In a major first for the festival business, a three-day music festival in Southern California is opening a permanent year-round social club and restaurant in the middle of its festival site, hoping to keep the party going 365 days a year.
On Tuesday (April 29), Allen Sanford, founder of the BeachLife festival in Redondo Beach, Calif., and his business partner Rob Lissner officially opened the doors to the California Surf Club, a 22,000-square-foot public restaurant and private social club that will serve as the centerpiece of this year’s three-day festival headlined by Lenny Kravitz, Sublime and Alanis Morissette.
Sanford, a long-time restaurant owner and venue operator in Los Angeles’ iconic South Bay region, has been working on the adaptive reuse project for several years, leasing and rehabbing two harbor front buildings near Redondo Beach’s popular tourist pier into a members-only lifestyle club and public restaurant on the Redondo Beach waterfront.
“The California Surf Club is two buildings,” Sanford explained to Billboard. “The south building is a membership club. The north building is a restaurant. During the festival, the south building will be open for all the members of the club. It’ll be open to artists and to some different ticket types. And then the north building will actually be part of the VIP experience.”
Allen noted that “the building is encompassed into the footprint of the festival, which is fairly rare. And it’s all the same vibe and culture of BeachLife.”
Designed by architect Stephen Jones and interior designer Steven Jones, the club mixes casual dining with a coastal-modern casual environment, where members who pay $350 per month can dine, play billiards with friends and relax near a warm fire pit. The club is decorated throughout with vintage surf art and artifacts, floor-to-ceiling glass, reclaimed wood accents and lush landscaping.
There’s currently a waiting list to join, Sanford explained, noting that more than 400 people have already signed up for the private club, which will serve as the unofficial headquarters of Beachlife Festival during the May 2-4 festival.
The California Surf Club also includes the Paddle Perch, a waterfront area outfitted with club-owned standup paddleboards, kayaks and outrigger canoes, as well as hot showers for surfers coming out of the water and a surfboard valet service. It even boasts several performance spaces, including a stage-ready room with a Wrensilva turntable console, high-end AV system, and large-format screen for live music, surf flicks, sports, and special events.
Under director of memberships Chris Brown, California Surf Club offers four membership tiers — Founders, Classic, Ambassador and Groundswell — as well as limited day-rate access. In addition to Sanford and Lissner, California Surf Club is led by president Jeff Jones and COO Jerry Garbus, along with Pennywise frontman Jim Lindberg, musician Donavon Frankenreiter, professional surfer Chris Frohoff, athlete Danny Ching, Quality Seafood President Jeff Jones, Redondo Beach School Superintendent Dr. Nikki Wesley, former Redondo Beach police chief Keith Kauffman and more.
The north building of the Surf Club boasts the public-facing waterfront restaurant with more than 250 seats across indoor dining rooms, shaded patios, firepit lounges and an Airstream courtyard. Led by executive chef Dennis Horton, the restaurant includes live-fire cooking, a lagoon-facing walk-up window with a casual “Lagoon Menu” for beachgoers, a cold seafood bar with shucked-to-order oysters, ceviche, sashimi, and crab, and performance spaces for guest DJ sets.
“The California Surf Club is like a surfer’s second home,” Sanford tells Billboard. “As a 47-year-old father, the only place I can go out to is a restaurant and that’s uncomfortable a lot of times — there’s nothing recreationally to do with my friends and family where we can hang out and enjoy the ocean. It’s literally designed to be your friend’s house that lives on the beach that has really good food and drink. It’s a place to just come and hang out with like-minded people.”
