From blight to beer garden: How this bar owner transformed a vacant lot into a ‘third space’ for the Wrigley community

Just a year ago, the former site of the Wrigley Village Community Garden was a hotspot for illegal dumping, graffiti, rats and overall blight. 

“The City would put notices that there’s couches, you know, homeless, fires,” Wrigley Tavern owner Tommy Mofid said. “It had just been, for the past five, ten years, a problematic lot. It just really housed a lot of problems.”

Now, dirt piles and debris have been replaced with flourishing banana trees, patches of vegetables and herbs, strings of warm patio lights and a shaded outdoor dining area. 

“I have always dreamt of opening up a beer garden in Southern California, because when you go to Germany, they have beer gardens everywhere. A place that has six months of rain straight has them everywhere,” Mofid said. “Here we have 300 days of sunshine and we don’t have hardly any beer gardens.”

After a bit of luck in obtaining the property, and already equipped with a liquor license, Mofid opened up Wrigley Tavern in late 2018.

But just as he was settling into the groove, the pandemic hit. 

He reacted to the pandemic’s first curveball—no indoor dining without food—by building out a small kitchen around August 2020. Mofid took inspiration from his travels to Greece and Turkey and created a menu of flatbreads topped with ingredients like pickles, organic cherry tomatoes, fresh mushrooms and peppers, all of which are named after neighborhoods in Long Beach. 

With basic dining restrictions covered, Wrigley Tavern was able to reopen with limited capacity.

As the pandemic threatened to stretch into 2021, Mofid turned his attention to the vacant lot adjacent to the bar—an opportunity for permanent outdoor dining. 

The property, which had changed hands several times in preceding years, eventually came under the ownership of Mofid’s landlord in 2018, just as Mofid was building the tavern. 

He saw the blighted lot not as a nuisance, but as an opportunity, one that came with its fair share of risk. 

“You’re behind the eight ball, and everything else is counted against you,” he said of the financial impacts of the pandemic. “‘How do you feel about betting the rest of your life savings on the idea?’ You know? Because I’d already been open for a year.”

“It was one of those moments where you’re like, ‘Do I go all in?’” he said. 

During his deliberation, he thought back to a lesson he teaches his bartenders: “Always bet on yourself. No one will bet on you like you do.” 

After a few months of convincing the City and a long-winded permitting process, Mofid finally got approval to bring his vision to fruition.

The minute he received permits, he and a team of friends went “full frontal,” he said, removing dirt and debris, grading the soil and gardening. 

He credits the success of the project to his relationship with the community. 

“They all just pitched in and did their part: came, shoveled, showed up and planted things, brought mint and stuck it in the ground,” he said. “It was very communal.”

That communal relationship had been brewing since Wrigley Tavern first opened. When Mofid first opened the bar, he hoped it would become a “third space” for the community. The first being their home, the second their workplace, and the third their place of reprieve from the other two. 

The litmus test for regulars is whether they know the name of Mofid’s dog, Gordy, who “sits like a gargoyle” in the corner of the bar. 

Rather than curate a “schtick” for the bar, he kept the space’s design as simple as possible—a blank canvas for the community. 

“In conception, the idea was to have a bar that’s not themed, a lot like method two in acting,” he said. “In theatre, you allow the situation and the environment to dictate what you’re going to be.”

He steers away from “supermarket” beers, instead attempting to stock his shelves with small, local, private and boutique spirits and brews. Mofid also uses house-made mixers and offers beverages from around the world: Glögg (a Swedish mulled wine), Hite (a South Korean lager), and is workshopping recipes for aperitifs, a delicate pre-meal drink with vermouth. 

The tavern’s custom cocktail menu includes drinks like the Galapagos, a mixture of sipsmith gin, grapefruit juice, pickle juice and ginger ale. The Smokin’ Monk is a concoction of smoky mezcal and benedictine liquor on the rocks with a twist. Mofid said the tavern will soon update their menu with a new cast of offerings. 

The tavern relies on a “if you know, you know” type of neighborly secrecy. 

“Every day, I get two or three people that go, ‘I would have never thought this was in my neighborhood. I can walk over here,’” he said. “I feel like that discovery allows them to own this third space.” 

The Wrigley Tavern is located at 2054 Pacific Ave, Long Beach, CA 90806. The tavern is open from 5 p.m. to midnight Tuesday through Sunday.