Over thirty years ago the owner of this building bought the least expensive site he could find, a 50’ by 50’ lot in downtown’s Little Italy neighborhood (then called Harborview) . Little Italy at the time had been largely abandoned. Flush with success from their fishing businesses, the Italian and Portuguese community had moved on to more upscale neighborhoods and plywood sheets replaced street front glass on many India Street shops. After 5 pm, the only activity were kids from the huge shanty town at Cedar and India st. playing soccer in the street. If you wanted coffee in the morning, Saluntos had the only cappuccino machine and it didn’t work much of the time. The Beaumont building became the first new residence built in the Little Italy neighborhood since WW II. It was also the first legal mixed use building in modern downtown San Diego. Amazingly, it was illegal to live and work in the same building in those years. A PUD was created for the little lot so that both residential and commercial could exist in the same building. Although the building rented immediately with young creative types, it was controversial from the beginning earning the unique honor of receiving an AIA award for design excellence and an Onion for being among the worst designed in San Diego in the same month.
