Harbor and Victoria Has Quietly Become the Westside's Errand Run

In under a year, Costa Mesa's Westside has gained an errand loop that runs across three neighboring addresses on Harbor Boulevard, at the corner of Victoria Street. 2170 Harbor was a 99 Cents Only Store and now holds a Trader Joe's and a Kahoots pet store. 2300 Harbor is Mercado González, which added a pozole puesto in July and a coffee bar in September. 2200 Harbor, between them, is the empty former At Home building, and the city's planning commission has now approved changes to turn it into a Dick's House of Sport.

Two of these three properties were left empty by national retailers in recent years. Their replacements filled in one storefront at a time, and they have done it on a schedule that's easy to lose track of if you're just driving past.

The 99 Cents Only building, refilled in two halves

The first half came back with a crowd. Trader Joe's opened its Costa Mesa store, Store 290, at 9 a.m. on Thursday, Dec. 11, 2025, at 2170 Harbor Blvd. It's a 9,541-square-foot store in half of the old 99 Cents Only space at Victoria Street, according to the Orange County Register. The Daily Pilot reported that about 100 people were in line for the opening. The staff was a mix of new hires and employees transferred from nearby Trader Joe's stores.

The second half took almost ten more months. On Oct. 1, 2026, Kahoots opened in Suite 150 at the same address, the Register reported this week. Kahoots is a Southern California chain that has sold pet products since 1987. Its first feed store opened in Moorpark in 1990, and its Ramona store, opened in 1995, later became company headquarters. It now has stores from San Diego County to Huntington Beach. The Costa Mesa store stocks food, toys, beds and wellness items for a range of companion animals.

The two halves don't share a timetable, so the order of your stops matters. Kahoots is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday. That is the earliest posted closing time among the stops in this post. A grocery run after work and a pet-food run after work aren't the same trip until Sunday.

Mercado González kept adding while the corner filled in

Across Victoria, at 2300 Harbor, Mercado González has kept changing. The González family's first Northgate Market opened in Anaheim in 1980, in a former liquor store. The family now runs more than 40 stores in California, and the Costa Mesa supermarket and indoor mercado opened in 2023, as the Daily Pilot recounted this fall.

Three newer arrivals inside are worth knowing by name.

Cenaduría Doña Tere marked its opening on July 16 with a "Ringing of the Bell." The custom comes from towns across Mexico, where a bell calls people together. The puesto is named for the family matriarch. Its menu is short: pozole verde with chicken, pozole rojo with pork, chicken flautas, and blue corn sopes de lomo. The Daily Pilot reported prices from $15 for a single serving of pozole to $70 for a paquetazo, the family package. Large tables for groups line the nearby wall. The family patriarch already has his own puesto in the hall, Carnitas Don Miguel, which serves Michoacán-style carnitas made with the recipe from the original Anaheim market.

Pradera now serves a Mexican-inspired brunch menu in the space that used to be Maizano.

Casa Libre opened last, on a later date than first planned. In July, a González family member told the Daily Pilot the café would open in mid-August. The grand opening took place on Sept. 24, with staff handing out coffee samples. The café is a partnership between the González family and the Taormina/Creighton family. Natalie Taormina and Jeremy Creighton were among the original founders of Common Room Roasters. Casa Libre features single-origin coffees from Mexico, according to the Daily Pilot. In July, the family described it as a café for people who want brewed coffee and for people who want to buy beans.

Casa Libre's hours have also changed since opening week. The schedule printed in the Register's preview doesn't match what the café now posts. As of Oct. 10, Casa Libre's own site lists 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

Churrería El Moro is still in the hall. It's the Mexico City churro maker, founded in 1935, that made its U.S. debut at Mercado González. On Sept. 10 it opened a second Orange County location in La Habra, the Register noted, near a Northgate store that is being converted into a second Mercado González. The Costa Mesa hall is now a model the family is copying elsewhere.

What the corner looks like this October

Here is where each storefront stands as of Oct. 12, 2026.

Casa Libre opens at 6 a.m. and Kahoots closes at 5 p.m. on weekdays, so the loop runs best early in the day. On a weekday, a practical order looks like this:

1. Coffee at Casa Libre once it opens at 6 a.m.
2. Groceries next door at Trader Joe's.
3. Pet supplies at Kahoots after 9 a.m.
4. Pozole or flautas at Cenaduría Doña Tere if the errands run into lunch.

Mercado González hasn't posted events for the rest of this season. Its Día de los Muertos quesadilla class for kids took place on Saturday, Oct. 10, and the Northgate event page currently shows no upcoming listings for the mercado.

The dark building in the middle is approved to become the biggest draw

2200 Harbor is the gap between the two refilled ends of the block. The 90,458-square-foot building used to be an At Home store. At Home announced a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in June 2025 and said it would close 26 stores nationwide by Sept. 30. The Costa Mesa store was one of them, and it closed in 2025.

On Monday, Sept. 14, Costa Mesa's planning commissioners unanimously approved a height variance for Dick's House of Sport, the Daily Pilot reported. The variance raises the allowed height from 30 feet to 50 feet, which leaves room for a larger entryway and a 40-foot glass roof over an indoor climbing wall. The plans also include a putting green with golf simulators and sports cages. A city assistant planner told commissioners these features let shoppers try products in the store before buying them.

The staffing numbers show how much busier this building could get. A representative of the design firm working for Dick's said House of Sport stores typically employ 81 to 109 people, compared with 34 to 55 at a regular Dick's Sporting Goods. The building shares its plaza with a Planet Fitness, Mattress City and a number of smaller shops and services.

No opening date has been reported. Casa Libre's opening slipped from mid-August to late September, about six weeks, and a 90,000-square-foot conversion with a new glass roof has many more steps to go through.

Why the empty half was the one to watch

The 99 Cents Only building shows how this stretch refills. Trader Joe's opened to a line out the door. The other half of the same building took almost ten more months to open, and it went to a regional chain that started with a feed store in Moorpark. Inside Mercado González, the new arrivals are family projects: a pozole puesto named for the matriarch, and a café started by two families whose grandfathers built businesses side by side in Anaheim.

The At Home building is the last large vacancy at this corner, and the next public milestone for it is an opening date from Dick's.

At CART Group, Inc., we follow how buildings like the old 99 Cents Only and At Home stores get reused, because those changes shape daily routines around Costa Mesa's Westside. If you'd like a local read on how the Harbor Boulevard corridor is changing, Schedule a Strategy Call.