On Hyperion, a Bakery Arrives and the Bar Next Door Begins a Long Goodbye

Two neighboring storefronts on the stretch of Hyperion Avenue by Trader Joe's and Gelson's changed course within eleven days of each other. Jyan Isaac Bread was scheduled to open at 2800 Hyperion Ave. on Monday, November 2, in the space Say Cheese held for 53 years. Next door, on October 22, a developer filed plans with the city to replace the Tenants of the Trees building at 2810 Hyperion with a five-story building of 28 apartments over ground-floor retail.

One looks like an arrival and the other like a departure, but they work on the same timeline. The bakery's deal was signed long before anyone could buy a loaf. The apartment filing is the start of a process with years left to run, and the paperwork on this block has been well ahead of the sidewalk for a while.

Twenty Months From Lease to Loaf

Say Cheese opened in 1972 and served its last public customers on April 23, 2025, as the Los Angeles Times reported that spring. Owner Glenn Harrell told the paper the shop's monthly costs, including operating expenses, were going from $3,950 to about $12,000, and the business could not carry that. The same report said the landlord had found a bread-company tenant that February and that the lease ran through April 30.

So the successor was lined up about 20 months before its opening day, and the storefront went roughly 18 months between Say Cheese's last sale and the bakery's scheduled first one. In its October 23 issue, the Eastside Rag called the Silver Lake location "long-delayed" and passed along a tip that it would "finally open on 11/2."

That gap is the best guide to reading the filing next door. On this strip, a signed deal and an open door can be more than a year apart.

What Is Moving Into 2800 Hyperion

Jyan Isaac Bread started in Santa Monica, and its only open shop today is at 1620 Ocean Park Blvd., which the bakery's site lists as open 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily. Hyperion will be its second permanent location. Founder Jyan Isaac Horwitz started baking bread in his family's kitchen in 2020 after losing his job at Gjusta during the pandemic, according to The Eastsider's business roundup.

The Silver Lake shop is a café as well as a bread counter. What Now Los Angeles reported these plans for the space:

The Santa Monica menu includes the City Sourdough and sourdough bagels, but the bakery hasn't posted separate hours or a separate menu for Hyperion, so its Instagram is the best place to check before you walk over. With 34 seats between the dining room and the patio, this corner has room to sit in a way the cheese counter never did.

What Was Actually Filed for 2810 Hyperion

The filing for the bar site is real, but it is early. Here is where it stood as October ended:

• City Planning case EAR-2026-5513-DB-VHCA was filed October 22, 2026, and assigned to a planner October 26. The city's case page shows it as not yet accepted for review, with no approved documents.
• The suffixes are explained in City Planning's own case suffix guide, where DB means Density Bonus and VHCA means Vesting Housing Crisis Act.
• The proposed building is five stories, about 59 feet tall, with 28 units, 23,740 square feet of residential floor area and four off-menu incentives requested under the density bonus.
• The building department record, LADBS 26030-10000-07538, is a pending grading application that the department itself labels "Pre - Inspection only, not a permit for construction."

The ground-floor retail space varies by source. City Planning lists 2,500 square feet of commercial floor area. The LADBS application says 2,100 square feet and describes the apartments as rentals for stays of more than 30 days. Urbanize, as relayed by Los Angeles Magazine, put the retail at 2,200 square feet. The same report named the applicant as H for Hyperion, LLC, said the units would be one-bedrooms, and credited the design to Bjarke Ingels Group, the Copenhagen-founded firm.

Neighbors who want a say should know that Urbanize reported the project would use an administrative review pathway "which does not require a separate environmental clearance or a public hearing," and Los Angeles Magazine repeated that. The city's case page doesn't list a hearing date. The Silver Lake Neighborhood Council board meets on the first Wednesday of each month, which put its November meeting on the 4th.

Seventy-Seven Years Inside One Low Building

Calling the plan "the bar's replacement" misses how many lives this building has had. Los Angeles Magazine's Chris Nichols traced it back to 1949, when it opened as three shops, including a dry cleaner and a donut store. By 1969 the storefronts had been combined into one wood-paneled, carpeted room for a short-lived restaurant called Nomad's Table.

It then became Woody's, a gay bar probably named for owner P.N. Woodward. The ONE Archives at USC cites close to a dozen gay guides from the 1970s and 1980s that list it. Nichols writes that the bar held carnivals in the parking lot and fundraisers for the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, and that the 1990s brought a lesbian night called Utero and promoter nights such as Solid Gold and Club 69. MJ's took over in 2002 and gave the building the streamlined nautical look with porthole windows and a rooftop neon sign. Tenants of the Trees opened in 2015 behind the wood-plank front that's there now.

Writer Eric Brightwell's map of more than 50 queer historic and cultural sites in Silver Lake is a good companion for anyone who wants to see where 2810 Hyperion fits among the neighborhood's other addresses. Los Angeles Magazine notes that most of those sites are long gone. The same report says the city isn't requiring a historic assessment for this project. That's a big part of why the building's history is being told now, in print, rather than in a hearing room.

The Clock Next Door Runs Slower Than the Headlines

On October 20 the Eastside Rag ran an item asking whether Tenants of the Trees was actually closing. Three days later, the newsletter's follow-up quoted tip-line sources saying demolition was "minimum two years out" and that the bar was almost certain to stay open until then because "it's a moneymaker." That estimate comes from unnamed sources, not from the bar or the developer. Even so, it fits the official record, which shows a case not yet accepted for review and a building department file that is not a construction permit.

The bread tenant for 2800 Hyperion was found in February 2025, and the bakery reached opening day in November 2026. The apartment filing for 2810 has to get through review before construction is even on the calendar. For now the block keeps its Gelson's run, its Trader Joe's line, a new sourdough counter with a patio and a cocktail bar in a 1949 building, all on the same stretch of sidewalk.

Opening weekends are the easiest change to spot. Anyone who wants to follow the rest can do it two ways. City Planning case EAR-2026-5513-DB-VHCA will show when the application is accepted for review and when documents are posted. The neighborhood council's first-Wednesday meetings are where any local discussion would be on the agenda.

I spent more than a decade on West Hollywood's Historic Preservation Commission, and I'm always drawn to buildings like 2810 Hyperion, where seventy-seven years of neighborhood life sit behind one modest facade. If you own on or near Hyperion and want to talk through how projects like this one tend to change a block over time, the team at Yawar Charlie is glad to share what we're seeing. Contact Us.