"When we always said we did things from scratch, that means I do that," Lloyd McLenithan told Coastal View News in the last weeks before Clementine's Steak House closed. He kept taking reservations in a yellow legal notepad, writing them in by hand. By the final weekend the book was, in his words, "almost overbooked."
Clementine's set Sunday, October 4 as its last day of service. That was also the closing day of the 40th California Avocado Festival a few blocks away on Linden Avenue. This year the festival wrapped at 6 p.m. Sunday instead of 7. Festival Director Olivia Sorgman told the City Council the street has to reopen by 10, and last year's later finish "was aggressive." On Monday the stages are gone and the downtown is easier to see clearly. One kind of business is closing: a single family or single owner running one room on someone else's land for decades. The kind arriving is different. Most of the next openings on Linden and Carpinteria avenues come from a small number of operators, and each of them holds more than one address.
Fifty Years on Someone Else's Land
Clementine's opened at 4631 Carpinteria Ave. in 1976. The McLenithan chapter started on April 30, 1982, when Irene McLenithan took over the restaurant on her 52nd birthday. Her son Lloyd and daughter Esther joined her, and Lloyd became head chef. The family never owned the property. McLenithan told CVN they had always known that this chapter would end someday. When the building sold, he told Noozhawk, the new owners gave the restaurant two more years. He said he holds no animosity toward them and does not know what will happen to the building next.
Clementine's is one of several closings this year. At Casitas Plaza, Sunny and Jun Han have stopped taking new orders at Casitas Cleaners and plan to close October 30. Sunny bought the business in 1989. In February, Nirasha and Jason Rodriguez closed The Food Liaison's lunch counter at Shepard Place Shops after 13 years and turned the space toward a shared commissary kitchen. By August 23, Field + Fort had opened The Larder in that former counter space on Casitas Pass Road.
The replacement says something about the pattern. The Larder is a Carpinteria outpost of a business that already exists somewhere else. A 13-year local original handed its space to an existing brand opening another location.
The Same Few Names, Address by Address
Walk the Downtown T from the Linden Square courtyard toward the freeway and you keep running into the same operators:
- Linden Square, 700 Linden Ave. Matt LaBrie and Terry Huggins opened the courtyard on May 22, 2025, with Tina's Pizza, Corazón Cocina Sur, Third Window Brewing and a Channel Islands Surfboards shop. CVN described it as reviving a downtown block that had been mothballed for 17 years. Arnie's Rooftop Bar, led by Arnie Sturham, opened above it on April 20 of this year.
- 721 and 701 Linden Ave. Endwell Hospitality, the group behind Monte's in Montecito, has both buildings. Rincon Hill Market is planned for the old Oaxaca Fresh storefront at 721. Next door at 701, the former Palms building, the plan calls for three businesses: Korean barbecue with a grill-your-own option on the ground floor, fine dining on the second floor and a rooftop bar.
- 659 Linden Ave. and beyond. Ryan and Ashley Moore already ran Lucky Llama, Sunburst Wine Bar and Heritage Goods and Supply, which they own with partners. They added a fourth business when they reopened Rincon Designs, the surf shop Ryan's father, Matt Moore, closed in 2025. Matt is still shaping boards.
- 4745 Carpinteria Ave. Justin Klentner and Amanda Masters opened the six-room Rincon Rooms here, two blocks from the main Linden and Carpinteria intersection. The same building also has 24 apartments and a street-facing restaurant. On September 27, Klentner gave the restaurant's name as Rincon General Bodega and Wine Bar. Restaurateurs who have been mentioned in the Michelin Guide will run it, with counter service by day and table service at night, and they are aiming to open by year end.
- 5003 Carpinteria Ave. Ojai Rôtie is bringing its second restaurant, Ojai Rôtie Deux, to the former Giovanni's Pizza corner at Linden and Carpinteria avenues. It announced 40 seats inside, 80 more in a dog-friendly garden, and a wine bar called The Winebox.
That is two Endwell buildings side by side on one block of Linden. Klentner has lodging, apartments and a restaurant under one roof. The Moores run four storefronts. Most of the coming change sits with these few names.
Why the Corner Is Taking Its Time
When operators build several pieces at once, everything runs on construction schedules. The state's public Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control license lookup shows where each project stood as of late September.
At 721 Linden, Rincon Hill Market has The Palms' full liquor license, first issued in August 1967. It moved next door on June 22. Since June 12 the file has carried an under-construction hold, which means no alcohol can be sold until the work is done. It is a restaurant-class license that allows drinks from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. when meals are offered, so the market will have a kitchen along with its produce. It had been aiming to open this summer, and summer has passed.
That transfer left 701 Linden with no license at all. Its old one was canceled June 23. None of the three planned concepts has filed for a new license, which makes The Palms the furthest from opening of everything announced on Linden.
On the corner, Ojai Rôtie announced on July 1 that it planned to open "this fall." Its Carpinteria page still says "Coming Soon," and its beer-and-wine application has been pending since July 10. The rotisserie chicken can arrive before the state rules on the application, but The Winebox cannot pour wine until then.
So this fall, the busiest intersection in town is mostly a set of storefronts showing early "signs of life," as CVN put it in February. On paper, the next six months could bring more openings to the Downtown T than any year since Linden Square opened. None of them has a confirmed date.
What Fifteen Thousand People Can Carry
Downtown business owners have described the effect of new openings in plain terms. Ryan Moore told CVN how it went when Brass Bird Coffee & Kitchen opened in 2022 and when Third Window started selling smash burgers near Dang Burger, which operates inside Sunburst Wine Bar:
"We feel it for about six months, but then things level out again."
His working rule is to take Carpinteria's population of about 15,000 and cut it in half to estimate who might shop or dine in town on a given day. Andre Jackson, who owns Corktree Cellars, described "a lot of dilution" after Linden Square and the reopened Nugget. Jackson has responded by staying open later, booking more live music and showing sports on the screens. Lorraine McIntyre, who serves on the city's Downtown "T" Business Advisory Board, said rents are "not sustainable for small businesses to succeed in the long-term without attracting money from outside the community."
That pressure helps explain the clustering. An operator with a market and a restaurant next door, or rooms upstairs from a wine bar, can spread costs across more than one business. A single owner in a rented building has to make one dining room cover everything. Clementine's did that for half a century, cooking from scratch and serving Wednesday through Sunday from 4:30 to 9 p.m.
Some independent owners are still opening. Peter and Caroline Hernandez opened Coyote's Market, a locally sourced food market at 4945-A Carpinteria Ave., in April. In July, Mayor Natalia Alarcon and Joyful Media owner Regina Ruiz started "Shop Carp," which uses business visits, window stickers and short videos to encourage year-round local spending. Nirasha Rodriguez, closing her own counter, compared the town to a snow globe: "It's so beautiful, but we have to embrace change in order to build the culture and keep it special for future generations."
The next date on the downtown calendar is October 30, Casitas Cleaners' last day. After that, the status line on the state license file for 721 Linden is the clearest signal to watch. When Rincon Hill Market's license changes from issue-and-hold to active, it has 30 days to open its doors.
Many Carpinteria properties have stories like Clementine's, with one family, one building and decades of history. Telling those stories well is central to how Eric Haskell Group represents homes along this coast. If you own a property with that kind of history and are wondering what it is worth now, we would be glad to prepare a Bespoke Valuation.
