They broke bread in Montclair on Wednesday. To christen the latest Panera Bread restaurant and bakery, officials smiled for the cameras and, ceremonially, tore a giant, braided baguette in half.
Well, that was different. (To avoid disappointing any traditionalists in the crowd, they also cut a ribbon with big scissors.)
I was there for a story, but also because I like Panera.
First off, a cup of soup and a half-salad is a good, low-carb lunch.
Also, there is sentiment involved. Panera is based in St. Louis, near my hometown. For national expansion, the name Panera, meaning “breadbasket,” was adopted. But — trivia note — locations in St. Louis still use the original name, St. Louis Bread Company.
Trivia note: In St. Louis, where @panerabread began in 1987, locations go by the original name: St. Louis Bread Co. The logo should still look familiar, though. I shot this while visiting in June. pic.twitter.com/LKu7bD433R
— David Allen (@DavidAllen909) July 18, 2024
Another reason to like the chain: It’s modest, reliable, unexciting and inoffensive. America’s political culture should aspire to be like Panera.
And so, as a resident of neighboring Claremont who still uses his plastic, color-faded Panera rewards card, I decided to attend the grand opening.
In his remarks, Mayor John Dutrey said the project had gone through “nine lives.” Deciding that had understated things, he amended that to “19 lives.”
It’s been a long time coming.
The restaurant, at 5212 Moreno St., is at the edge of a parking lot near a Target and across the street from Montclair Place mall. Oldtimers may remember when that stretch was home to a Van de Kamp’s, with its rotating windmill edged in blue neon.
The last restaurant there was Islands Burgers, which closed in 2010 and sat dormant the next 13 years.
Panera first expressed interest in 2016, a couple of presidential administrations ago.
As Mike Diaz, the city’s community development director, told me Wednesday: “This has been an eight-year project.”
Imagine, an eight-year wait for a Panera. Did Montclair’s tabletop buzzer not go off?
If you’re building from scratch on a vacant lot, that’s relatively straightforward, officials explained. In this case, however, the small shopping center property has multiple owners.
Easement rights had to be negotiated and renegotiated among an array of lawyers representing various property owners and tenants, few of whom were in a hurry because they didn’t necessarily care if a Panera were built or not.
In eight years, too, Panera’s design changed, with a drive-thru, not something the company did before COVID, becoming a must. The zoning didn’t originally allow for that.
Building a Panera “was a little more complicated than you’d think,” Diaz said.
Panera at first negotiated with Montclair Place owner CIM, which also owned the Islands property, and then with David Malin, whose Scottsdale Development Partners made a deal to buy the property from CIM in 2019.
That was only the start of Malin’s odyssey.
Said Malin: “We basically had to get approval from six parties” — four property owners and two tenants — “to do this. It’s a lot of parties to negotiate a document with.”
He probably wished he could just “pick two.” (Panera joke, sorry.)
One sticking point: Target didn’t want to give up parking spaces to accommodate a Panera restaurant and drive-thru. A year after the deal died, though, Target offered a compromise.
The store would swap a more distant part of its parking lot, about 200 yards west, for use as a Panera if Target could have the Islands property for parking — and if Malin would deliver the parking lot.
Malin agreed to that. The new site, however, would need an OK from Mushmel Properties, which owns the western half of the shopping center, and two of its tenants, 99 Cents Only and Gold’s Gym.
Malin had to introduce himself to the tenants’ corporate offices and ask them to approve his plans, which would involve putting up a building that would partially block motorists’ view of their businesses. They told Malin to send his site plan and that they’d get back to him.
“They didn’t get back to me,” Malin said wryly. “This took two years.”
Did money change hands to placate tenants or property owners? “Some of these parties,” Malin said delicately, “had to be incentivized to give formal consent to the project.”
Perhaps 99 Cents Only officials should have focused on internal problems. In April the discount chain went bankrupt and closed for good.
The City Council approved the Panera plans in December 2021. Yet the real-estate deal still had not been consummated and financing almost fell apart. In a last-ditch effort, Malin phoned Mayor Dutrey to ask for help.
“It came down to one property owner who needed to sign to meet the deadlines,” Dutrey told me. He said he phoned the owner, in West. L.A., “to explain the importance to the community” of the Panera.
A week later, Malin got the last signature required, which allowed him to get the building permit and close escrow.
“The mayor, he really stepped up,” Malin said.
The Islands was finally demolished in August 2023 and construction of the Panera began, culminating in the restaurant and bakery’s opening Wednesday, July 17.
Panera senior real estate manager Tim Okane — whose business card says his “Panera fave” is the Kitchen Sink Cookie — told me that in his 10 years with the company, no location took longer to come about than Montclair’s.
“It died several times,” but Panera stayed interested, Okane said, because “it was just a target site for us.”
He joked to Malin that “this is a case study,” and not in a good way.
Malin said he’d spent five years, and an undisclosed amount of money, to pursue this project with no guarantee of success.
“Developers take big risks,” Malin said from a seat facing the busy dining room Wednesday at lunchtime. “And now we get to enjoy this.”
Panera fans would give Malin, and everyone else involved, a bravo. Maybe even a signature Panera item, the Bacon Turkey Bravo.
Anyway, welcome to Montclair, St. Louis Bread Company — I mean, Panera!
You can read David Allen on Friday, Sunday and Wednesday, or you can “pick two.” Email [email protected], phone 909-483-9339, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on X.
