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    Former Highland Park pet shop turns into a hot property

    The cages and carpeted cat trees have been hauled away, and the faded images of a rabbit, fish and rooster on the facade have disappeared under a coat of beige paint.  Nine months after Highland Park pet shop owner Hervey Chapman died,  his York Boulevard building has been cleaned out and was recently put up [...]

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    Derby Dolls skate past developers

    It looked the L.A. Derby Dolls, the women’s roller skating team, would have to look for a new home in late 2008 after the owners of its Historic Filipinotown headquarters and track won city approval to build four apartment towers rising as high as nine floors above Temple Street.  But that residential project went no [...]

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    What to do with an old Echo Park furniture store?

    The recent closing of La Popular, the Echo Park furniture store that  opened during the 1940s as Stone Bros.,  has left behind a big empty space on the south side of Sunset Boulevard near Alvarado Street.  But now the nearly 5,600-square-feet of ground floor space – in addition to a mezzanine – has come up [...]

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    Storefront Report: Atwater wine shop owner pursues restaurant plans

    The owner of 55 Degree Wine in Atwater Village plans to open an 80-seat gastropub next to his wine shop in a Glendale Boulevard minimall. But, first, Andy Hasroun must get a special permit from the city to open up that restaurant in a former H&R Block office at 3111 Glendale Boulevard – the same [...]

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    Will retailers follow the Gold Line to Boyle Heights’ Mariachi Plaza? *

    The extension of the Metro Gold Line through Boyle Heights and East Los Angeles nearly two years ago has many anticipating – as well as fearing – new development near the stations.  The weak economy has forced many to reduce expectations but brokers and developers continue to promote and pitch proposed projects, including two retail [...]

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    Echo Park artist draws attention to the Eastside music scene

    By Lea Lion It’s no mystery why Echo Park is a favorite setting for detective novels. There is something about ramshackle Victorian and Craftsman-era architecture combined with the soundtrack of modern-day gang battles that just screams whodunit.  But while Echo Park has its share of squats, hideouts and business fronts, the pint-size chocolate brown structure [...]

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    Storefront Report: Sunset Beer offers you a place to sit and sip

    Sunset Beer, Echo Park’s new beer store and tasting room, is scheduled to officially open Saturday but the retail portion of the Sunset Boulevard shop is expected to open for a few hours this afternoon.  Instead of just a big room lined with shelves and stacked with cases of beer,  Sunset Beer, whose ownership includes [...]

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    Follow the giraffe to Echo Park’s new animation studio

    On trips to downtown, Chris Finnegan and Mark Caballero would always notice what they called the “Giraffe Building,”  a two-story brick structure with a giraffe-shaped sign outlined in neon that hangs over the sidewalk at  Temple Street  and Belmont Avenue. The pair joked how the building on the southern edge of Echo Park  would serve [...]

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    Cypress Park woman scratches out a living as a chicken sitter

    By Christopher Yee The urban chicken has become a new status symbol  for those seeking to live sustainable lifestyles.  Owners can let their chickens out in the morning before they go to work, put them inside after they return home  and collect fresh eggs at their leisure.  However, what happens when these friends of fowl [...]

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    A new business culture grows in Northeast L.A.

    On a recent weekday evening in Eagle Rock, a group of  Northeast Los Angeles entrepreneurs – from boutique and bar owners to house flippers and sound engineers – gathered in a neighborhood shop during a time-honored, meet-and-greet affair. But don’t mistake this for your typical chamber of commerce crowd. Some of the owners sported tattoos [...]

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    Rising rents and Tortilla Wars force Echo Park business to move on

    Omar Ahmed Hernandez grew up making tortillas. His family founded the Santa Fe Tortilleria 17 years ago in a narrow Sunset Boulevard storefront in Echo Park. After the family sold off the business, Hernandez continued to work off an on at Santa Fe as it expanded into a former fish market on nearby Logan Street, [...]

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    Coffee Table owner brewing new plans for Silver Lake restaurant

    Inspired by a visit to an Atlanta coffee house,  former music industry executive Mike Zamarripa decided he wanted to open something similar close to home in Silver Lake.  Zamarripa teamed up with a friend, Brett Schoenhals, a former controller at Buzz Coffee, and found a former doctors office in the north end of Silver Lake on [...]

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    Club Los Globos fades to black*

    Club Los Globos, the Silver Lake nightclub that had long catered to a Latino clientele, today resembles a two-story high, stucco oil tanker as workers slap black paint across the Sunset Boulevard building. There  has been a  lot more changes inside, where work is still underway on the main floor. Meanwhile, upstairs, workers are putting [...]

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    Some good news for 106 Sunset Junction fans

    Origami Vinyl  today said it will be able to offer a full refund – including service fees – on the tickets the Echo Park store sold it in advance for the cancelled Sunset Junction festival in Silver Lake.  Those refunds will apply only to the 106 tickets purchased through Origami – not other sources. “Sunset [...]

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    Bands and venues prepare for a weekend without Sunset Junction festival*

    The failure of Sunset Junction festival organizers to get city permits to hold this weekend’s massive street and music fair has left bands, ticket sellers and other scrambling to figure out what to do if the event is officially cancelled.”We are still waiting to hear the official word,” said Neil Schield of Echo Park’s Origami [...]

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    Signs of trouble at an Echo Park business

    The signs painted on the windows of La Popular furniture in Echo Park read “Lost our Lease” and “Everything Must Go.”  Inside the Sunset Boulevard store, which has been holding a half-off liquidation sale, the dim showroom is mostly empty except for a few mattresses, couches, lamps and stuffed animals. Is the store going out [...]

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