WAVE RESORT PROJECT CHANGES DEVELOPERS

The artificial wave lagoon, 300-room resort hotel, retail stores, offices and up to 700 homes proposed for the 92acre site of the former Oceanside drive-in theaters and swap meet has a new developer.

“We are no longer involved with the project,” said Brad Termini, CEO of Encinitasbased Zephyr Partners, in a brief email Tuesday. “We sold our interest to our (joint venture partner N4FL Worldwide) who now owns the property.”

N4FL Worldwide, also known as N4FL Development, has offices in Encinitas and Rancho Santa Fe. The company’s vice president, Michael Grehl, was senior vice president at Zephyr from November 2018 until March of this year when he started his current job.

“N4FL is a local real estate company which has completed projects throughout California including a mixeduse project in the Village of Carlsbad called State

& Oak, as well as developments in the Lake Tahoe area,” Grehl said by email Thursday. “We’re excited to work with the city of Oceanside.”

Zephyr and N4FL were partners on the Oceanside project until a short-lived legal battle that appears to be a factor in the split.

A San Diego Superior Court lawsuit filed in May shows Zephyr agreed to borrow up to $12.7 million from N4FL to finance the Oceanside development, known as Ocean Kamp, and a separate mixed-use project called Solana 101 under way at Coast Highway 101 and Dahlia Drive in Solana Beach. The two companies had a dispute over loan payments and collateral, but the lawsuit was dismissed in September based on a undisclosed settlement.

Oceanside Principal Planner Sergio Madera said Tuesday the project appears to be on track under the new ownership.

“We are working ... on moving the project, as submitted, forward and expect a resubmittal of project plans and technical studies in the next 30 days,” Madera said.

The site is north of Mission Avenue near the city’s

airport. About 20 of the 92 acres would be preserved as open space with bike trails and pedestrian paths connecting to the nearby San Luis Rey River trail and the Alex Road skatepark.

A previous developer obtained approval in 2008 to build what would have been the city’s largest shopping center, called The Pavilion, on the site with fast-food restaurants, a movie theater and multiple big-box stores. But that project never broke ground.

The Pavilion project included no residential component, which developers and city planners say would not be practical today. Oceanside, like most cities in San Diego County, has a shortage of affordable housing and faces state mandates to build more.

Zephyr, under approvals the city granted to the previous developer, completed a monthslong grading project earlier this year to prepare the site by trucking in 450,000 cubic yards of fill material to raise the property above the San Luis Rey River flood plain. Nothing has been done since then, and last week only two empty construction trailers remained on the site.

Zephyr has completed a number of luxury residential projects in San Diego County, including the Summerhouse condominiums

on Ocean Street in Carlsbad, the Level 15 townhomes in Escondido, and Las Ventanas, a community of 13 single-family homes in Fallbrook.

The company also proposed the Marisol Resort, a plan to build 251 hotel rooms, 76 privately owned villas, retail shops and restaurants on 16 acres of coastal bluffs at the northern edge of Del Mar. A citizens initiative backed by Zephyr placed the project on the Del Mar primary ballot in March, but it faced widespread opposition and voters defeated it.

Grehl and other Zephyr employees unveiled the water park idea in a community meeting in June 2019. About 100 people attended the meeting at St. Mary Star of the Sea School in Oceanside.

“The new world is that the consumer wants to have an experience,” Grehl said at the time.

He compared the Oceanside plan to successful artificial wave parks that attract surfers to inland locations in Lemoore and in Waco, Texas.

Four drive-in movie screens occupied the Oceanside site for more than 30 years. The theaters closed in 1999 and the screens were demolished in 2016. The property continued to host a weekend swap meet until 2019.