Waiting for your train while sipping a cup of joe? It's as traditional as searching out a window seat for your rail ride or asking for an extra hit of milk for your coffee.
It's pretty standard, in short, to find a beverage kiosk or cart, the kind of place readymade for fueling up pre-trip, near your platform. But to find it in a building that's existed within three centuries, one that had clearly seen brighter days in the past, is rather more unusual.
There's a happy ending, or, rather, beginning, for the Lankershim Depot in North Hollywood, which now houses Groundwork Coffee, the Venice Beach-started beans-and-more business.
Commuters and neighbors and travelers know this building, which didn't weather the years too well. There've been quite a few years to weather, too, as the structure was constructed just a few years before the dawn of the 20th century.
As for the modern reconstruction, which can only be described as major? Metro "completed the $3.6 restoration of the Lankershim Depot, a registered State Historic Landmark Building, in 2014."
That was a few years back, yes, but due to work on a pedestrian tunnel connecting two lines — the Red and the Orange — the depot had to wait on the beginning of its next chapter.
That chapter officially starts on Friday, Feb. 17 when Groundwork Coffee opens inside the handsome building. It's open 12 hours a day, from 6 in the morning through to 6 at night, and if you've already grabbed a latte there, well, you enjoyed the coffee house's soft opening.
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There's more to come in terms of development for the site, a bustling 15.6-acre expanse which sees plenty of foot traffic each day, as people dash for their train, or head home, or, as of Feb. 17, stop to sip a macchiato in a landmark depot, a North Hollywood landmark that's endured the decades and emerged with a fresh, piping-hot future.
