Downtown’s $28 Million Park Remodel Seeks Giant New Restaurant Tenant

A crowning new jewel in Downtown’s ongoing urban planning efforts is the upcoming First and Broadway Park, situated just next to popular (and recently rejuvenated) Grand Park near the Walt Disney Concert Hall. First and Broadway Park will soon be home to a multitude of indoor-outdoor spaces and well-landscaped design features, but among the massive construction effort there is one particularly special project: A 9,000 square foot restaurant with rooftop patio, bar, cafe, and beer garden. Now the City of Los Angeles just needs someone to step in and run the thing.

Per Curbed LA’s coverage earlier this year, First and Broadway will become a mostly open-air urban park with some 10,000 square feet of paved plaza, lots of trees, and a small “meadow” space for lounging. In all, the revitalization effort will cost some $28 million, and LA-based Mia Lehrer + Associates will spearhead the project.

Courtesy of Bureau of Engineering

As the above rendering shows, a fair bit of that money is being spent on a big corner building with wraparound glass that houses a cafe restaurant inside. Upstairs will be the restaurant’s open-air rooftop lounge and over-21 bar area, while a downstairs beer garden and coffee kiosk will round out the look. Construction will start next year with hopes of being completed by 2020, but in the meantime the city is set to begin negotiating with potential restaurateurs on the lease for the property, which opens as a 10-year agreement with a five-year option to renew.

As for the process of putting a bid in on the space, reps for the city say they are looking for a single operator to land behind the entire project, from coffee to dinner to the beer garden. Because the search is starting now, that does also mean that any new tenant would be able to offer some input as to the interior design of the space as well.

Prospective tenants can reach out to the Department of Recreation and Parks’ Concessions Division by calling (213) 202-5659, but note that there is a mandatory pre-proposal conference on the project to be sometime mid-December in Downtown, and those looking to submit a proposal will need to be in attendance. As for who will actually take the space it’s anyone’s guess, but there are plenty of big restaurant groups like the Lucques team, Patina, and Wolfgang Puck who could likely handle such a gig — not to mention a ton more just on the LA horizon.

• The Essential Guide to Downtown LA Restaurants [ELA]