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Republique’s Walter Manzke Confirms Upcoming Restaurant in Downtown LA

Margarita and Walter Manzke have big plans for one of the city’s most beautiful buildings

Herald Examiner
The Downtown Herald Examiner Building
Gensler for The Georgetown Co.
Farley Elliott is the Senior Editor at Eater LA and the author of Los Angeles Street Food: A History From Tamaleros to Taco Trucks. He covers restaurants in every form, from breaking news to the culture, people, and history that surrounds LA's dining landscape.

Downtown’s South Park neighborhood is in for a big new restaurant reveal (though not until early 2019), as Walter and Margarita Manzke have confirmed plans to take over the large ground-floor restaurant space currently being built into the base of the Herald Examiner building.

Little is known at the moment about what sort of restaurant the Manzkes are considering for their next venture, but it’s certain to be something outside of the team’s current realm. Under the loose Republique umbrella there is also Petty Cash and Sari Sari Store at Grand Central Market, in addition to a handful of restaurants in the Philippines.

The two-story space should lend itself to something rather grand though, and both the Manzkes have a background in finer dining. This also isn’t their first foray into greater Downtown; Walter Manzke ran the show for a while at Church & State in the Arts District, and for a time were considering that area for Republique, before the former Campanile space became available.

The Herald Examiner building from earlier this year
Patrick Lee, via Curbed LA

Located on Broadway and 11th, the Herald Examiner property is a big, wide ode the architectural styles of a century ago. The property was built in 1914 by Julia Morgan, the first registered female architect in California, who would later jump from the Hearst-owned Herald Examiner property to designing the Hearst Castle up on the Central Coast.

The building is currently being transformed by The Georgetown Company, a development outfit tasked with rehabbing and reshaping the property with additional restaurant, living, and retail spaces to the tune of $40 million. The LA Times Business section was the first to report on the restaurant news.

1111 S. Broadway
Los Angeles, CA