Walk the 5500 block of West Pico and you already know the storefronts by muscle memory. The liquor store on the corner of Carmona. The auto shop with cars half up on lifts a few doors down. Mad Lab Coffee, where the line moves fast because the regulars already know their order. What most people on this stretch have not clocked yet is that two of those three are about to change hands, and they are changing into the same thing, run by the same person, at the same time.
That is not a coincidence of timing. It is a strategy.
One Name, Three Addresses
Robert Vinokur runs a hospitality company called The Playhouse Group, based in Hollywood, with a roster that already includes Mad Lab Coffee Roasters, Linden & Dot, Joe's Pizza, and Wing It Los Angeles. Mad Lab's Mid City location sits at 5508 West Pico Boulevard. According to permit filings reviewed by WhatNow, Vinokur is also the applicant behind a new full-service bar approved for 5500 West Pico, the corner spot currently occupied by Okay Liquor Store. And per a separate WhatNow report, he is the operator behind a food hall proposed for 5510 West Pico, where Sniper Alignment & Auto Service does business today.
Read the addresses in order: 5500, 5508, 5510. Three storefronts, one operator, all within a few doors of each other on the same side of the same block. That is the story this stretch of Pico is actually telling, and it is a different story than "new businesses keep opening here," which is the version every generic roundup will give you.
Two Projects, One Playbook
The bar and the food hall are not identical concepts, but they were designed with the same instinct: rather than lease space to separate tenants who each answer to their own landlord, one operator holds both rooms and runs the whole footprint as a single point of view.
| 5500 W. Pico (Bar) | 5510 W. Pico (Food Hall) | |
|---|---|---|
| Replaces | Okay Liquor Store | Sniper Alignment & Auto Service |
| Building size | 2,722 sq ft | 3,339 sq ft indoor + 2,173 sq ft patio |
| Seating | 65 indoor seats | 12 indoor, 122 patio seats |
| Proposed hours | 8 a.m. to 2 a.m. | 7 a.m. to 1 a.m. |
| Concept | Full-service bar with food | Three cuisine counters, an ice cream shop, and a small bar under one operator |
The seating math on the food hall is the number worth sitting with. Twelve indoor seats against a hundred and twenty-two on the patio is not a room that happens to have outdoor space. It is a room built to function almost entirely outside, with the kitchen and counters doing the indoor work and the patio doing nearly all of the sitting. Ping-pong and table games are part of the plan, but no arcade machines and no live entertainment, according to the filing, which reads less like a bar trying to become a venue and more like a backyard someone is willing to run food out of.
The bar at 5500 tells a tighter story. Sixty-five seats inside a building of only 2,722 square feet total means most of that small footprint is being dedicated to one thing, and the building itself is old enough to have some texture behind it: constructed in 1946, it already houses a coffee shop, a pizza restaurant, and a beauty supply shop alongside the liquor store making way for the bar.
What It Took To Get Approved
Neither project is landing on an empty stretch, and neither got a free pass. The bar's public hearing drew concerns from neighbors about noise and parking, and the applicant responded by ruling out outdoor seating or music and by committing to steer patrons toward street parking rather than adding pressure to the block. The local neighborhood council still voted to approve it, and more than eighty letters of support were submitted on its behalf, a number that says more about appetite for the corridor to feel more walkable at night than any press release could.
The food hall faced its own version of the same concern and answered it with design rather than restriction. Plans include a tall rear building positioned to buffer sound, along with added greenery, umbrellas, and a retractable canopy over the patio. Both projects qualify for the city's Restaurant Beverage Program, and both benefit from a temporary local rule that waives parking requirements for changes of use, which is part of why a liquor store and an auto shop were viable candidates for conversion in the first place. As of the most recent filings, the bar's change-of-use request was still under review by the city's Planning Department and would require a special permit to serve alcohol, while the food hall's alcohol license was pending before the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. Neither has a confirmed opening date yet, so the honest way to think about this stretch of Pico right now is: approved on paper, still working through city review, and worth watching for construction activity rather than a grand opening announcement.
The Corridor This Is Landing Inside
None of this happens in a vacuum, and the surrounding blocks are worth naming because they are the reason this particular stretch of Pico was worth the bet. Paper or Plastik Cafe has held its spot at 5772 West Pico for more than a decade, family run, the kind of place where staff remember regulars by name. Bloom Cafe at 5544 Pico has been a brunch fixture for years. Powerplant Superfood Cafe at 5671 and Olson's Deli at 5660 round out a run of small, independently owned food businesses that built this stretch's reputation one order at a time, long before any single company owned more than one address on the block. Further into Picfair Village proper, Molido! has become a neighborhood hub for Latin-inspired coffee and pastelitos, Videre Coffee draws the writers and remote workers who want quiet over foot traffic, and n/soto, chef Niki Nakayama's Michelin-starred spot, is the destination that put this pocket of the city on a wider map to begin with.
That is the texture Vinokur's three addresses are stepping into: a corridor built almost entirely by individual owners making individual bets, one lease at a time. What is genuinely new is not that Pico is getting more businesses. It is that for the first time on this block, one operator is choosing to hold three storefronts in a row and run them as a single curated cluster instead of three separate rolls of the dice. Whether that reads to residents as momentum or as consolidation will depend on what actually opens and how it feels to walk past, but it is worth knowing now, while the storefronts are still what they have always been, that the answer is already decided on paper.
If you already live in Mid City or Picfair Village, keep an eye on that stretch of the 5500 block over the coming months. Permits move slower than press coverage, and the difference between an approved project and an open door can be a long stretch of nothing happening behind a fence. For a closer look at what makes this pocket of Los Angeles work, from its architecture to its everyday rhythms, visit JoJo Steinberg's Mid City and PicFair Village neighborhood guide.
Curious what a block like this means for home values nearby, or just want a second set of eyes on the neighborhood before your next move? Work With JoJo.
