The Promenade got the headlines this June when Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers cut the ribbon on the Third Street Promenade and The Win~Dow debuted at 930 Montana Ave., adding more than 100 jobs. Two openings in two days made for a tidy revitalization story, and the mayor showed up to say so.
That story is real. It is also a distraction.
If you live here, the more useful map is the one forming away from the ribbon cuttings: an office-campus all-day café at Colorado Center, a cluster of new coffee counters along Wilshire and 15th, a second Italian anchor on north Montana, a dipped-cone shop swapping into Main Street, and an oyster bar inheriting a 16-year Ocean Avenue address. Read together, these openings are a bet on midday, walk-up, café-scale foot traffic returning to specific residential pockets. Where they land tells you which blocks are quietly upgrading.
The map, not the marquee
| Opening | Address | What it replaced | What it signals |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bower Santa Monica | Colorado Center campus | New build-out inside 15-acre office park | Midday office traffic returning |
| DOL Coffee House | 1231 Wilshire Blvd. | Former Krispy Kreme corner | Wilshire as a coffee corridor |
| Sonia's Café | 1260 15th St. at Arizona | Downtown-edge vacancy | Walk-to-coffee for 15th St. residents |
| Dragon Alley Coffee | 312 Santa Monica Blvd. | Downtown vacancy | Promenade-adjacent daily traffic |
| Bacio di Latte | 1510 Montana Ave. | Boutique turnover | Italian cluster with Sogno Toscano |
| La Diperie | 2441 Main St. | Holey Grail Donuts | Main St. dessert tenancy stabilizing |
| West Side Oyster Club | 1355 Ocean Ave. | Blue Plate Oysterette (16 yrs) | Ocean Ave. seafood lineage continues |
What Bower is actually testing
The single most interesting opening this summer is the one furthest from a tourist itinerary. Bower Santa Monica, spanning approximately 6,500 square feet, will offer food and beverage, health and wellness programming and what its creators describe as "socialization rituals" at the 15-acre office campus at Colorado Center. BXP, the largest publicly traded developer, owner and manager of premier workplaces in the United States, announced the concept April 15 alongside restaurateur Dave Harper and New School Hospitality.
The name is a giveaway. Harper, the founding partner of Amigo Roasters and the restaurateur behind community-focused venues including Bondi Harvest, El Chucho, Palmys and Likeminded Wellness Club, said the restaurant draws its name from Fairy Bower, a break in the Cabbage Tree Bay of Manly Beach in Australia. A surf-village reference dropped inside an office park is not accidental branding. It is a signal to the buildings around it: we are betting the lunch crowd is walking here again.
For residents in the Pico and Ocean Park pockets nearest Colorado Center, this is the read-through. A viable all-day café inside a corporate campus is only viable if enough people are actually there at 11 a.m. If Bower works, expect the surrounding retail bays to fill in faster. If it does not, that block returns to its post-2020 pattern.
A coffee corridor on Wilshire and 15th
Three openings that individually look like one-offs form a pattern when you plot them. Along Wilshire, the vacant corner building at 1231 Wilshire Blvd. will soon host Vietnamese coffee specialists, DOL Coffee House. The company currently has a location in Gardena where it also serves boba and desserts. The 1231 Wilshire building has been a Santa Monica orphan for years. Taking over the former Krispy Kreme space, the buzzworthy new café is celebrated for its signature Vietnamese coffees, specialty teas, boba drinks and decadent desserts, including fan-favorite egg coffee and rich condensed milk creations.
Two blocks north and east, a new coffee shop called Sonia's Café is also in the Downtown area currently working to open at 1260 15th St. at the corner of Arizona Avenue. And in the heart of Downtown proper, Dragon Alley Coffee Shop has also announced plans to set up at 312 Santa Monica Blvd.
Three new coffee counters inside a roughly ten-block triangle is not a coincidence. It is operators reading the same tea leaves: residential density in the North Downtown and Wilshire pockets that used to walk to Go Get Em Tiger or Krispy Kreme has been undersupplied since 2023. The rents cooled. The lease terms improved. The counters followed.
