According to CityWatch LA, Pineapple Hill Saloon & Grill has poured drinks at 4454 Van Nuys Blvd since 1978. Angela Marsden took over the place in 2010, and in the years since she's built the kind of bar where regulars lead Skol chants over the drums on Sunday mornings, where a memorial plaque on the wall honors a regular who used to organize the office happy hours before he died, where the patio still wears its string lights from whatever night someone last strung them up. In August, the plaza's ownership issued 60-day vacate notices to Marsden and the other tenants there, with the exception of In-N-Out.
That's not a metaphor about neighborhood change. It's a specific commercial lease dispute with a specific date attached, and it happens to be landing in the same stretch of weeks in which Sherman Oaks loses two other local fixtures and throws its biggest party of the year. If you live here, the useful thing to know isn't that a bar might close. It's what a city designation for surviving 47 years does and does not cover when a property owner moves ahead with a redevelopment plan.
How the 60-Day Notice Affects Pineapple Hill
On August 6, the owners of the shopping plaza known as Sherman Oaks Square issued vacate notices to every remaining business there except In-N-Out Burger. That list includes Pineapple Hill, a nail salon, a water store, a liquor store, and Capital Drugs, a longtime homeopathic pharmacy. The developer behind the project, Blumax Partners, principal Daniel Gryczman, gave Marsden until October 6 to tear down the patio she built and empty both the saloon and the adjacent space she rents.
Marsden says she was told years ago, informally, that she'd get first right of refusal on a new lease once the remodel wrapped.
In a report by Yahoo News, Marsden said, "They didn't put anything in writing."
Sherman Oaks Neighborhood Council land-use records show this redevelopment has been on the table since at least 2018, when plans called for 42,000 square feet of new office space, a parking structure, and upgraded outdoor dining, with In-N-Out explicitly carved out of the remodel even then. A commercial listing now markets the site as a future "flagship lifestyle retail destination." The gap between a plan filed in 2018 and a 60-day notice delivered in August is where seven years of month-to-month leases sat quietly, waiting.
The Word "Legacy" Doesn't Come With a Lock on the Door
Pineapple Hill holds Legacy Business status through the Mayor's office, a designation built for exactly this kind of place: a bar that's been a neighborhood gathering point for closer to 50 years than 40. According to CityWatch LA, what that status actually delivers is eligibility for city grants and promotional help. It carries no zoning mandate and no legal mechanism that can stop a private landlord from declining to renew a lease or moving forward with a redevelopment eviction. Marsden can apply for aid to help her relocate.
She's raised $2,392 of a $9,000 GoFundMe goal earmarked for legal costs or a possible relocation, a modest ask against a redevelopment that's adding tens of thousands of square feet to the same lot. Under her triple-net lease, Marsden also paid roughly $500,000 to acquire the business over her first decade and recently put about $20,000 into a new air conditioning system, an improvement she can't take with her when she leaves.
The Same Stretch of Weeks, Two More Sendoffs
Pineapple Hill isn't losing its address in isolation. On September 12, Boneyard Bistro served its final meal on Ventura Boulevard after 21 years, owner Aaron Robins closing the smokehouse he opened in 2005 with his father, Preston Robins. It had survived the 2008 recession and the pandemic, expanded into a second restaurant called SOCA a few blocks west in 2017, and earned its own SOHA Restaurant of the Month recognition in February. Around the same stretch of calendar, Santino's NY Pizza, the New York-style pizzeria that had run for close to 20 years on Woodman Avenue just north of Ventura, closed its doors, according to SOHA's own newsletter.
Three businesses. Nearly 90 years of combined history across Sherman Oaks. All winding down inside the same season.
What's Filling the Storefronts Around Them
None of this means Ventura Boulevard is emptying out. The corridor is seeing a wave of new tenants and a reopened space, with most of the activity clustered within a short walk of the addresses closing down:
- Yama Sushi Marketplace, a roughly 7,200-square-foot grab-and-go sushi counter at 15300 Ventura Blvd, targeting a late summer opening. CEO Scott Kohno told What Now Los Angeles the brand sees Ventura Boulevard as "ground zero for sushi in Los Angeles."
- Aromas Indian Cuisine, led by chefs Jaspal Singh and Jaspreet Bindra, moving into the former Billa Indian Cuisine and SanSai Japanese Grill space at 14350 Ventura Blvd.
- HoneyBaked Ham, which opened June 22 at 14427 Ventura Blvd, co-owned by Sherman Oaks resident Tony Vennie and actor Leslie David Baker.
- A fully restored 1950s Armet & Davis Googie coffee shop building at Van Nuys Boulevard and Hesby Street, closed for six years as the old Corky's before Chick-fil-A rebuilt it from original plans with architectural historian Alan Hess, reopening December 4, 2025 under local operator Brad Boerneke.
- Hapa Haus, a golf-simulator restaurant-bar planned for the Sherman Oaks Galleria at 15301 W. Ventura Blvd, targeting a November opening under owner Alex Miyawaki.
Every one of those is a real addition to the neighborhood. None of them replaces what a 47-year-old dive bar or a 21-year-old smokehouse actually was, which is a place where the plaque on the wall means something because enough years have passed for it to.
October 18, Twelve Days Later
The Sherman Oaks Chamber's 34th annual Street Fair runs Sunday, October 18, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. along Ventura Boulevard between Kester Avenue and Van Nuys Boulevard, free admission, typically drawing tens of thousands of people to what's billed as the largest single-day event in the San Fernando Valley. The fair's eastern end sits at Van Nuys Boulevard, a few blocks from where Pineapple Hill has poured drinks since 1978, behind the plaza's In-N-Out, which remains on the site.
If Marsden's October 6 deadline holds, the fair's 34th year will be the first in the bar's history where Sherman Oaks throws its biggest party of the year without Pineapple Hill open a few blocks away to catch the overflow afterward.
The saloon's regulars have until the first week of October to get one more round in under those patio lights. The fair goes on twelve days later either way.
This is the kind of block-by-block detail that separates a neighborhood you've lived in for years from one you're still getting to know, and it's exactly the texture Carey More tracks across every corner of Los Angeles she covers, including the Sherman Oaks stretch of Ventura Boulevard. Subscribe for exclusive listings, and for the local read that comes with them.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
