Newly landmarked Tom Bergin’s is sold

After its landmarking last month, the Miracle Mile tavern Tom Bergin’s has been sold.

David Passman of the Passman Group, the brokerage that represented the former owners, announced the sale Wednesday, but did not disclose the amount and would not comment on the buyer’s plans for the former bar.

The buyer is 840 Fairfax Owner, a limited liability corporation registered to a townhouse in Encinitas.

An impending sale of the property to a developer that wanted to build a mixed-use project at the site had been teased during public hearings for the property’s landmarking.

The move to landmark the bar itself but not its large, adjoining parking lot was seen as a kind of compromise that might allow for preserving the bar building and a future development of the parking area.

Frank Schrek, who co-owned of the bar, has that a development like that would be “the only way Tom Bergin’s will ever survive.”

The Los Angeles Conservancy, the Miracle Mile Association, and a number of neighborhood supporters appeared at public hearings to speak out in favor of saving Tom Bergin’s, which was one of the oldest drinking establishments in Los Angeles.

But the landmarking of the property occurred over the objections of Schrek and his son Derek, who argued that the restaurant and pub, which had reopened and closed a couple of times in the last few years, was not viable at that location. It has been shuttered since 2018.