The two eco-campuses across Bristol Street have been quietly rebuilding their tenant rosters for eighteen months, and by mid-July 2026 the version residents are walking through is meaningfully different from the one they knew a year ago. Not a facelift. A reset.
If you live in Mesa Verde, Halecrest, or anywhere within a five-minute drive of the 405-Bristol interchange, the practical question is not whether the campuses are worth another visit. It is whether you have updated your mental map of them, because the block that used to be a coffee-and-Patagonia detour is now a full-day loop with a cat lounge, a Japanese tea house, and a Mexico City import in various stages of opening.
The reset behind the tenant math
The clearest signal came from The LAB Anti-Mall at 2930 Bristol Street. When Urban Outfitters, one of the anchor tenants, decided to exit rather than shrink, ownership treated the vacancy as a chance to return to the property's original "Little American Business" mantra rather than replace one chain with another. Linda Sadeghi, who leads The LAB and designed the Costa Mesa development, told the Orange County Business Journal that the anchor space is being carved into new footprints ranging from 600 to 1,500 square feet, which she described as the sweet spot for smaller tenants, with a larger footprint carved out for a full-service eatery. Six new stores were planned for the space, with roughly 30 percent of leases signed at the time of that early-2025 conversation and the balance in letters of intent.
Read against The CAMP's own 2026 slate across the street at 2937 Bristol, the pattern is consistent. The CAMP entered 2026 announcing six grand openings, framed less as a leasing push and more as an editing of the food-and-retail mix around the campus's stated focus on independent operators. Daydrift reopened a refreshed café early in the year. Chafinity Matcha followed. Purrs in Paradise, Costa Mesa's first cat lounge, is next. Maleza, a Baja-inflected concept from Drift Palm Springs, is on its way. A new sushi concept is preparing to debut. That is a lot of first-and-only concepts on one parcel.
For a resident, the interpretation matters more than the count. A center leaning into small-format independents behaves differently from one leaning into national anchors. Hours are more variable. Grand openings cluster on Saturdays. Weekday lunch capacity is smaller than the parking lot suggests. Weekend afternoons will feel busier this fall than they did last fall, and the two-block Bristol strip will absorb more of Newport's evening traffic than it used to.
What is actually open right now
Skip the press-release version. Here is what a Costa Mesa resident can walk into this month:
- Chafinity Matcha at The CAMP. Grand opening was a ribbon cutting on Saturday, April 11 at 9 a.m., followed by a full day of matcha programming in the courtyard. The concept sources matcha directly from Japan and pairs it with house-made plant-based milks, which is the kind of specificity you do not usually see in a suburban café rollout.
- Daydrift, reopened. The refreshed café space is quickly becoming a coffee-and-matcha default on the campus, and the reopening bought The CAMP a second morning-drink option before Chafinity arrived.
- The standing food-and-drink roster. Mesa Lounge continues to run its retractable-roof late-night program with small plates and cocktails. Salty Bear holds down the craft-beer slot. Slurpin' Ramen and Wine Lab remain the two most reliable weekday sit-downs. These are the businesses you are still routing your Tuesday lunch through.
- Maleza, opening this summer. The Baja-Mexican concept from Drift Palm Springs is preparing to open at The CAMP. Watch for a soft-opening window before Labor Day.
- The LAB's new small-business slots. The former Urban Outfitters footprint is being subdivided. Tenant announcements have been staged rather than dumped, so if you have not walked the interior courtyard since spring, you are looking at a different storefront lineup.
The Thursday-morning block
The programming schedule is where the campuses now differentiate themselves from every other Costa Mesa retail corner. The CAMP's public calendar this summer includes free outdoor morning yoga in the courtyard with DJ Crisanto Santa Ana and instructor Tracy Bui, weekly acoustic musicians rotating through the same courtyard, and periodic themed maker markets, including a bread-themed pop-up in late June with a live string quartet and twenty vendors.
For a resident, that translates into a real weekday rhythm rather than a special-occasion visit. A Thursday looks like this: yoga in the courtyard, coffee at Daydrift or matcha at Chafinity, an hour of email at a courtyard table, an early lunch at Slurpin' Ramen or Wine Lab, then a walk across Bristol into The LAB before the afternoon traffic on the 55 rebuilds. None of the individual pieces is new. The density of them on one block is.
The signal to watch is Saturday morning grand openings. Any weekend that Chafinity, Maleza, or a Purrs in Paradise soft launch collides with the courtyard maker market will functionally close the surface lot by 10 a.m. Locals who care about parking should default to the north end of the property or arrive before 9.
The Purrs in Paradise question
The most-asked question at The CAMP this summer has been whether the cat lounge is actually happening. The answer is yes, with unusually specific conditions attached.
On November 10, 2025, the Costa Mesa Planning Commission voted 7–0 to approve a conditional use permit for Purrs in Paradise at 2981 Bristol Street, Suite B3. The vote adopted a CEQA exemption under Guideline §15301 for existing facilities and cleared PCUP25-0011 subject to a set of operating conditions, per the commission's public docket. Assistant Planner Jeffrey Raimondo described the site as a 27,191-square-foot parcel with 28 parking spaces, and the approved business plan limits the lounge to twelve guests at a time with up to fifteen adoptable cats on site. The commission also added conditions on hours and children's access.
Two practical takeaways. First, the twelve-guest cap means reservations will be the operative currency. Do not plan to walk in on a Saturday. Second, the "adoptable cats" framing is meaningful. This is not a themed café. It is a small-scale adoption pipeline attached to a retail-facing lounge, which is a different social contract with the visitor than a pet store, and it explains the parking-and-access conditions in the CUP.
A resident's Saturday, sketched
If you have not been to the block since March, here is a version of a Saturday that captures what has changed:
- Arrive at The CAMP by 9 a.m. and park on the north end.
- Coffee at Daydrift or a matcha flight at Chafinity. Ten minutes in the courtyard.
- Walk the courtyard's current pop-up or maker market if the calendar has one that day.
- Cross Bristol to The LAB. Check the reworked storefronts inside the former Urban Outfitters footprint. New tenants are being staged rather than opened en masse, so the lineup you saw in March is not the lineup you will see today.
- Late lunch back at The CAMP at Slurpin' Ramen, Wine Lab, or Salty Bear.
- Evening pivot. Mesa Lounge with the retractable roof open, or hold the reservation for Maleza once it opens.
The whole loop is walkable, is under a mile from the residential blocks on either side of Baker, and is designed to work at the pace of someone who lives here rather than someone driving in from Irvine for a single reservation.
What to watch for the rest of the year
The two variables that will change the block again before December: the exact opening date for Maleza and the phased tenant announcements at The LAB. The CAMP has been staggering its openings to avoid overloading any single weekend, and The LAB has said tenant reveals are staged rather than batch-announced. Both approaches favor residents over destination visitors. If you follow The CAMP's calendar rather than its social feed, you will hear about grand openings a week before the crowd does.
The larger read is simple. Costa Mesa's independent-retail identity, which the city has traded on for two decades, is being actively defended on this specific stretch of Bristol in 2026. The tenant math on both campuses is being edited toward small operators, first-and-only concepts, and programming that assumes the visitor is coming back next Thursday. For residents, that is a rare piece of good news about a retail corner staying the version of itself you actually wanted.
If you are weighing a move within Costa Mesa, a sale in Mesa Verde or Eastside, or an investor question about how the Bristol corridor's evening pull affects rents on the surrounding blocks, Jade Larney is available for a consultation and complimentary home valuation. Request a Consultation & Free Home Valuation.
