The Ongoing Story of Andre's

Andre's was (and happily, still is for now) a little Italian cafeteria in Los Angeles that I love very much.  I have been to many famous restaurants where you could pay two to three times as much for a plate of pasta and get one that was one-half to one-third as good.  It's a friendly neighborhood joint situated in a shopping mall…no fancy decor but the food's good and they do such a brisk business that it's always fresh.  Saturday or Sunday evenings, there's a line out the door and once you eat there for the first time, you're quite willing to wait in it every time.

Around a year ago, it was announced that the proprietors of the mall had big expansion plans.  When the lease on a KMart there expired, as it would soon, they were going to tear down half the mall and replace it with a massive structure, variously described as between 19 and 26 floors and full of new retailers and housing units.  It looked unlikely that there would be room in the massive structure for a little Italian cafeteria that was much-loved by many.

Photo by me

Protests began, most of them at least in part about the possible loss of Andre's.  But neighbors also felt the proposed development was too big and too disruptive to the area, including a public school that was adjacent to the land in question.   Some of the protesters appeared before the Mid City West Community Council in August to argue that the development should not be permitted. I was one of them.

I felt that evening that we had made a strong case but that it probably would not make a difference. People who want to spend a lot of money usually get what they want. I figured what they wanted was to build 13-15 stories and so had proposed the bigger monstrosity so they could scale it back and get it approved.

The owners 'n' operators of Andre's did not seem to think their little shrine to red sauce would survive.  They pressed ahead with a plan to open a new restaurant — essentially Andre's under a new name — in the city of Canoga Park. Canoga Park is a great town but, alas, it's too far away for me to visit even a tenth as often as I visit Andre's. There, they would open that new place and in the meantime, they'd operate and we'd enjoy Andre's as long as it was there to enjoy.

That's still the plan but a few things have changed since I last reported on the situation there…

In September, it was announced the KMart was definitely closing, as so many KMarts (and their sister stores, Sears) have done. One interesting element of this whole matter is that some of us stare in stark amazement at how two once-mighty retail chains have merged, crashed and burned so thoroughly. If you and I had been put in charge of them and, knowing absolutely nothing about running department stores, had made every decision by flipping a coin, we could not have done a worse job. Hopefully though, we would have collected the huge salaries that corporate management has pocketed for doing essentially nothing right.

Just before Thanksgiving, the KMart was emptied and all its employees got the wonderful holiday gift of unemployment. The store remains empty to this day. Some of the other businesses in the mall, like a big Payless Shoe Store, are also now vacant. But Andre's is still serving up spaghetti and meatballs and ravioli and lasagna and other fine, sloppy meals…

Ah, but for how long? The last time I reported on all this was last October and Andre's seemed to be safe through the end of 2019, at which time the developers would probably start tearing down the east half of the mall and Andre's with it. We're hearing now that that will not happen until at least June of 2020.

Earlier this year, there was what seems to have been a final ruling on whether they could build their proposed 19-26 story tower of apartments and retail outlets…and as expected, the answer was no. But they didn't get 13-15 stories either.

Instead of a 26-story tower with 381 apartments and 81,000 square feet of commercial ventures, what was approved was an eight (8!) story structure, no more than 100 feet in height, containing 331 residential units and just under 84,000 square feet of business tenants. Don't ask me how you can lose eighteen stories from your proposed plans and still have that close to the same number of apartments and stores. But that's where we are right now.

Current plans call for it to be all completed by 2023 so that probably means 2025 or 2026. It may be quite some time before we know whether Andre's will be a part of it…and of course, plans may change again and again and again.

In the meantime after many delays, the Andre's clone in Canoga Park has finally opened! It's the Grandi Italiani, located out there at 21730 Sherman Way. I haven't been yet but since it has pretty much the exact same menu and cuisine and management as Andre's, it's already one of my favorite restaurants.

And hey, if you're anywhere near CBS Television City (which is undergoing a similar scenario) or Farmers Market, check out Andre's. It's in the shopping center at 3rd and Fairfax, just to the left of the Whole Foods Market there. The place just might wind up outliving all of us…except, of course, Al Jaffee.