Iconic Hollywood Restaurant Hits Market With $100M Price Tag
Yamashiro comes with the potential to build as much as 280K SF around the famed sushi restaurant
By Nick Trombola July 23, 2024 2:35 pm
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A Hollywood compound made famous by appearing in movies such as “Memoirs of a Geisha” and “Kill Bill Vol. 1,” and for hosting countless celebrity gatherings, is on the market — nobody tell O-Ren Ishii and the Crazy 88.
The 7.3-acre property, which houses the Japanese restaurant Yamashiro Hollywood, is listed for sale at $100 million, according to Bloomberg. The property is owned by an entity named Samaka, which is owned by film producers and entrepreneurs Elie Samaha and Steven Markoff.
Avison Young is marketing the property at 1999 North Sycamore Avenue, which sits in the Hollywood Hills above and behind the famed Magic Castle. The prospective buyer could develop as much as 280,000 square feet around the centerpiece building, per Bloomberg, citing a sales presentation.
Representatives for Yamashiro did not immediately respond to a request for more information.
Built in 1914 by brothers Eugene and Adolph Bernheimer allegedly as a replica of a manor in the Yamashiro province of central Japan, the compound has lived many lives over the past 110-odd years.
It briefly hosted an exclusive social club, known as the 400 Club, in the 1920s during the golden age of Hollywood. It even became home to a 600-year-old pagoda flown in from Japan, which Yamashiro’s website claims is the oldest structure in California.
After falling into disrepair in the 1940s due to anti-Japanese sentiment in the midst of World War 2, entrepreneur Thomas O. Glover purchased the property and eventually renovated and transformed it into a restaurant in the early 1960s.
Fast-forward to 2016, when the Glovers were bought out of the property by Chinese hotel operator JE Group for nearly $39 million, according to property records. Although the restaurant’s future was initially in doubt after the purchase, BNG, Sugar Factory and TCL Chinese Theatres stepped in as new operators later that year, according to reporting at the time by the L.A. Times.
Update: This story has been updated since it was first published to include additional details about the restaurant’s ownership.
Nick Trombola can be reached at NTrombola@commercialobserver.com.
