Zov’s will open a fifth Orange County restaurant in Costa Mesa in late 2026, taking over the former Playa Mesa space at 428 East 17th Street. At the same time, the company’s Tustin flagship sits at the center of a mixed-use redevelopment that will reopen the restaurant in a larger space while a developer builds housing around it.

Both moves come from the same position of strength, and the company’s history explains why. Zov’s has operated in Orange County since 1987, when chef Zov Karamardian opened the original in Tustin, and three generations of the family now run the business. It serves Mediterranean and California cuisine in Tustin, Irvine, Newport Coast, and San Clemente, where it opened on Avenida Del Mar in April, and Costa Mesa will make five.

A Developer Builds Around the Flagship

The Tustin flagship sits in the Enderle Center, at East 17th Street and Enderle Center Drive. Burnham-Ward Properties, a Newport Beach developer, bought the center in August 2026 and is redeveloping it as Campo on 17th, a project that adds roughly 60,000 square feet of commercial space and 100 for-sale townhomes, with Intracorp handling the build. Retail leasing is already underway, with units running from about 988 to 6,880 square feet.

The restaurant will stay open through construction and then reopen as an anchor tenant in a fully expanded and remodeled 8,200-square-foot space. For a project that mixes retail with for-sale housing, a long-tenured restaurant with a local following is the tenant that protects foot traffic while the rest of the site is rebuilt. As one trade analysis of the deal put it, a long-tenured food anchor can be the difference between a phased project that leases and one that stalls. Newport Beach is running a version of the same play on Mariners’ Mile, where restaurants are being written into the ground floor of mixed-use development.

On a redevelopment like this one, brand equity is the reason a developer structures a phased project around keeping an operator open rather than clearing the site. It shows up in lease terms, in tenant improvement dollars, and eventually in what the business is worth.

Using a Vacancy to Grow

The Costa Mesa move is the other side of the same confidence. Playa Mesa, a Mexican-inspired restaurant on Costa Mesa’s 17th Street, closed, and instead of waiting on a ground-up build, Zov’s is stepping into a space that already carries a restaurant’s infrastructure. A second-generation space comes with hood systems, grease interception, heavy electrical, and a dining room that a previous tenant paid to build, which cuts both the cost and the timeline of opening the next unit.

Who absorbs that kind of vacancy tells you how a market is sorting itself. In San Diego, proven operators have been the ones filling shuttered restaurant spaces, and the same pattern holds in Orange County, where the county’s legacy brands are the ones expanding. A capitalized operator with four locations and a loyal base can look at a closed restaurant and see a discounted entry point, while a first-timer looks at the same space and sees a lease they cannot underwrite.

Brand Equity Shows Up in the Deal

For Orange County owners, Zov’s is a working example of what a durable local brand is worth once the real estate underneath it changes hands. The operators who get built around, instead of bought out or pushed aside, are the ones whose names carry traffic and whose balance sheets let them act when a neighbor goes dark. A proven concept paired with the capital to move on space is what makes a seller worth representing and a buyer worth taking to a landlord. An operator weighing an exit or an expansion in Orange County should know early whether the business has built the kind of equity a landlord or a future buyer will pay to keep, and that answer usually sits in the real estate and the lease as much as in the kitchen.

Sources

Businesses Mentioned

Zov's Playa Mesa Burnham-Ward Properties Intracorp