu would take its cues from the peninsula's fishing heritage and use herbs and citrus from gardens on site. Thorsen has narrowed the name from 72 options to two and was still choosing a chef as of August. For the gatehouse, Thorsen plans to fill the walls with vintage images of people who were stationed at NTC or went through boot camp there. His own grandfather put in his papers for boot camp at NTC.
The plan has also grown since 2024. Back then the restaurant was set at 140 seats, and the gatehouse was going to be a cocktail bar with a view deck, a martini stop before shows at the Joan just down the block. Moving the kitchen into its own building made room for 162 seats, and the deck was dropped in favor of an indoor bar.
Why the Fence Is Still Up
A restrained plan doesn't mean a quick one. Thorsen first expected a $15 million project to be finished by summer 2026. As of August 21, 2026, the budget was $20 million and the project had not broken ground. Thorsen blamed a long and sometimes frustrating permitting process for much of the delay. His architect, Christopher Bittner of OBR Architecture, has designed earlier Arts District buildings at Liberty Station, and he was more direct. He said most of the city staff who knew the site's history are gone, and getting approval was "surprising because it's four houses. They're not complicated."
The land belongs to the city. In 2024, Johnson explained the order of steps. The foundation secures a ground lease from the city, then a long-term lease is negotiated with Thorsen, and before that he has to show he has raised the money. By August 2026, Thorsen said financing was nearly secured. Christina Bibler, who heads the city's Economic Development Department, said she hoped to bring the proposed lease to the City Council before the end of the year.
That lease vote is what to watch. No lease item for The Admiral appears on the Council's September 22 agenda or on the agendas posted for October 5 and October 6. It's also missing from the staff briefing dockets of August 27, September 10 and September 24. That leaves less than three months for the item to reach Council if it's going to meet Bibler's year-end target.
If you've seen a "late 2026" opening date elsewhere, it's out of date. The Admiral's own website still lists groundbreaking in 2026 and completion in spring or summer 2027. The schedule in the Union-Tribune's August 2026 report runs later and opens in phases once approvals come through:
- Gardens, parking and three of the officers' houses open in fall 2027.
- The events venue follows a few months later.
- The gatehouse speakeasy comes last, with the full complex finished by the end of 2028.
Each of those dates depends on the lease, so the fall 2027 date only holds if a Council vote and groundbreaking happen first.
What Is Open Around It This Month
The houses sit in a part of Liberty Station that, according to the Union-Tribune, the public rarely visits. The busier part of the campus has a full October. Halloween at the Station runs Sunday, October 25, from noon to 4 p.m. at Ingram Plaza, with a costume contest, trick-or-treating and a food drive. El Punto, a larger, dog-friendly restaurant from the City Tacos team at 2885 Perry Road, Suite 102, was forecast this summer to open in October, though no specific day was given. Tickets for the Swiss Winter Village on the South Promenade go on sale October 13, ahead of its November 27 opening.
Quarters D is the one officers' house that has been renovated, and it currently has a paying tenant. Under Thorsen's plan, its polished hardwood floors and 1920s-era fireplace would become part of an all-day marketplace open to the public.
Big projects near home affect more than where you eat. A restored seven-acre site on Rosecrans, with an events venue and a 162-seat restaurant, would change the stretch of Point Loma around Liberty Station. If you'd like to talk through what The Admiral's timeline could mean for your plans nearby, Justin Halbert is glad to walk through it with you. Schedule a Strategy Call.
