Downtown Cantonese Spot Monkee Angles for Fall Debut inside U.S. Bank Tower

Well that didn’t take long. The same day that Eater reported the closure of downtown’s McCormick & Schmick’s inside the U.S. Bank Tower, LA Downtown News noted that the inevitable next tenant would be none other than the M2K Group.

Known mostly for their downtown stranglehold, M2K is the restaurant beast behind spots like Wokcano and the upcoming Triple 8 at L.A. Live. They also hold spaces like Spear, a sort of casual steak and seafood spot, EMC Seafood & Raw Bar, and the Bunker Hill Bar and Grill. For their latest trick, M2K will be flipping McCormick & Schmick’s into a Cantonese iteration known as Monkee.

The change won’t come cheap, though. The 12,600 square foot space requires some $4.5 million to fully renovate, but when finished should hold something in the neighborhood of 500 seats. That’s a big footprint for what will essentially be a Chinese big plate restaurant with a dim sum component.

The Spacecraft design team is already hard at work on the overhaul, with a planned opening inside the looming tower sometime this fall.