A developer has filed to demolish the Tenants of the Trees bar at 2810 Hyperion Ave. in Silver Lake and build 28 apartments in its place.

Property owner H for Hyperion, LLC submitted the application to the Los Angeles Department of City Planning the week before Oct. 26, as first reported by Urbanize LA. The internationally known Copenhagen-founded firm Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) is designing the project, which calls for a five-story, steel-clad structure with all one-bedroom units above roughly 2,200 square feet of ground-floor commercial space.

Five of the 28 units would be reserved for lower-income renters, according to the application. In exchange, the project would receive density bonus incentives allowing a larger building than current zoning rules permit.

The project would use the city's enhanced administrative review entitlement pathway, which does not require a separate environmental clearance or a public hearing, Hoodline reported. That could speed the project toward construction compared with conventional review routes.

No public statement from H for Hyperion, LLC or BIG appears in available records.

Decades of queer history at the site

The building at 2810 Hyperion dates to 1949, when it housed three shops including a dry cleaners and a donut store, LAmag reported. By 1969, the storefronts were combined into a short-lived restaurant called Nomad's Table. It soon became a gay bar called Woody's, likely named for owner P.N. Woodward.

ONE Archives at the University of Southern California cites nearly a dozen gay guides that mention Woody's during the 1970s and 1980s, according to LAmag. The bar hosted special events, parking-lot carnivals and fundraisers for the AIDS Healthcare Foundation.

"Woody's was very friendly with no pretentions, a real working class place," David Del Valle of Hollywood told LAmag.

Another gay bar, MJ's, took over in 2002. Tenants of the Trees opened in 2015 after a major remodel, catering to a different audience, LAmag reported.

The site sits in a neighborhood central to LGBTQ+ history in Los Angeles. The Mattachine Society, one of the earliest gay rights organizations in the United States, was founded in Silver Lake in 1950. Patrons of the nearby Black Cat Tavern staged a public protest against a 1967 LAPD raid, two years before New York's Stonewall uprising.

Gay activist Roland Palencia told The Guardian in a July 2023 article that Silver Lake was being "de-gayed and de-Latinized." Writer Eric Brightwell has mapped more than 50 queer historic and cultural sites in the neighborhood, the majority of which are gone, according to LAmag.

No construction timeline or project cost has been disclosed. The application's case number is EAR-2026-5513-DB-VHCA, per the city planning filing.