EDITOR'S NOTE: This is a collaboration between digital journalist David Mendez and multimedia journalist Itay Hod. To watch the video report that accompanies this story, click the arrow above.

LOS ANGELES — It’s been a long 2020 for Steve Cohen. He’s spent the last two decades building up Larchmont Village’s Village Pizzeria into an institution — the kind of restaurant that has murals, neon signs, photos of celebrity customers, and friends alike. You walk in and feel like you’re stepping into an anchor of the neighborhood.

So when the pandemic hit, and Cohen had to close his doors, the whiteboard sign behind his roll-down gate apologized to customers, promising he’d be back soon. Eventually, he was — Village pivoted, becoming a take-out only operation.

But COVID had hobbled the restaurant. And soon after Chevalier’s Books, Village’s neighbors across the street, put out a call for their customers to help them survive the winter, Cohen put out his own ask.

“For months we’ve been struggling to keep up with the insane demands that this pandemic has brought upon us. We’ve tried in good faith to negotiate a fair deal with our landlord for six months to no avail,” Village Pizzeria posted on Instagram.

Cohen said that he and his landlord haven’t been able to come up with an arrangement between paying the space’s regular rent and a rate that he believes is pandemic appropriate.

“How could that be fair? I can’t use my dining room for the purpose I signed my lease for,” Cohen said.

He asked customers to sign petitions — a change.org petition racked up thousands of endorsements, while the clipboard-and-paper petition on their take-out table was packed with signatures. In his Instagram post, Cohen wrote that Village Pizzeria could be one of about 30 empty storefronts along Larchmont Boulevard by year’s end.

Cohen bought into his first pizzeria in 1994, in San Francisco. He had just cashed out from the clothing business — he was tired of the long hours, the long trips, the heavy bags, and the interminable car rides. In 1996, after visiting his brother in L.A., Cohen spotted an empty bakery storefront on Larchmont Boulevard.

That same trip, Cohen signed the lease and moved his family down to Larchmont. He went about making it the kind of restaurant that the guys from his childhood pizza joint in Flushing, Queens, could be proud of.

“They told me that, for a Jew, I’m doing really good,” Cohen said, laughing. “The Italians are proud of me. I got ordained.”

Cohen’s catered for the stars and donated to the schools. Chatting with him on the sidewalk, he’ll cut out to bump fists with friends, say hi to firefighters, call out to street musicians. He’s watched families grow, too: Babies being born, growing up, and heading to college, eventually starting families of their own. “I call it belly to Berkeley,” Cohen said.

Edie Frere, of Landis Gifts and Stationery, believes that Larchmont Village truly is a village — that, in a pinch, a neighbor could leave a child in any one of their stores, and someone would babysit.

Frere, along with Chevalier’s and every other tenant in the former Lipson Building, must vacate the space by the end of December, when their leases expire. The new landlord, Christina Development, seeks to redevelop the building into the “Larchmont Mercantile,” according to a brochure distributed earlier this year. Many of those businesses, including Frere’s, are looking for new homes, whether it’s on the same block or north of Beverly Boulevard.

“It’s not bad up there, but there isn’t the foot traffic,” Frere said. “I’d rather stay in the village, but I don’t know that it makes financial sense.”

Frere calls herself a lifelong resident of the area; for decades, she and a business partner maintained a number of shops, selling stationery, office supplies, and furniture. She remembers the days that hardware and grocery stores were open down along the boulevard.

Frere sees how Christina is marketing the building — the brochure uses more than a handful of synonyms for “monied” in describing its likely customer-base — and worries that Larchmont might lose what makes it special.

“You were about the neighborhood, because the street will die. It’ll just be a street full of banks and coffee shops,” Frere said. “Things change, but making them slick and full of stores that people don’t really need…it’s too bad.”

“While our desire was to keep the building occupied to the greatest extent possible during this repair work, it has been determined that the noise and disturbances will be too disruptive for our tenants to continue to operate,” said Christina Development President and Founder Lawrence N. Taylor.  “We greatly understand the impact of COVID-19 and have made every effort to be flexible with our tenants and have granted rent deferral to every tenant that requested us to do so. 

Tenants, he said, are “welcome and encouraged to return to the building,” after the building’s repairs and upgrades are complete. No completion date for the repairs has been announced.

Business is suffering across Larchmont Village just as it is across the country, said Heather Duffy Boylston, executive director of the Larchmont Village Business Improvement District.

“To be frank, the pandemic hit at a time for retail where…they were already readjusting based on shopping patterns,” Boylston said. “But I will say, Larchmont is a very different community than most. We’re very proud of the fact that we have a small-town feel, that Larchmont is our neighborhood gathering place.”

According to Spectrum News 1 reporter Itay Hod, an agreement has been reached between Cohen and his landlord over the lease. But Cohen feels that the neighborhood has changed over the years and that Larchmont risks losing what makes it unique. 

“It’s changed. The mom-and-pop independents that have been here are gone. There’s an apathy — there’s a lot more garbage on the street,” Cohen said.