Cohn restaurants buy $1.8M building for commissary kitchen

The Cohn Restaurant Group has spent more than $1.8 million to acquire a former restaurant space to serve as a commissary kitchen for its expanding portfolio of dining venues.

The 5,500-square-foot building, located on Adobe Falls Road north of San Diego State, was formerly occupied by the Junk House Restaurant, a gastro pub that opened in 2015 and closed a little more than a year later.

Although the primary objective of the sale was to have a large kitchen space for catering and prep work for the Cohn restaurants, a portion of the newly acquired building will be reserved for a small eatery, said co-owner David Cohn.

“We had been looking for a commissary kitchen but in more industrial areas,” he said. “But this is a really large kitchen that’s much too large to support the restaurant there and it’s brand new and in a very central location, right off Interstate 8 and close to other freeways.”

Cohn noted that the owners of the Junk House had done a complete remodel of the restaurant space, which for years before that had been home to Nicolosi’s, an area landmark.

Cohn said the restaurant building’s newer kitchen will prove useful during busier times of the year when its restaurants near the coast and in Balboa Park are much fuller. There are currently 22 Cohn restaurants in the county, from Oceanside to Imperial Beach.

He said he had been looking for a space in industrial areas of the city but the Adobe Falls site came about unexpectedly.

“It’s in a hidden spot, but in a great area,” said Cohn.

Brokering the sale was Del Mar-based Location Matters, a commercial real estate firm with a focus on restaurants.

The restaurant group will be spending some time talking to the community to get its ideas for what kind of eatery it would like to see in the Adobe Falls building. It will be several months before the new restaurant will open because it will take time to acquire a liquor license for the business, Cohn said.

While it is more typical for the Cohn Restaurant Group to lease space for its restaurants, it has purchased some properties, including Bo-beau in Ocean Beach, the former OB Warehouse, and the Coaster Saloon in Mission Beach.

lori.weisberg@sduniontribune.com

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Twitter: @loriweisberg