Greco’s New York Pizzeria is coming back to Sherman Oaks in early June, taking the 1,000-square-foot space at 4319 Woodman Avenue that Santino’s NY Pizza vacated at the end of March. The brand was founded in Hollywood in 1979 by three brothers who said they wanted to bring the New York experience to every household in Los Angeles. What makes this move worth reading is who’s making the decision and why now, because an established operator returning to a market they walked away from a decade ago carries a fundamentally different signal than a new concept opening cold.
The Generational Read
Nico Grasu is co-owner and the next generation of the founding family, and he grew up in the San Fernando Valley. He told What Now Los Angeles, “We’re excited to be back serving the Sherman Oaks community.” Grasu has watched his family run this brand for decades, knows the Sherman Oaks customer base by name, and is making the re-entry call from a position of deep market knowledge.
Greco’s held a Sherman Oaks location at 4572 Van Nuys Boulevard from 1992 to 2016, which is 24 years of building relationships in the same neighborhood it’s now coming back to. The brand has remained active in Hollywood, Tarzana, and Thousand Oaks in the intervening years, so this is a multi-unit operator with Valley-specific market knowledge expanding back into a corridor where the family’s name still resonates with longtime customers. The ramp-up risk profile is materially different from any first-time concept walking in cold.
The Format Is the Signal
The Woodman Avenue space is 1,000 square feet, and the format is hand-tossed dough, in-house sauce, pies up to 28 inches, late-night service, a counter model, and an open kitchen. That footprint is engineered for the market as it exists today rather than for 2019. Full-service labor costs have been the central pressure point pushing concepts out of Valley corridors over the past two years, and the operators picking up vacated spaces are doing it with concepts built for current cost conditions rather than recycling formats that already broke.
The predecessor at this address matters too, because Santino’s NY Pizza operated at 4319 Woodman until March 29, 2026, closing permanently and noting the team would need one to three years before reopening elsewhere. A landlord with a vacated F&B footprint and a 47-year established brand with Valley history coming to fill it is well outside an arms-length competitive lease situation, and Greco’s walked into that conversation with institutional credibility no first-time operator could match.
What This Means for Operators Watching the Valley
An experienced multi-unit operator, second generation, with 24 years of prior Sherman Oaks history, is expanding back into the Valley with a format designed for current operating conditions and a customer base that already exists. The timing reads as a deliberate move on a vacancy with a lean concept and a brand the neighborhood already knows, taking the space ahead of the broader recovery being priced into rent.
The Valley market has absorbed a difficult cycle, with full-service closures, elevated lease rates, and labor pressure reshaping the competitive landscape, and what’s emerging in the vacancies left behind is a tier of experienced operators with proven track records taking the spaces that undercapitalized concepts couldn’t hold. The operators moving first are the ones with market knowledge deep enough to act before the recovery is fully priced into the rent.
For operators in the Valley, whether you’re thinking about what your own position is worth, considering a second location, or navigating what the next chapter of a family business looks like, this is the pattern worth watching. If you want to understand what this cycle means for your situation, let’s have a confidential conversation.
Sources
What Now Los Angeles, Greco's New York Pizzeria Returning To Sherman Oaks Culinary Scene
Hoodline, Sherman Oaks Scores Late-Night Greco's Pizza Comeback
Greco's New York Pizzeria, About
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