Clfton’s, the historic Downtown cafeteria, restaurant, and bar property, is set to reopen — at least in part — this October, reports the Los Angeles Times.
Owner Andrew Meieran spent years remaking the entire Broadway building after buying the business from the original family back in 2010, pouring millions into a deep renovation of the entire building. While the bars and ballroom spaces have proved popular, the cafeteria struggled along before closing again back in 2018.
More recently the property has been shuttered for the duration of the pandemic, but now Meieran says that several aspects of the hospitality complex will likely return in mid-October. That includes the Pacific Seas tiki bar on the fourth floor and the Monarch Bar on the second floor. The cafeteria itself will take more time, in part because the ongoing pandemic makes the high-volume, fully enclosed space a challenge.
Now known as Clifton’s Republic, the multi-story property at 648 S. Broadway in Downtown Los Angeles has undergone a tidal wave of changes in the past decade-plus. At its post-Depression height, the cafeteria’s whimsical faux woodsy dining room was capable of feeding up to 10,000 people per day, but in recent decades the property had fallen on harder times, in part because of lower foot traffic and slowed sales. Meieran tells the Times that he still plans to return the property to its rightful glory.