For generations of Los Angeles residents, The Original Pantry Café wasn’t just a restaurant — it was a ritual.
The doors never locked. The griddle never cooled. For nearly a century, cabbies, lawyers and later Lakers fans rubbed elbows over stacks of pancakes, day and night. Now, an iconic downtown Los Angeles institution is prepping for a new course.
The trust overseeing the estate of late Mayor Richard Riordan has listed the Original Pantry Café and its adjacent parking lot for sale this week, about two months after the restaurant closed its doors.
The 8,000-square-foot building, designated a Historic-Cultural Monument, is hitting the market without an asking price, leaving bidders to decide its worth and next use.
“We want to leave it in the hands of someone who can steward it through the next generation,” Aaron Twersky, vice president at Wilshire Advisory Group, the brokerage marketing the property, told CoStar News. “This isn’t just a piece of real estate — it’s part of the DNA of the city.”
The sale comes at a delicate time for downtown Los Angeles, where high office vacancies, shifting demographics, and an uneven recovery from the pandemic have cast uncertainty over once-thriving streets. Nevertheless, neighborhood boosters see signs of improvement as more workers return to downtown offices and the city preps for the 2028 Olympics.
Twersky said the Pantry’s combination of historic cachet and location — a block from LA Live and Crypto.com Arena, just off the 110 Freeway ramp — offers rare staying power.
“Downtown has changed a lot,” Twersky said. “It’s had its ups and downs, and it’s probably in a downswing right now. But long term, the heart of the city is still beating. Someone who believes in downtown can make a strategic acquisition of an iconic location.”
Century of service
The Pantry opened in 1924 at a nearby location before relocating in 1950 to its current building constructed in 1917 at 811 James M Wood Blvd. The restaurant famously never closed until the pandemic.
Riordan, a frequent customer long before he began his career in politics, purchased the business in the early 1980s to preserve its legacy, even sacrificing air rights above the restaurant by selling it to a neighboring building to ensure the property's survival during downtown’s building boom.
Those past deals now shape the site’s future: opportunities for vertical expansion are limited. The restaurant’s interior can be modified without restriction, but any changes to its iconic exterior would require review by the Office of Historic Resources and the Cultural Heritage Commission, Twersky said. A redevelopment of the restaurant site may be feasible, but subject to zoning regulations and historic guidelines.
But development isn't out of the picture. Alongside the Pantry, the adjacent surface parking lot is also being offered for sale, presenting potential for redevelopment. Under the updated Downtown Community Plan, the lot could support a project with a floor-area ratio of up to 13 to 1, depending on the proposal.
In one example of several possible plans, a buyer could restore the restaurant while developing an apartment tower — or other commercial structure — on the parking lot site. The two properties can also be purchased separately.
The roughly 14,000-square-foot parking lot comes on the market at a time when the city is under pressure to address California’s affordability crisis by making room for 450,000 new homes by 2029. Earlier this year the city council approved a Citywide Housing Incentive Program that lets developers build taller and denser multifamily properties if they locate them near public transit and include a certain percentage of affordable units.
CoStar data shows the number of multifamily units under construction in Los Angeles has declined 22% year over year, pushing the city’s multifamily vacancy rate down to 5%, with tenants renting 10,000 more units than they vacated over the past year.
The parking lot could be a candidate for an all-affordable housing project, Twersky said, because the site's size and zoning would allow enough units to make the economics feasible, especially if construction costs stabilize and city incentives are available.
Twersky said discussions with the city suggest a strong interest in seeing the Pantry revived and in encouraging housing development on the parking lot parcel.
Community interest
The restaurant’s closing earlier this year stirred emotions in the local community, with locals submitting their favorite memories of dining at The Pantry to the Los Angeles Times.
Workers were moved, too. The former Pantry workers, represented by Unite Here Local 11, have lobbied the city to require union employees for any future restaurant at this location.
The Riordan Foundation, a charity founded by Riordan, will be the beneficiary of proceeds of the sale. They are planned to be used to continue the charitable purposes established and required by Riordan’s wishes.
“The goal is to honor the history of the property but also make sure it thrives into the future," Twersky said. “If another buyer comes in and sees a different vision for the property, we welcome that too.”
For Twersky and his partners, Craig Miller and Todd Cobin, all native Angelenos, the listing is personal. Each grew up visiting the Pantry, first as customers and later as real estate professionals watching downtown evolve around it.
“This stretch of Figueroa — between 9th Street and the Convention Center — it’s the core of LA,” Twersky said. “Opportunities like this don’t come around very often. This is a rare chance for someone to put their personal stamp on our great city.”