The yellow sign over 2926 Main Street flickered back on the night of May 22, and for anyone who has lived in Santa Monica long enough to have a Circle Bar story, it looked exactly like it always had. Same oval bar. Same low ceiling. Same spot on Main Street it has occupied since 1949, dark for nearly three years after an ownership shakeup in August 2023 shuttered it without warning.
A few blocks north, on Santa Monica Boulevard, two other rooms went quiet the same year and didn't get a version of that ending. The Misfit closed for good on April 18 after fifteen years in the Art Deco Clock Tower Building near the Promenade. Britannia Pub, the British-themed bar that had poured pints on Santa Monica Boulevard for three decades, saw its lease at 318 Santa Monica Blvd expire July 31, with a Taco Bell Cantina already filing permits to take the space.
Three legacy bars, one city, one calendar year. Only one came back the way it left.
What Came Back
Circle Bar's return was led by Mark and Addie Van Gessel, the Westside restaurateurs behind Venice's Hinano Cafe and Santa Monica's own Tavern on Main. They didn't just lease the space. They bought into a piece of Santa Monica history and largely left it alone: the 1949 floor plan stayed, the vintage signage stayed, the oval bar that generations of regulars have leaned on stayed. What changed sits behind the scenes. A new elevated DJ booth called "The Halo" now anchors the room, wired into an upgraded QSC sound system and a digitally controlled Chauvet lighting rig built around the bar's original disco ball.
"Everyone has a Circle Bar story," Van Gessel said ahead of the reopening.
The bar opened its doors Thursday through Saturday, 6 p.m. to 2 a.m., with the space available for private bookings the rest of the week. It is also one of the named participants in Santa Monica's Main Street Entertainment Zone, the city program that lets adults carry drinks between businesses on Main between Hollister Avenue and Ocean Park Boulevard during sanctioned events. The other participants on that list are worth reading as a group: Ashland Hill, Jameson's Pub, Library Alehouse, Tavern on Main, The Victorian. Every name on it is independently owned.
What Didn't
The Misfit's closing had a different shape entirely. LGO Hospitality, the group that opened the restaurant in 2011 inside the historic Clock Tower Building, chose not to renew its lease after what it described as a revolving door of five building ownership entities over fifteen years. The company is redirecting the Misfit's happy hour and menu into its newer property, Diner Antonette, on Wilshire Boulevard. The bar didn't lose its following. It lost its building.
Britannia Pub's ending played out more slowly. The lease at 318 Santa Monica Blvd expired July 31, and permit filings show Taco Bell Cantina plans to convert roughly 1,510 square feet of the space into a restaurant and bar with a mezzanine, a project valued at just under $400,000. The Cain family, who ran Britannia for thirty years, said at the time they'd keep pouring on a month-to-month basis until the new tenant was ready to move in, and that the pub itself wasn't disappearing so much as relocating, with what they called "Britannia 2.0" already being scouted elsewhere in the city.
| Venue | Location | Run | What Happened in 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Circle Bar | 2926 Main Street | Since 1949, dark Aug. 2023–May 2026 | Reopened May 22 under new independent owners, floor plan intact |
| The Misfit | Clock Tower Building, Santa Monica Blvd | 2011–2026, fifteen years | Closed April 18, lease not renewed, brand moved to Wilshire |
| Britannia Pub | 318 Santa Monica Blvd | Thirty years | Lease expired July 31, site becoming a Taco Bell Cantina |
Same City, Two Different Kinds of Math
It would be easy to read all three as one story about a city trading its character for chains. The data doesn't support that as cleanly as it feels like it should.
Downtown, near the Promenade, the city itself has been actively courting larger operators. In April, the City Council approved a $3 million fund built specifically to backfill vacant storefronts, part of a plan that waives the $1,000-per-seat wastewater fee that used to apply to new restaurant builds and remodels, and that now offers 90 minutes of downtown parking for a dollar. That policy shift matters because it lowers the entry cost for exactly the kind of large-footprint tenant that can absorb a build-out and sign a long lease, which is precisely what happened when Raising Cane's took over the former Bibimbap and Yogurtland spaces at 1401 Third Street Promenade in June. Hunter Hall, who directs the Main Street Business Improvement Association, put it plainly when the incentive package passed: "We're doing more events than ever." The city's own tracking map put Third Street Promenade vacancy at 28.5 percent as of April, the backdrop against which both Misfit's and Britannia's landlords made their calls.
Main Street, half a mile south, ran on a different logic. Nobody waived a fee to bring Circle Bar back. Two local restaurateurs who already had a stake in the neighborhood bought a dark building and put their own money into preserving it, then folded it into a civic program built around businesses that were already there. The contrast isn't chains versus locals in the abstract. It's two separate playbooks operating three blocks apart in the same year: one designed to fill empty storefronts with tenants who can afford the fixed costs of a downtown build-out, and one built by people who already had equity in what the street used to be.
If you're trying to guess which version applies to a spot you care about, the address tells you more than the headline does. A room near the Promenade is competing against a vacancy rate north of a quarter of all storefronts and a city actively subsidizing new entrants. A room on Main Street south of Wilshire is more likely to change hands between people who already know the regulars by name.
What This Means If You're Watching Your Own Block
None of this is really about real estate, but it is about paying attention to who owns the building your favorite spot sits in, because that answer predicts its future better than nostalgia does. The Misfit didn't lose customers. It lost a lease to a building owner who wouldn't commit. Britannia didn't lose relevance. Its landlord found a tenant willing to pay for a walk-in cooler and a mezzanine. Circle Bar came back because two people who already ran two other rooms nearby decided the return on a dark, storied building was worth more to them than the alternative.
Main Street's version of Santa Monica isn't frozen. It's just being renewed by people who were already in the neighborhood, one building at a time, while downtown works through a very different kind of turnover with a very different set of incentives behind it.
If you're watching how a particular block or building in Santa Monica is changing hands, or you're curious what a shift like this means for a property you own or are thinking about, Steve Frankel has spent more than two decades reading the Westside block by block. Reach out anytime for a confidential conversation about what's happening on your street.
