Which Leucadia Staircase Is Actually Open This Week?

Walk to the end of Neptune Avenue this year and you might find caution tape where a staircase used to be. Walk back the following week and it might be gone. If you've lived in Leucadia through 2026, you've probably felt the same low-grade frustration: the stair you count on for a sunset walk keeps changing status, and there's no obvious pattern to when.

There is a pattern. It's just not the one most people assume.

Leucadia's three beach staircases along Neptune Avenue, Beacon's at the foot of Leucadia Boulevard, Grandview at the north end near Grandview Street, and Stone Steps near El Portal, aren't failing at random. The city is working through a backlog of deferred maintenance in a fixed order, one staircase at a time, and that order is public information if you know where to look. Once you see the sequence, the closures stop feeling like bad luck and start feeling like a schedule you can actually plan around.

The Order Isn't a Coincidence

Of Leucadia's own access points, Beacon's, Grandview, and Stone Steps, only one has actually closed for repair this year: Grandview. But the timing of that closure, and the fact that Beacon's and Stone Steps have been left alone so far, has nothing to do with luck. Grandview's turn came in the middle of a citywide bluff staircase safety program that started just south of the neighborhood at D Street, the access point residents of Old Encinitas use to reach the mile-long stretch of sand running from Moonlight Beach to Swami's Point. That staircase reopened on January 21 after a roughly $1 million emergency rebuild, with city crews installing custom steel brackets, repairing deteriorated timber, and upgrading the lighting. Two weeks later, on February 3, the city turned its attention north to Leucadia and closed Grandview for its own refurbishment, an estimated $900,000 project to address corroded steel connections and worn timber in a multi-segment structure last rebuilt in 1992. Grandview reopened on schedule, substantially complete by May 22 and back in service for Memorial Day weekend, exactly as the city had promised.

Next in line is Swami's staircase, back south in Old Encinitas near the surf break of the same name. The city filed a Notice of Exemption for a Swami's Staircase Rehabilitation Project in late November 2025, describing plans to replace identified lumber and steel hardware in kind. No construction date has been announced yet, but the filing confirms the direction the program is moving: D Street, then Leucadia's own Grandview, now Swami's.

That sequence traces back to a 2018 structural inspection that flagged problems the city didn't act on quickly enough. Mayor Bruce Ehlers acknowledged as much when Grandview closed, saying the safety defects were first detected years earlier and that the city would now be inspecting the bluff staircases annually or every other year instead of waiting for emergencies. That's the real story behind this year's shuffle. It isn't a coastal town falling apart. It's a coastal town finally working through a maintenance list it let sit too long, in an order you can track on the city's capital projects dashboard.

Here's where things stood as of this writing:

The Sand Showed Up Right When the Stairs Didn't

While Grandview was closed, something else was happening on the same stretch of coast that made the closure easier to live with, whether the city planned it that way or not. Between mid-February and mid-March, roughly 9,400 cubic yards of sand were delivered to Leucadia State Beach as part of an approved replenishment project. A wider beach at the base of the bluff meant that during Grandview's closure, residents could still reach that stretch of sand by walking north from Beacon's at low tide, an option that's tide-dependent and worth checking before you commit to the walk, but one that turned a months-long staircase closure into a manageable detour rather than a lost beach entirely.

It's a small thing, but it matters if you're the kind of person who surfs Grandview specifically or walks that stretch every morning. The infrastructure fixes and the sand project weren't coordinated as a single plan, but they landed in the same window, and that overlap is exactly the kind of detail that only shows up if you're paying attention to this particular half mile of coastline rather than reading a general beach guide.

The Crossing That Finally Caught Up to How People Already Get Around

The staircases aren't the only piece of Leucadia infrastructure that spent 2026 catching up to reality. For decades, the 1.3 mile stretch of railroad track between Leucadia Boulevard and La Costa Avenue had no legal pedestrian or bike crossing. Anyone living east of the tracks who wanted to reach the beach, the shops, or the restaurants on the west side either drove around or crossed the tracks unofficially, which is exactly the kind of situation that eventually produces enough pressure that a city has to act.

On February 5, 2026, the California Public Utilities Commission approved the city's application to build two new at-grade crossings at Grandview Street and Phoebe Street, finally giving that stretch a legal way across. The crossings will use wayside horns, train-activated devices that substitute for the traditional locomotive horn blast at each crossing, aimed at reducing noise for the surrounding neighborhood while still meeting federal safety requirements.

The project still has steps ahead of it. On June 17, 2026, City Council allocated an additional $300,000 through the city's capital improvement budget to fund the final engineering phase, the work that comes before construction bidding. The full project is estimated at $6 million to $6.5 million, and the city is pursuing federal funding to cover 80 percent of that cost, with the remaining match still being secured. Design and permitting are expected to wrap by the end of 2026, but the money to actually build the crossings still needs to come together by early 2027. In other words, the CPUC approval was real progress, but it's a milestone in a longer process, not a ribbon cutting.

What it tells you about the neighborhood, though, is worth sitting with. Leucadia's rail corridor has quietly shaped how people move through the neighborhood for years, forcing detours and informal shortcuts that the infrastructure is only now being built to match. The city's project page is the best place to track the remaining steps if you want to know when the physical crossings actually go in.

Coast Highway Kept Moving While the Stairs Were Taped Off

None of this slowed down the stretch of North Coast Highway 101 that runs through the middle of the neighborhood. In February, chef Claudette Zepeda opened Leu Leu inside a restored 1930s roadside motel, bringing a menu built around her travels and her Mexican American roots to a space that leans into Leucadia's laid-back, slightly eccentric character rather than smoothing it over. A few blocks away, Coast Thai-Way was on track to open by early summer, taking over the space that most recently housed A Little Moore Café. The restaurant comes from Stella Bayphouthongkham, who also co-owns Mekong Cuisine Lao & Thai on Convoy Street, with a menu built around Lao-Thai dishes and a seafood-forward, coastal spin.

Between a staircase rotation, a rail crossing finally clearing a state regulatory hurdle, and two new kitchens opening on the same half mile of highway, it's been a busy year for a neighborhood that prides itself on staying a little funky and a little slow.

Reading the Rest of the Year

If you live in Leucadia and want to actually use any of this, the practical version is simple. Swami's staircase, just south in Old Encinitas, is next in the citywide queue, which means Leucadia's own access points have likely had their turn for now. If Grandview or another local staircase closes again down the line, remember that walking from Beacon's at low tide has been a real workaround this year, though it depends entirely on tide conditions, so check before you go. And if you're curious when the Grandview and Phoebe Street crossings actually break ground, the city's project page is a better source than secondhand chatter, since the funding piece is still very much in progress.

None of this is dramatic news. It's the kind of granular, block-by-block detail that only becomes visible if you're paying close attention to how a specific stretch of coastline actually works, which is exactly the kind of attention we try to bring to every corner of North County we cover. If you're curious what else is shifting in Leucadia or any of the neighborhoods nearby, or if you're thinking about what your own home might be worth in today's market, Booth Properties is happy to talk through it. Request your home valuation whenever you're ready.