With encouraging approval from the Design Review Board last Wednesday and a presentation before the Community Council scheduled for October 11, a new Mort’s is well on its way to reopening early in 2008. The town’s beloved delicatessen, which closed its doors for remodeling on March 31, will reopen in a new guise, but with the same emphasis on casualness and community that Mort and Bobbie Farberow fostered from the time they opened in 1974. The new owner, former L. A. Mayor Richard Riordan, ‘is sensitive to fitting in,’ Rick Mills told the Palisadian-Post. Mills, who is the chairman of the Pacific Palisades Design Review Board, outlined the plans that look more like a facelift than a makeover. Trish Riordan Torrey, who is overseeing the project, attended the meeting, along project manager Janel Wright and architect Ralph Gentile, of Ralph Gentile Architects. Gentile’s L.A.-based firm specializes in the gaming, restaurant and hospitality industries. Local designs include Boule Bakery on La Cienaga, Bliss at the W Hotel and Josie restaurant in Santa Monica. Riordan’s project consists of exterior and interior improvements to the one-story retail building at 1029-1035 Swarthmore. The previous restaurant space consisted of approximately 5,800 sq. ft. divided into two adjacent spaces’the former deli and the Oak Room. Plans call for maintaining two separate restaurant operations, whose much-anticipated names were revealed at the DRB meeting. A ‘Mort’s’ sign, antiqued to look as if it had always been there, will be placed on the awning above the entrance. The deli will be called The Village Pantry, reflecting Riordan’s sister restaurant The Original Pantry in downtown Los Angeles. The Oak Room will keep its name and reopen as a bar and grill, with banquet capabilities. The project will not enlarge the restaurant area or the footprint on the site, and the existing parking lot that serves the restaurant will remain at 43 total, including four handicapped-accessible parking spaces. The deli will offer a buffet line, with seating at booths, tables, and the addition of a community table, which Riordan hopes will encourage people to be neighborly and talk to one another, Mills said. With no promises on final menu items, Mills reports that the matzo ball soup will most certainly have a place on the menu. ‘What would we do about Passover, if they didn’t?’ he asks. In addition, the new owners are making efforts to recruit some old staff members, several of whom are still around. ‘One former employee works at Caf’ Vida and one at Gladstone’s, another of Riordan’s restaurants,’ Mills said. For the Oak Room side, which will not be accessible from the deli, the d’cor will be more formal with tables and chairs and a bar and stools in the middle. For the building’s new exterior, the architects propose an earth-tone color palette, which will not exactly match the retail stores in the same area, but will be compatible. The bulletin board, formerly placed on the building’s fa’ade and updated by PRIDE, will be replaced with a plaque in memory of Mort Farberow, who died in 2002. For the moment, Riordan’s staff is focused on building out the new restaurant and is not planning to offer seating outside, as it requires a different city permit. While supporting the new project, Mills says that the DRB attached a condition, which requires that the tenant improve the appearance of the three newspaper racks in front of the restaurant. ‘They’re old and beaten-up, and although they are technically the responsibility of the owner of the building, we are insisting that the tenant either remove or improve them,’ Mills said. The Design Review Board, created by city ordinance, oversees the aesthetic standards of the commercial areas in the Palisades, including the village, Santa Monica Canyon and Sunset at PCH. The Community Council will hear details of the project next Thursday at 7 p.m. in the Palisades Branch Library community room.
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