The Ellwood, a new restaurant replacing the former Beachside Bar-Café, is expected to open this fall at Goleta Beach after a series of delays stalled progress at the location.

The Ellwood was approved as the new concessionaire by the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors in 2021. The board approved a 10-year lease with Omar Khashen and Joe “Diggs” Dies to operate the restaurant at Goleta Beach.

Now, despite a series of setbacks in the past few years, Khashen said he expects the restaurant to open this year.

“We’re in full-swing construction and making some good progress,” Khashen told Noozhawk. “I think we’ll probably be wrapping up construction some point in August or early September, and then getting the staff hired and trained. So, I think opening will probably be, realistically, early fall.”

Progress was stalled for multiple reasons, including construction.

One of the major issues was renovating the former Beachside building, which was built in the 1930s. The property was originally constructed as a military facility.

The team originally thought that repairs to the restaurant would be cosmetic, consisting of a furniture and fixture remodel. Instead, construction crews had to work on structural issues, including plumbing and flooring.

Other issues were caused by the storms that hit Santa Barbara County in 2023, which flooded the dining room, patio and other parts of the restaurant.

“We had to kind of rework the design of the outside wall just to improve it, so should the tides ever come back, we’re not kind of left in that situation again,” Khashen said.

The new seawall not only took time for engineers to design, but building the new wall led to other issues.

During the construction, crews discovered a power line that was installed before the building was built and ran directly under the property. More importantly, the line ran under the area where they needed to construct parts of the new seawall.

The line, which fed power to the Goleta Pier, needed to be redirected and moved. Khashen and Dies had to work closely with the county to redirect the line through the parking lot and install a power station across from the restaurant.

On top of that, the county was busy with repairs of its own. Goleta Beach Park, which the county operates, sustained damage during the 2023 storms.

As the county worked to repair parts of the pier, Ellwood crews paused construction to stay out of the way.

Besides the reconstruction, Khashen and Dies had to deal with a lawsuit that was leveled at them by the owner of SeaLegs and PRJKT Concessions Inc. in early 2023. The lawsuit was officially dropped later that year.

Looking Ahead

Moving forward, Khashen said he wants the community to know that the operators of The Ellwood want to be in Goleta for the long haul.

The name Ellwood was chosen to honor one of the founding members of Goleta, Ellwood Cooper.

“We did a little homework and research on the history of the area, and obviously guys like Hollister have a lot of stuff named after him,” Khashen said. “Ellwood Cooper was kind of another person on that level. And so, we like the name. We like the history of it.”

The restaurant owners also chose to incorporate the Ellwood Queen into the logo. The Ellwood Queen is a lemon-scented gum tree that Cooper planted on his western Goleta ranch in 1887.

Khashen said he also is excited for people to see what the restaurant has planned.

Even though The Ellwood will be somewhat similar to the Beachside Bar-Café, the new owners are adding new features. One of them will be the outdoor event space that can be booked for events, weddings and live music. They also plan to book local bands.

The owners also plan to renovate the local snack shack. It will have a menu that resembles the one at restaurant, plus other items throughout the day.

The menu will consist of coffee and doughnuts in the morning, and sandwiches, salads, barbecue and pizzas in the afternoon and evening.

Khashen said the idea is to give people a way to pick up a simple meal to enjoy lunch or dinner at the park without having to go to the restaurant.

“We’re excited to get open and share the space,” he said. “It’s been such a long project at this point. We know people are kind of chomping at the bit to get back in here and really enjoy this county park and [enjoy] such a beautiful space.”