WILSHIRE BLVD — The city's most enigmatic developer is bringing in a slew of new eateries early next year.
Mendocino Farms, Sidecar Doughnuts, and Juice Served Here will open in the newly renovated Art Deco building on Wilshire Boulevard at Seventh Street.
Pacshore Partners takes pride in adaptive reuse, developing buildings from the inside, local than corporate businesses, and keeping a low profile, said the company's front man Philip Orosco.
"We are taking these old buildings and bringing them back local, instead of taking the traditional line of running four Starbucks," he said. "We're doing more in Santa Monica that we can't announce yet, but every time we get a building, we're just going to keep doing this."
Mendocino Farms, a sandwich shop, currently has eight locations throughout the Los Angeles-area.
"We're punching into the building, right in front of the building, so that's why you see all those plywood boards up," Orosco said. "It's going to be a huge patio in front of the building and the patio's going to be for Mendocino Farms and this is going to be their flagship store."
Sidecar Doughnuts and Coffee, which has a store in Costa Mesa and a foodtruck, will tuck in next to the Mendocino Farm's space and also feature a punched-in indoor/outdoor patio, Orosco said.
Sidecar's Costa Mesa location is next to a Mendocino Farms.
"This all became friends of friends," Orosco said.
Juice Served Here (whose website claim they are "more than just a juice company," they are "your new daily ritual") is served at handful of locations throughout the Los Angeles-area, including in Venice and Culver City.
"The theme of all of this stuff was completely local everything," Orosco said. "As kind of our corporate culture, we're shunning everything corporate and trying to stick to whatever makes Santa Monica special. That's why we chose these tenants. We really chose them all by hand. We rejected probably 10 tenants just because they couldn't fit us. I just want it to be right down there."
Orosco, an Austin, Texas native, cut his teeth working for a more traditional developer, Maguire Partners, which built on Ocean Avenue during the building boom of the 1980s.
Now he's back with the highly secretive Pacshore Partners, scooping up "cool buildings in Santa Monica to play with." Pacshore, he said, isn't interested in new development, instead repurposing old buildings — a touch-up company, as he puts it.
They've been seismically retrofitting the Telephone Building, which housed Verizon's old switchboard operations, on Seventh Street at Arizona Avenue.
Two new places from the restaurateurs behind Rustic Canyon, Huckleberry, and Milo and Olive are expected to open on the ground floor early next year.
He owns the ground under the media park at Olympic Boulevard and Centinela Avenue, which he previously told the Daily Press he has "big plans" for.
He owns the Jack In The Box at Wilshire and Chelsea which, he also previously told the Daily Press, might not be a Jack In The Box for much longer.
dave@www.smdp.com
