A new chapter on the Embarcadero

Bayside Landing replaces three ageing visitor units on the Morro Bay waterfront with seven purpose-built suites, a small restaurant, and a rebuilt public wharf.

What is being built

The project spans four parcels on the Embarcadero. Three existing visitor-serving units come down. In their place go seven single-storey guest cottages, each 384 square feet, built on the wharf over the water and supported on steel and treated piles.

The existing building at 495 Embarcadero is being remodelled — three visitor units above, with retail, kitchen and marine-related retail below. Reggie’s Place, at 480 square feet, sits at the southern end beside a new pocket park.

The wharf itself is demolished and rebuilt, with a new elevator, stairs and decking, roughly 85 steel and treated piles beneath it, and a new five-slip floating dock system.

The public side

A condition of the approval — and, frankly, the part of the project we are most pleased with — is that a good deal of it is not the hotel. A new public harborwalk runs the length of the site, north and south, tying the street sidewalk to a new observation platform over the water.

Those spaces are open to everyone, whether or not you ever stay here. See the property for what is there.

Design

The architecture comes from Land/Sea Interface. The governing idea was to build something that belongs on a working harbour rather than something imported from a resort somewhere else: modest single-storey volumes, gabled standing-seam roofs, cedar and painted shiplap, and a band of bright painted colour along each cottage’s eave line — a different colour for each.

That detail carries inside. Each suite repeats its cottage’s colour along the ceiling edge where the wall meets the rafters.

Status

The project holds a conditional use permit — CUP 24-04 — approved by Morro Bay City Council Resolution No. 04-25 — and is currently out to bid for construction. We will publish an opening date here once the build schedule is confirmed.