Mexican Restaurant Plans a Major Overhaul with a Hollywood Designer Refreshing the Space

Lola Coastal Mexican, the 17-year-old coastal Mexican restaurant in the Lower Highland neighborhood in Denver, plans to go through a renovation with a Hollywood heavyweight taking the lead.

Owner Dave Query shakes up the look of the space with a makeover from his longtime friend and interior designer Kari Whitman, who has worked on hotels in New York, Baltimore, and Los Angeles, several rooms of the White House during the Obama era, interiors for chef Kerry Simon, as well as a Hollywood A listers such as Jessica Alba, Kristen Bell, Melanie Griffith, Antonio Banderas, and Emilio Estevez. She appeared on The Discovery Channel’s The Dude Room, and is currently in pre-production for a new interior design show. Her high-end residential and commercial designs tend to lean toward eco-friendly design elements.

“I’ve probably seen a hundred sunsets on the Baja Peninsula,” Query says in a press statement. “…There’s something rustic and true and grounded about Baja that doesn’t happen anywhere else, at least nowhere else I’ve been to yet. And more and more, coming back to Lola, it seemed she had lost a few of her dance moves.”

Whitman plans to add “raw organic finishes mixed with the breezy cool colors that reflect the oceans’ flow.” Query and Whitman became friends in high school in Boulder, where Whitman is opening a new office.

Lola closes on May 13 for the bulk of the renovations and plans to reopen on May 21.

Lola originally opened in 2002 on South Pearl Street in Washington Park, then moved to its current location four years later.

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