Throughout the summer, 1933 Group co-founder Bobby Green has been making plans to reopen the historic Formosa Cafe in West Hollywood. The cafe has been frequented for decades by movie stars, mobsters, entertainment executives and Green, as a teenager in the 1990s with a fake ID.

The new operators of the Formosa Cafe, 1933 Group, led tours through the venue on Oct. 7 to promote its bid for $150,000 from a national contest. (photo by Luke Harold)

“The Formosa not only to me, and I know to everyone here and most of Los Angeles, is so much more than a restaurant or a bar,” Green said. “To me, growing up, it was the relics of old Hollywood. It was the chance to be in a space that every celebrity we’ve ever heard of in life was there. And the stories that came out of the place are just incredible.”

Through the end of October, local residents can help. The Formosa, closed since December, is in a national contest that will award shares of $2 million in preservation funding to projects throughout the country that receive the most online votes from supporters.

Green, West Hollywood Mayor John Heilman and Councilwoman Lauren Meister joined the community on Oct. 7 at the Formosa for tours of the interior and to encourage everyone interested in its restoration to vote the maximum five times per day until the Oct. 31 deadline.

The funding is issued through the Partners in Preservation: Main Street campaign, created by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and American Express. It would provide the Formosa with $150,000 to rehabilitate the Pacific Electric Red Car trolley, the building’s oldest section. The nonprofit Los Angeles Conservancy nominated the Formosa for the campaign.

Twenty-four other venues from across the country are also competing for votes, including two others in California. Each venue was allowed to request up to $150,000 of the $2 million. Money will be allocated to the top vote-getters until the $2 million runs out. With nearly 280,000 votes cast, the Formosa is in fourth place, behind projects in Arizona, Alabama and Iowa.

Green, whose company leased the Formosa earlier this year, said there is still a lot of work to be done on the kitchen, walk-in-cooler, bathrooms and stockroom before it opens for business. But he and his partners, who specialize in restoring and reopening vintage L.A. venues, want the revamped cafe to live up to the memories of longtime denizens.

“I’ve been trying to assure people from day one, don’t worry, we’re not going to change it too much,” he said. “It’s not going to be that different from the old Formosa you remember.”

Red booths and memorabilia from its heyday will help recapture its former glory. One of Green’s partners, Dimitri Komarov, said in an interview earlier this year the menu will include the Formosa’s traditional Chinese fare with a “modern twist.”

Alison Martino, founder of the Vintage Los Angeles Facebook page, encouraged the crowd gathered outside the restaurant to vote online every day.

“It does not get more vintage than the Formosa,” she said.

In one of the Formosa’s most memorable movie appearances, an actress playing Lana Turner threw a drink in the face of a detective after he accosted her and an actor playing Johnny Stompanato, a Mickey Cohen associate. For the tour, 1933 Group placed a cardboard cutout of Turner in the booth where the scene was filmed.

“The movie ‘L.A. Confidential’ comes in here and all they do is set up cameras and shoot, there’s no set design needed,” Martino said. “Hollywood movie studios spend thousands of dollars to have something look like this on their movie sets, and we have it right here.”

Heilman, serving his eighth one-year term as mayor of West Hollywood, referred to the Formosa’s location next to studios where the entertainment industry’s top talent used to work.

“It’s proximity to a movie studio also made it a location where entertainment celebrities, came, deals were made and exciting things happened,” he said.

For information about the Formosa Cafe and other venues vying for a portion of the funding, and to vote, visit savetheformosa.com.