On March 1, Rincon Brewery poured its last pint at 205 Santa Barbara Street and posted a goodbye on Instagram, calling the closure bittersweet after nearly six years in the space. Seven weeks later, on April 20, South Coast Deli opened its doors at the same address, its fourth Santa Barbara County location and its first foray into the Funk Zone. The grand opening landed on May 7, timed deliberately to Santa Barbara's First Thursday Art Walk, so the new tenant's first real crowd came from people already out walking the district for something else.
That turnaround, brewery to sandwich counter in under two months, is normal here. It's also the whole story of how the Funk Zone has worked for twenty years: buildings change hands and change purpose constantly, but almost nobody ever builds anything from scratch. That's about to change at the corner of Garden and Yanonali, where a project six years in the making is finally clearing its last hurdles toward construction, and it will be the first structure in the district's modern history designed as itself rather than converted from something else.
Same Address, New Sign, Old Rhythm
The space at 205 Santa Barbara Street has a short memory but a long habit. Before Rincon Brewery moved in during the summer of 2020, the address was Laplace Wine Bar & Shop, which closed in late 2018. Before that, something else. The building itself hasn't changed. What changes is the pour list and the signage out front.
South Coast Deli, founded in 1991 by Jim and Darlene St. John, isn't new to Santa Barbara. The chain is entering its 35th year in business, and this is its fourth county location. Owner Jim St. John told Noozhawk the Funk Zone brought "a whole new level of fresh energy" within days of opening, which is one way of saying the deli walked into a spot that already had foot traffic built in. The location keeps weekday hours, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Saturday, which is a different rhythm than the brewery's evening pours but the same building, the same corner, the same 205 Santa Barbara Street that's hosted a rotating cast of tenants for years.
This is the Funk Zone's actual operating model. Warehouses that once held marine repair shops and produce sorting became wineries. Wineries became beer halls. Beer halls become sandwich shops. Noozhawk's own reporting on the district's next major project put it plainly: the neighborhood's businesses have "risen organically, without a city master plan," and most of what you're standing in front of on any given weekend used to be something with a completely different purpose. That's not decline. It's just how a former industrial pocket absorbs demand without anyone pouring new concrete.
The Corner That's Finally Breaking The Pattern
Which is what makes The Platform worth watching. In December 2025, the project cleared a vote from Santa Barbara's Historic Landmarks Commission, unanimously supporting design changes and moving the 26,000-square-foot, two-story development at Garden and Yanonali streets closer to construction. That approval capped a process that started years earlier: Runyon Group, the developers behind The Post on Cabrillo Boulevard, purchased the Yanonali site back in 2020. A previous retail proposal for the same corner had been approved back in 2019, but those approvals expired in 2022 before ground was ever broken, forcing a resubmission and a fresh round of review.
Unlike everything else in walking distance, The Platform isn't a conversion. As proposed, the ground floor will house restaurants, shops, and cafes, with a central open-air courtyard, curved rooflines, and native landscaping tying the design back to the neighborhood around it. The second floor is planned for studios, showrooms, and office space, a layout that mirrors how much of the Funk Zone already mixes commerce with working artists, just built new instead of carved out of an old fish cannery or lumber warehouse.
Runyon partner David Fishbein described the merchandising approach in an interview with local blog Siteline, saying the project will keep a "focus on unique independent boutiques and great local chef/restaurateurs," the same kind of small-operator mix that already fills the surrounding blocks. The difference is that every other building on those blocks was here before it became what it is now. This one won't have that history. It'll be new from the footings up, in a district where that hasn't happened in most residents' memory.
No construction start date has been announced as of this writing, so the fencing hasn't gone up yet. But with the Historic Landmarks Commission's approval in hand, the project is closer to breaking ground than at any point since Runyon Group bought the land.
What's Already Running While You Wait
None of this slows down the neighborhood's monthly rhythm. SB Funk Zone Live, the district's recurring block party, has settled into a Last Friday format, five to eight in the evening, with confirmed 2026 dates on May 31, July 26, September 27, and December 6. That means the next one lands in less than two weeks from today, on September 27.
The format hasn't changed much since it relaunched: participating venues stay open late, each one folding in some kind of art element, whether that's a gallery show, a musician set up on the sidewalk, or a pop-up table from a local craftsperson. Past editions have pulled in wine pours at La Lieff and Fess Parker's Funk Zone tasting room, spirits tastings at Cutler Artisan Spirits, and shopping stops at boutiques like Dylan Star, with The Valley Project among the newer tasting rooms to join the lineup.
If you're planning to walk it, South Coast Deli's weekday hours mean it won't be open for the Friday evening crowd, but the sandwich shop is worth keeping in mind for a lunch stop before an evening out, especially if you're parking once and staying in the district for a few hours. The Funk Zone's paid lot on Garden Street tends to have room outside of major holidays, which makes it a reasonable spot to leave the car for an evening of walking the circuit on foot.
What Changes And What Doesn't
The Funk Zone's appeal has never depended on permanence. Tenants turn over, taprooms become delis, wine bars become breweries and back again, and the district's character survives because it was never built around any single occupant staying forever. That's precisely why The Platform stands out. It's not replacing a business that closed. It's replacing nothing, going up on a corner that's sat through two rounds of city approval and a purchase agreement now six years old, in a neighborhood that has otherwise never needed anyone to build something from the ground up.
For residents who already treat the Funk Zone as a regular stop, the next twelve months will look like two different clocks running side by side. One clock moves in weeks, the same clock that turned Rincon Brewery into South Coast Deli, and it will keep turning over tenants inside buildings that already exist. The other clock has been running since 2020, and it's about to produce something the neighborhood hasn't seen: a building nobody gutted, converted, or rebranded, just built.
Watching both is part of what makes this stretch of Santa Barbara worth paying attention to right now, whether you're stopping in for a sandwich on a Tuesday afternoon or walking the Last Friday circuit on September 27.
For those thinking further ahead, about what a corner like Garden and Yanonali might mean for property values nearby, or how a neighborhood's development pipeline factors into a purchase or sale, Neyshia Go and The Go Group bring the kind of on-the-ground familiarity with Santa Barbara's shifting pockets that only comes from tracking them closely. Schedule a confidential consultation whenever you're ready to talk through what a changing block can mean for your next move.
