general admission
Los Angeles, California
Type
Sports Bar
2,765 SF
Size
Built
Status
General Admission infuses a modern aesthetic and atmosphere into a sports bar through the addition of outdoor seating, implementation of a superior operational infrastructure, enhanced guest service, catering and private events and of course happy hours! All culminating in a unique sports bar experience. We wanted to incorporate iconic sports references to the design of the building. From the "court side" bar, to the TV cages, to the bat details surrounding the interior space.
If you’ve ever been to a sports bar in the Los Angeles area, you might realize that lack of attention paid to the location of the TV screens in respect to the seating area and viewing angles. When watching a game, at least one or more of your friends (hopefully not you), is not able to sit, eat, drink, and comfortably watch the game. From the beginning, it was a priority to provide optimal viewing angles from every seat!
Each patron can enjoy watching their favorite event from every seat in the house including the outdoor patio. To provide television screens visible from every seat it became clear that our team needed to design a ceiling that integrated the televisions, ceiling finish and lighting into one seamless element.
Secondly, we wanted to create a family friendly restaurant that embraced the local community of Cahuenga Pass. To achieve this, we first opened the restaurant to the street using bi-fold hangar doors, as opposed to regular garage doors which would conflict with the ceiling's design, creating a comfortable, open, and welcoming feel. We made the kitchen compact but capable of handling a variety of gourmet foods that would be more appealing to the community.
By incorporating various sporting elements in abstract ways, we created a classic sports bar with a more contemporary feel. We created a back-lit screen wall made up of baseball bat voids; we used brown leather for the booths and benches, referencing a football; we surrounded the bar and face of the bar in the same wood floor pattern used in basketball courts, and we encased the above head televisions in chain-link cages, similar to the cages in Mixed Martial Arts.
The Court features a light maple floor and bar face that evoke the sensation of being court-side at a Lakers game, while the bat wall pays homage to baseball batters who traditionally shaped their own bats by hand, utilizing modern CNC machines and software to create a striking negative impression. Additionally, the bi-fold hangar doors enhance the indoor-outdoor ambiance, allowing for optimal light placement and an unobtrusive layout for television viewing.