Six Huntington Drive Lots, One Buyer. El Sereno Neighbors Push Back.

Beverly Hills–based Langdon Street Capital has rented one storefront to Canyon Coffee and another to the Highland Cafe.

A Beverly Hills real estate firm has bought six parcels along Huntington Drive, the commercial spine of El Sereno on the Eastside of Los Angeles. The buyer is Langdon Street Capital, which purchased Grand Central Market in 2017, LA Public Press reported. The outlet credited L.A. Material with breaking the news of the purchases.

One of the lots held El Taquito Restaurant. It closed in December 2025 after 53 years, when the owners retired and their children didn't want to take it over. Langdon Street Capital bought that parcel too, the outlet reported. Two listings for renovated apartments on the site have since gone up on Zillow.

The turnover now has a calendar. Canyon Coffee is slated to open in October in a high-ceilinged Huntington Drive building. The space was once the Mecca Cafe, and later held upholstery and barber shops. The company grew from online sales and mobile pop-ups into a seven-figure wholesale business with three locations.

Neighbors have been meeting about all of it since March. The sessions run at the Coyotl + Macehualli Lending Library on Eastern Avenue, and the group calls them Land Defense Circles.

Co-founder Brenda Contreras helped raise money to buy hillside land at Eastern and Lombardy and return it to the Tongva. She said she started the space so people would be less intimidated about speaking up.

Roughly 20 environmental activists from Northeast Los Angeles and beyond came to the most recent circle, LA Public Press reported. So did a city planner attending on his own, and a 25-year-old Collis Avenue resident who wanted somewhere to vent.

The guest speaker was Fernanda Sanchez, 35, president of the Lincoln Heights Neighborhood Council. She won in 2024 on an anti-gentrification slate, and wrote her college thesis on Highland Park.

"Gentrification is often disguised as revitalization, but it's a violent form of erasure that leads to more homelessness," Sanchez told the gathering, the outlet reported.

Her pitch was procedural. Neighborhood council members are elected, and they get extra time at public comment. They can also file community impact statements, which carry weight when a development goes up for approval. El Sereno's is the LA-32 Neighborhood Council, which didn't answer the outlet's calls and emails.

Opinion on the block isn't one thing.

Julie Acosta, 48, said she'd like Huntington Drive to end up closer to Main Street in Alhambra, with something for everyone, than to Figueroa. Martin Hernandez, 69, was born and raised in City Terrace, and moved to El Sereno 15 years ago for its working-class Latino character. He said houses now sell for more than $1 million, and long-term renters are exposed.

Some at the circle named the El Sereno Social Club as part of the problem. Realtor Andrew Rayas founded the club in 2024. His grandparents bought a house in El Sereno in 1960, and he moved to the neighborhood in 2018.

Rayas told the outlet he started the club to make events reachable for everybody — hikes, taco nights, jazz in the park. Older neighbors, he said, tell him they're glad to see people out together.

Arnie Miller grew up in Glassell Park and spent his savings opening the Highland Cafe in a Langdon Street Capital storefront that used to be Phở Eastern. He described the squeeze from the other end. Sales at his Highland Park location fell sharply once investor-backed businesses such as Ggiata Delicatessen arrived nearby.

"We almost closed twice last year. We're hanging on by a thread," Miller said.

Phone numbers listed on the developer's website are out of service, and emails went unanswered, the outlet reported.

Canyon Coffee cofounder Casey Wojtalewicz said he understands the concern. Many of his employees live in El Sereno with kids at El Sereno Elementary, he said, and he's meeting with Coyotl + Macehualli. Before the October opening, he plans to hire local young people and pastry cooks, promote the neighboring businesses and fix up the bus bench out front.

Source: lapublicpress.org, retrieved September 5, 2026.