Architect Michael Lee had a special motivation when he designed the building across the street from his Highland Avenue office. Hunger.
It wasn’t hunger for architectural acclaim or even the commissions a building on such high profile site might generate. Lee was thinking about lunch. Perhaps even breakfast, definitely some coffee, and maybe even an occasional glass of wine and some light dinner in the early evening.
Lee wanted to design a place that would make the neighborhood where he lives and works a little bit more convivial. The site, at the northwest corner of the intersection of Highland and Marine avenues formerly occupied by Mac’s Liquor Store, is one of the more prominent locations in North Manhattan Beach. Although Lee acknowledges that Mac’s had its throwback charms, he saw the possibility for something else.
“The neighborhood needed something,” Lee said. “There was a void here…Mac’s had just a lot of junk in there. I remember one time I was standing in there next to some 10-year-old kid, and there was horny goat weed and the condoms and the Penthouse magazines and the liquor and cigarettes. It was a little odd. It was a little slummy in there. I thought it could be a better place.”
Next week, the Corkscrew Cafe will open, a business owned and operated by Kieran and Kirk Harrington, twin brothers who are both chefs and formerly operated a cigar and martini bar in their native Philadelphia. Their cousin, Daniel Field, will manage, while chef Chris Opsata and three-star Zagat rated chef Fernando Fernandez are also on board.
The cafe is ambitiously broad. It will open before rush hour to provide Italian coffee, danishes, and breakfast sandwiches; at lunch, it will become a gourmet deli of sorts, with offerings including what the Harrington’s promise will be the South Bay’s most authentic Philly cheese steak sandwich (with Amoroso rolls shipped in from Philadelphia); in the early evening, the lights will dim and the place will offer an array of small plate dishes and a wine list that will include 18 different kinds of wine by the glass. Throughout the day, the business will also offer retail sales of everything from sandwiches and sushi to energy drinks, olive oil, beer, spirits, milk and eggs. And wine, or course.
The Harrington’s say they designed their business concept to fit the neighborhood.
“We had to do something that Manhattan Beach could be proud of,” Kirk Harrington said. “If we wanted to come in here and open up a cold deli joint, we probably could have opened five months ago. But that is not what we wanted to create. We wanted something that fit in with the neighborhood, and something that fit what Mike Lee designed. He gave us the perfect design for this.”
The cafe is the commercial component of a mixed-use design that also includes two 1,000 sq. ft. apartments upstairs. Mac’s took up three 30 ft. by 90 ft. lots, much of which was occupied by a parking lot. Lee’s design consisted of two buildings – the mixed-use building, which sits on the corner, and four 1,000 sq. ft. condominiums in the building next door. The new buildings, along with the office across the street, together form what could easily be called Lee’s corner. Nowhere else in the South Bay does one architect’s work so dominate such a bustling intersection.
Lee, who lives 10 blocks away in a beach cottage, grew up in the neighborhood and has designed more than a half-dozen residences there, including his own mixed-use office. He said that this latest project was particularly satisfying in that it genuinely meets a civic need.
“I think Marine Street has been a little neglected, or taken for granted,” Lee said. “It’s a great area, a great place to live. My wife’s sister lives upstairs [above his office], so we are here a lot. The area really needed a focal point. Mac’s was a little bit of a focal point, because you could go there and buy things. But I think this will be more of a hang out. I think it is going to be a neighborhood gathering place.”
Architects always balance an equation of interests and constraints that include the wishes of clients, the particularities of a site, a budget, city codes, and their own vision. In this case, Lee had some particularly tight constraints. The residential component was the most obvious economically viable use, but the city also had a strong desire to keep a retail use of the site. And as a neighbor, Lee really wanted the place to be able to offer more than a retail use.
Lee said one problem the design needed to address was, “How do you maximize not just the density, but the uses, for everyone?”
The solution he came up with is corkscrew-like in its design. The cafe’s 1,600 sq. ft. are squeezed into four different levels. One dining area is in a south facing mezzanine that offers generous sunlight and a wide-open ocean view; the entry level includes the kitchen, deli counter, and retail area (with birch-stained mahogany woodwork that gives the place a warm feel); stairs continue to wind down into the building to two lower levels, one that features a dining area with a view of the sidewalk and the ocean and another that feels like a warm, subterranean wine cellar (a feeling enhanced by the mahogany woodwork). Lee also managed to put in 15 parking spaces, using two decks on the 40 by 90 ft. lot and thereby matching the amount of parking that previously existed on three lots.
Every last inch of every square foot is utilized. “We designed it like a boat,” Lee said.
Still, the design was ultimately speculative. There was no specific business that was in existence when the plans were drawn. It wasn’t until last February that the Harrington brothers arrived on the scene. Lee was astonished at how closely the Corkscrew Cafe’s business concept adhered to his greatest hopes for his design.
“I designed it for exactly what they are doing,” the architect said. “And that was a really nice thing. It worked out perfectly for everyone. The city said they have to have retail in there, and we came up with a floor plan that I thought worked pretty well for the building. They utilized almost exactly what we designed, and they came up with a business concept that is exactly what the city wanted. So it’s been good.”
The only problem, Lee said, is also its greatest attraction: the proximity of so many food choices.
“It’s not going to do much for my lunch budget,” Lee said. ER