For most of the last decade, the Helms Design District was a place Culver City residents pointed out to visitors and then drove past on the way to somewhere else. HD Buttercup anchored the west end, the bakery revival came and went, and the block read as a design showroom for people furnishing second homes. In the span of a single spring, that identity has been rewritten. A city-format IKEA opened a 38,000-square-foot store at the Helms Design District, a cult Costa Mesa pizzeria took the corner that Lustig left behind, and a Japanese restaurant from the WATAMI group joined the same stretch. If you live here and have not walked Helms Avenue since April, the block you remember is not the block that exists in August.
The Helms block finally works as a destination
Three tenant announcements would have been notable individually. Arriving inside one season, they changed the math of the district. The Helms Design District is undergoing a makeover that brings a new IKEA store and two restaurants to the neighborhood this year, with the IKEA a scaled-down city-center version of the Swedish retailer that still includes 4,000 items over 38,000 square feet of space along with Swedish meatballs and other food items. For reference, a typical suburban IKEA runs 300,000 to 400,000 square feet with twice as many items. This one is roughly a tenth the size of Burbank or Carson, which is the entire point.
The reason that matters for anyone who already lives here is geographic. The line that separates Culver City and Los Angeles runs through the Helms Design District, with the Venice Boulevard side part of L.A. and the Washington Boulevard side part of Culver City, and the new IKEA is closer to Venice, making it part of L.A. proper. Practically speaking, you can walk to it from most of downtown Culver City in under fifteen minutes.
The current anchor tenants and addresses worth knowing:
- IKEA Culver City, 3225-A Helms Ave., which had a soft opening on April 29, 2026, and a Grand Opening celebration on May 2
- Folks Pizzeria, 3273 Helms Ave., in the former Lustig space, marking the brand's first step outside Orange County
- Hayama by WATAMI, a Japanese restaurant that also arrived this spring alongside Folks Pizzeria
Why Folks matters more than another pizza opening
Culver City does not lack for pizza. What it has lacked, on the Helms side of Washington, is a dinner reason to linger after the design showrooms close. Folks fills that specific gap. Chef-owner Joey Booterbaugh and partner Chloe Tran, who launched Folks in 2019, have built a loyal following for their fermentation-forward 14-inch pizzas and a tight natural-wine list. The Infatuation, reviewing the new location, described chewy, blistered sourdough pizzas topped with fennel and sausage, spring peas and asparagus, or pancetta and potato, with LA-exclusives including a spinach arancini appetizer and a full cocktail list.
The location detail is worth pausing on. The Culver City restaurant slides into the space left by Lustig, which closed in early 2025, giving Folks a corner perch in one of the busier stretches of the Helms food corridor. Lustig had been the block's fine-dining bet. Folks is a different bet entirely, and the trade tells you what the district's owners have concluded about who is actually walking these sidewalks on a Thursday evening.
If you have lived in Culver City for more than five years, the useful mental model is this: Helms used to be a Saturday afternoon errand. It is now a Thursday-through-Sunday evening.
Thursday nights at the Culver Steps, through August 20
The Helms shift did not happen in isolation. Half a mile east, the city's free summer concert series has been quietly pulling residents back into the downtown core every Thursday. The City of Culver City is presenting the return of the popular Summer Sunset Music Series, now in its fourth year, with the free family-friendly concert series beginning Thursday, July 16, at 7 PM in Town Plaza. The venue is Town Plaza at The Culver Steps, and the run ends August 20.
If you have already been, you know the drill. If you have not made it out yet, the remaining lineup is worth planning around:
| Date | Genre | Act |
|---|---|---|
| August 6 | Pop, Soul & Blues | Soul3Sixty with Lester Lands & Sonny Green and The Midnight Blues Revue |
| August 13 | Latin | Adelaide Pilar |
| August 20 | Jazz, Funk & Soul | Tatiana Tate & Her All-Star Band |
Source for the schedule is the Music Lineup for Summer 2026 published by the Culver City Observer. One logistics note the city has been repeating: to avoid parking challenges for the Summer Sunset Music Series, attendees are encouraged to take Culver CityBus or to walk, bike, ride or take alternative transportation to the event. Residents south of Culver Boulevard can genuinely walk it. Those closer to the Fox Hills side will want the bus or a short rideshare.
A walkable evening that used to require a car
The reason to describe the Helms opening and the concert series in the same post is that they now connect into a single evening, which was not true a year ago. A practical Thursday route that reads as native rather than touristy:
- Park once, near Venice and Helms. The Helms Design District lot has EV chargers available, or you can park across the street at Venice Boulevard and Helms Avenue.
- Walk the IKEA showroom floor for twenty minutes. The former HD Buttercup space has had its windows and skylights uncovered so daylight pours in, and the entire downstairs is a showroom for sofas, bookcases, kitchen cabinetry and children's furnishings.
- Early dinner at Folks or Hayama. Folks takes walk-ins at the bar; Hayama has been booking through its own site.
- Walk east on Washington toward The Culver Steps. Doors on Town Plaza for the concert are effectively 7 PM.
- If the show runs late and you want a nightcap, downtown's existing operators are still open, and the summer Sip & Stroll passport events downtown run on the third Wednesdays of June, July and August, when downtown businesses create spiked or virgin cocktails and serve tastes to summer crowds as they explore the streets of Downtown Culver City using a free "Passport" provided by the Downtown Business Association.
That is a two-mile loop with a real meal, a real show, and one parking transaction. A year ago the same evening required either two separate drives or a compromise on one end.
What this actually means for the neighborhood
The temptation with a post like this is to call the Helms changes a rebirth or a renaissance. That reads flat and it is not quite right. Helms has been reinvented at least three times since the bakery shut down in 1969 and the Marks family real estate firm bought the property in 1972 and turned it into a center for home furnishings and antiques. What is different this time is the operator mix. A city-format IKEA is a foot-traffic engine in a way that a luxury furniture floor never was, and the district's owners have paired that engine with two restaurants sized to catch the spillover.
For homeowners who bought here in part for the walkability south of Culver Boulevard, the practical effect is that the walkable radius just got bigger. The block that used to require a car to justify the trip now rewards a stroll. That is the sort of quiet change that does not show up in a portal search or a school scorecard, and it is the sort of change that residents feel first.
If you are hosting out-of-town guests before Labor Day, the answer to what to do on a Thursday night in Culver City is now genuinely different from what you would have told them last August. Take them to Helms, take them to the Steps, and let the block do the talking.
For a longer conversation about the West Los Angeles submarkets, from Culver City to the Westside enclaves, Michael Bloom Homes is happy to compare notes. Schedule a Confidential Consultation whenever the timing suits you.