North of Montana gets a second Italian anchor
Montana Avenue's turnover tends to be boutique churn, but one opening this summer clusters rather than churns. On the city's north side, a second Santa Monica location of Italian gelato brand Bacio di Latte is coming to 1510 Montana Ave., next to Italian market Sogno Toscano.
The address matters more than the brand. Placing a gelato counter directly beside an Italian pantry store creates the kind of two-stop errand that Montana used to be built around and has been losing to Whole Foods and Erewhon. Grab olive oil, hand a kid a cone, walk back to the car once. Small mechanics like that are what keep a shopping street breathing between the big-ticket openings.
Speaking of which, the eyewear side of the same block quietly shifted in February. Warby Parker opened a new eyewear store at 1311B Montana Avenue in Santa Monica on Feb. 25, featuring local artist collaboration and new collections. A national name in the middle of a boutique street is usually treated as a threat. On Montana, where several storefronts sat empty through 2024, it functions more as a rent stabilizer for the neighbors.
Main Street's sweet-shop swap
The most literal one-for-one this summer is happening on Main. On Main Street, the closure of Holey Grail Donuts at 2441 Main St. has made way for a new dessert concept. A notice on the door indicates La Diperie will be moving in. The chain, founded in Montreal in 2014, specializes in dipped ice cream, cakes, donuts and cookies served with a selection of chocolate dips and more than 20 toppings. With more than 65 locations across Canada and into Florida, the Santa Monica outpost would mark the brand's first West Coast location.
Two things worth noticing. First, a first-West-Coast pin dropped on Main Street rather than Abbot Kinney or Melrose is a real vote of confidence in the corridor. Second, the space stays a dessert shop. Property owners on Main have been holding out for use-consistent tenants rather than accepting anyone with a deposit, and the market is finally producing them.
Ocean Avenue's seafood address gets its inheritance
The block anchoring Ocean Avenue lost its 16-year fixture in January. It did not stay dark for long.
The husband-wife entrepreneurs and Santa Monica residents debuted today the West Side Oyster Club, a casual-meets-luxury seafood concept that's as serious about its caviar offerings as its restaurant's laidback, beach city spirit. The new restaurant took over the former Blue Plate Oysterette space, which closed in early January after 16 years on Ocean Avenue. West Side Oyster Club carries its predecessor's legacy to act as a go-to spot for enjoying seafood by the beach.
The lineage runs deeper than the address. Her parents founded SM Pier Seafood in 1977, now known as pier-top restaurant The Albright. West Side Oyster Club lets locals and tourists alike forego the pier trek for a seafood smorgasbord. An almost-fifty-year Santa Monica seafood family taking over the tablecloth-adjacent address one block off the sand is the kind of continuity that tourist-district storytelling tends to flatten. For residents, it means the walk-up oyster habit that Blue Plate held down has a successor with local memory, not an out-of-town concept.
What the summer actually adds up to
Take the openings in aggregate and the picture is not "Santa Monica is back." It is more specific than that. The bets are being placed on pockets where daily foot traffic is a residential utility rather than a tourism metric: a coffee for the walk to the office at Colorado Center, an errand pair on north Montana, a dessert stop on Main, a coffee counter on the way home to a 15th Street apartment, an oyster after a beach walk. The Promenade openings sit inside the same wave, but they are the piece of it aimed at visitors.
For anyone thinking about where in Santa Monica they want to live, or what their current block will feel like in twelve months, the map above is more predictive than the median-price chart. Retail follows demonstrated demand, and demand is showing up in the parts of the city that got quietly overlooked while the Promenade got the ink.
If you own a home in one of these pockets and are curious what the shifting ground-floor tenancy has done to your property's position in the market, Steinbeck Homes reads Santa Monica block by block, not by ZIP. Request a home valuation and we will walk you through what the corridor around your address is signaling to buyers this fall.
