Liberty Station and Point Loma Harbor: Public Market, Arts District and Shelter Island

Positioned between San Diego International Airport and the coastal bluffs of Point Loma, the historic Naval Training Center, reborn as Liberty Station, and the neighboring marinas of Shelter Island and America's Cup Harbor form one of San Diego's most rewarding waterfront neighborhoods. For more than seventy years starting in 1923, hundreds of thousands of U.S. Navy recruits passed through boot camp inside these arched cream-stucco buildings. After the base closed in the 1990s, the city preserved the entire 361-acre Spanish Colonial Revival campus, turning former mess halls, barracks, and parade grounds into a lively food hall, arts district, and waterfront park.

Liberty Public Market and the Historic Mess Hall

Start your visit at the northern end of the campus inside Liberty Public Market (2820 Historic Decatur Road), housed inside a cavernous 1920s commissary warehouse. Open seven days a week, this indoor-outdoor artisan food hall brings together more than thirty local San Diego food stalls under exposed wooden rafters. You can walk the aisles sampling fresh Maine lobster rolls, seared ahi tuna poke, handmade empanadas, French pastries, Filipino street food, and Argentine parrilla meats, then carry your tray out to the sprawling dog-friendly garden patio or grab a pint of local craft beer from the Bottlecraft bar.

Right across the palm-lined walkways, the former base command buildings and barracks make up the Arts District Liberty Station. Here, long two-story Spanish arcades shelter working artist studios, dance companies, museums (including the Visions Museum of Textile Art and the New Americans Museum), ceramic workshops, independent bookshops, and an outdoor sculpture garden where planes taking off from the nearby airport climb overhead. South of the buildings, the former recruit parade deck (Ingram Plaza) stretches down to a calm boat channel lined with paved running paths and kayak launches.

Shelter Island, Bali Hai and Humphreys by the Bay

Driving or cycling ten minutes south down Rosecrans Street brings you to Shelter Island, a mile-long landscaped sandbank connected to Point Loma by a narrow causeway and surrounded by thousands of sailing yachts. Walking the flat bayside promenade along Shelter Island Drive offers postcard views across the water toward downtown and Coronado, passing the bronze Yokohama Friendship Bell (gifted by San Diego's Japanese sister city in 1958) at the southern tip, a public fishing pier, and the landmark Polynesian tiki architecture of the 1954 Bali Hai restaurant at the northern tip.

Halfway along Shelter Island sits Humphreys Concerts by the Bay, an intimate fourteen-hundred-seat outdoor amphitheater tucked between palm trees and a yacht marina, where concertgoers can even watch summer evening performances from kayaks and paddleboards floating directly in the adjacent boat basin. Just north of Shelter Island around America's Cup Harbor (Scott Street at Emerson Street), commercial sportfishing boats tie up right outside classic dockside seafood markets where you can eat fresh fish and chips overlooking the fleet.

How to Get There

MTS Bus Route 28 runs directly from the Old Town Transit Center straight through the heart of Liberty Station and down Rosecrans Street to Shelter Island in about ten to fifteen minutes.