Trader Joe's plans grocery store in historic Venice theater, 2029 opening

Trader Joe’s plans to turn the long-vacant Fox Venice Theatre at 620 S. Lincoln Blvd. in Venice, Los Angeles, into a grocery store with a $30 million redevelopment and a target opening in 2029. The chain has filed with Los Angeles City Planning for a 12,585-square-foot store, putting one of the Westside’s most recognizable old movie houses on a new path after years of dormant redevelopment talk.

The application lists daily operating hours of 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. and also seeks permission to sell a full line of alcohol for off-site consumption. That means the project is still moving through the city’s review process, and the store cannot open until the planning and alcohol approvals are finished. For Trader Joe’s workers, the filing is the clearest sign yet that the company intends to keep using existing urban buildings to add stores rather than building from scratch.

The Fox Venice opened on August 17, 1951, as a 1,003-seat Art Deco single-screen theater, with a preview of Meet Me After the Show and an appearance by George Jessel. It later operated as a revival house, then briefly as an art house, and later as an indoor swap meet. The interior was heavily modified over the decades, but the marquee remains intact. The building has sat largely vacant since the swap meet operation ended, making it a familiar but unfinished fixture on a busy stretch of Lincoln Boulevard.

Preservationists have already pushed back. The Los Angeles Historic Theatre Foundation is helping the local community pursue Historic-Cultural Monument designation, a move that underscores concern over what survives inside the building and how much of the old theater’s character will remain once a grocery store takes over. A prior 2021 concept had proposed office space for the site, showing how often the property has been recast without ever being fully revived.

The Venice filing also fits Trader Joe’s broader Southern California pattern. The company already has multiple Los Angeles stores, including locations in Hollywood, at 3rd & Fairfax, Burton Way, La Brea, Olympic Blvd., Silver Lake, Sunset Blvd., USC Village, West Los Angeles-Sepulveda, West Los Angeles and Westwood. Trader Joe’s surpassed 600 U.S. locations in late 2025 and recently bought a former Rite Aid in Santa Monica for about $22 million, signaling a steady appetite for urban reuse projects that can be converted into stores without waiting on raw land.