The sidewalk in front of 2032 Harrison Street is new concrete, poured sometime this month as the last of six construction phases wrapped up on schedule. A few doors down, Common Room announced a summer 2026 debut, months before that construction wrapped. That is the part most drive-through visitors miss: Downtown Hollywood's newest restaurants did not wait for the ribbon cutting. They signed leases and set opening targets while crews were still working the block.
For anyone who has watched Harrison Street from a car window over the past year, the corridor looked like a permanent construction zone, fencing on one side, open storefronts on the other, moving block by block with no obvious end date. It had one. The Hollywood Community Redevelopment Agency broke the Harrison Street Streetscape Project into six sequential phases, and the final one closed out on September 18, 2026, almost exactly a year after the first phase began.
Six Phases, One Street, No Full Closures
The CRA's own schedule reads like a construction log, and it is worth reading closely if you use Harrison Street at all:
| Phase | Section | Dates |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | South side, 1800 block | Sept 29 - Nov 21, 2025 |
| 2 | North side, 1800 block | Nov 24 - Dec 23, 2025 |
| 3 | South side, 2000 block | Jan 5 - Feb 27, 2026 |
| 4 | North side, 1900 block | Mar 2 - May 1, 2026 |
| 5 | South side, 1900 block | May 4 - Jun 25, 2026 |
| 6 | North side, 2000 block | Jul 6 - Sept 18, 2026 |
The pattern is deliberate. Instead of shutting down entire blocks, the CRA alternated sides and kept the westbound lane closed only during the day, reopening it every evening. Sidewalks stayed accessible to every business on the street for the full eleven months. That detail explains something that otherwise looks improbable: how a restaurant corridor absorbed a year of active construction without losing its anchor tenants.
The Coverage Got Ahead of the Calendar
If you read anything online in May 2026 describing Harrison Street as having "just completed a major street remodel," that description was early. Phase 6, the north side of the 2000 block, the same 2000 block where Common Room's address sits, did not close out until September 18, four months later. Construction on that block was still active when the first press coverage described the street as finished.
That gap matters if you are trying to picture the street as it exists right now, not as it was described mid-year. The corridor did not become a finished, walkable two-block stretch until this month. Everything that opened before September did so alongside active fencing, not after it.
The Corner That Never Closed
The Tipsy Boar has operated from the same corner of Harrison Street since 2013, which means it predates every phase of this project by more than a decade. Its draft list runs to 40 rotating taps, two of which pour cocktails instead of beer, alongside a gastropub menu built around pork belly, boar burgers, mojo pulled pork, and lobster tacos. A bar with that kind of tap turnover depends on foot traffic showing up daily, which makes its survival through eleven months of lane closures a small data point in itself: the phased construction did what it was designed to do.
A few blocks down, Thanks to Harrison has been serving an all-day menu at 2001 Harrison Street under chef Ivan Proseniuk, open from 8:30 in the morning until 10 at night on weekdays and 11 on Fridays and Saturdays. The kitchen leans European, with whole baked branzino and a Wagyu burger alongside a cocktail program built around fresh ingredients. It sits two blocks from Young Circle and about ten minutes from Hollywood Beach, close enough to pull in both the downtown lunch crowd and the beach crowd looking for dinner on the way back.
Neither of these places is new. Both spent the better part of a year operating next to active construction equipment, which is a different kind of endurance test than opening into a finished street.
The New Arrivals Timed to the Finish Line
Common Room, at 2032 Harrison Street, is the newest name on the block and the most deliberately timed. It comes from BOL Hospitality Group, the team behind Bae Korean Grill, The BŌL Asian Cuisine, and the Davidoff of Geneva Cigar Lounge at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, along with Hollywood's own Social Room. Founders Eric Douglas and Hai Nguyen built the group starting in 2013, the same year The Tipsy Boar opened its doors a few storefronts away.
Common Room's menu, led by executive chef Tanya Evans, runs toward elevated American classics: lobster rolls, slow-braised short ribs, a French dip, and a dish the menu calls yum yum chicken. The cocktail program comes from Miami's Unfiltered Hospitality. The space seats about 65 across roughly 2,000 square feet, with interiors from Jewel Toned Interiors and construction handled by Kaller Architects and Lombardi Development. Its most talked-about feature is a hidden bar called The Brooklyn Room, accessed through the back alley and open by invitation only, with cocktails named after New York City neighborhoods. Hours run Wednesday and Thursday from 5 to 10 p.m., Friday and Saturday until 11, and Sunday until 10, closed Monday and Tuesday.
A few doors north, at 2044 Harrison Street, Milieu Cafe was expected to open by spring 2026 according to coverage from earlier this year, though no confirmed opening date has surfaced since. If it opened on schedule, it did so on the same block where construction crews were still working through the summer. If it slipped, it would be opening onto a street that, as of this month, is finally finished on both sides.
What Changed This Month
Walk Harrison Street today and the difference from six months ago is not just cosmetic. For the first time since construction started in September 2025, every block is finished on both sides at the same time, and the restaurant lineup has grown to match it. The Tipsy Boar and Thanks to Harrison anchored the street through the disruption. Common Room set its opening target for the tail end of it. Whatever Milieu Cafe's status, it staked its address on the same two blocks betting the same outcome: a corridor that would come out the other side of a year of construction with a finished street and enough dining options to justify the walk from one end to the other.
That is a different Harrison Street than the one described in press coverage back in May, and a different one than the fenced-off stretch drivers were navigating around as recently as August. The construction schedule is public record. The restaurant lineup is now, as of this month, operating without a single active phase left on the CRA's list.
If you are watching Harrison Street because you are thinking about what a finished corridor like this does to the addresses around it, that is a conversation worth having before the next wave of leasing decisions gets made. Leonor Ortiz works Broward's mid-market corridors alongside her coastal condo practice, and a finished streetscape with four active kitchens on it is exactly the kind of shift worth a real conversation.
