From most of Cliff Haven, Mariner's Mile is a middle distance. You catch it through the pepper trees on Kings Place, or from a driveway on St. James, or on the walk down to 16th Street: a thin ribbon of Pacific Coast Highway wedged between the bluff and the harbor, punctuated by yacht masts and the occasional Maserati flag. For years the view from the top was largely stable. Car showrooms, brokerage offices, a few durable restaurants, the low white profile of Balboa Bay Resort holding the water's edge.
That view is changing this year, and the change is more coherent than a scattering of new signs suggests. If you live above it, the strip below is starting to work less like a highway you drive past on the way to somewhere and more like the neighborhood's ground floor.
What's actually going in
The headline is Uchi.
