This fall, two openings are clustered at the Lancaster and Louella corner of downtown Wayne. A chef is turning her catering kitchen into a café there this weekend, and a live-fire grill is under construction across the street from Maison Lotus. Radnor Township's new master plan, which commissioners are scheduled to vote on Monday, points to the same few hundred feet. It names Louella Court as the place to add public parking while a corner of the North Wayne Avenue lot becomes a park. The corner that's drawing new tables is also the one the township is counting on to handle the cars.

A catering kitchen gets a front door

Koren's Kitchen Café opens at 8 a.m. this weekend at 11 Louella Court, just off Lancaster Avenue. The reports differ on the day. Patch says Saturday, and the Radnor-Haverford Herald says Sunday, Oct. 11. The café's website is the best place to confirm.

The space isn't new to Executive Chef Koren Draper. According to the Herald, she has run her catering business out of it for about two years, handling private events, cooking classes and private chef dinners. The café adds a public storefront to a block already home to UpLIFT Haus Hair Studio and Colonna Contemporary. The menu covers breakfast and lunch: breakfast sandwiches, avocado toast, salads, sandwiches, homemade soups, baked goods and seasonal items, plus barista coffee. The Herald also reports options for halal, kosher-style, keto, low-carb and nitrate-free diets.

This is Draper's second café of 2026. Her first opened earlier in the year at the Radnor Corporate Center, 100 Matsonford Road, and the Wayne Business Association described it as aimed at office workers looking for a better lunch. The Louella Court location moves that same breakfast-and-lunch format to the center of town.

The grill going up across from Maison Lotus

A few steps away, Old Friend is under construction at 166 E. Lancaster Ave., in new ground-floor retail space at the Apartments at Wayne Station. The Inquirer reports it will seat 86, with 78 in the dining room and eight at the bar. It sits across from Maison Lotus and Rosalie and a few blocks from At the Table, White Dog Cafe and the North Wayne Avenue dining strip.

The concept is a contemporary American grill cooked over live fire. Larry Kagan, who created it with Chas McFeely, told a Radnor commissioners hearing in March it would have "the soul of a steakhouse." The two met in 1984 as students at Welsh Valley Middle School. Neither is a restaurateur, so they brought in Joe Monnich, chef-owner of Stove & Co., the group behind Stove & Tap and Joey Chops, to shape the concept and build the team. Former Fork executive chef Sam Henzy will run the kitchen. Henzy and Monnich met at Morimoto, when Henzy was about 20.

Old Friend still has no opening day. The Inquirer's Oct. 1 roundup listed it among the restaurants coming to Radnor in the next few months, and the late-fall target from the paper's August story still stands.

Put the two together and Louella has a morning café on one side of Lancaster and an 86-seat dinner room on the other. That's a different crowd, coming at different hours, to a block that used to be easy to drive past.

Why the township's plan focuses on Louella Court

The draft master plan, titled "A Vision For Wayne," would be the Wayne Business District's first new master plan in 20 years. The 144-page public draft covers public space, parking, retail and more.

On page 94, the September 16 draft recommends acquiring neighboring parcels on Louella Court and Waynewood Avenue. It projects a 96-space lot there, about 34 more public spaces than today, along with stormwater measures, new sidewalks along Louella Court, and easier-to-see, easier-to-reach parking.

That figure matters because of the plan's other headline idea. Wayne Commons would turn the street-facing part of the North Wayne Avenue Municipal Parking Lot into a parklet meant to serve as downtown's main gathering space. A full, permanent park there would remove 24 spaces. The roughly 34 spaces proposed for Louella Court are more than the North Wayne lot would give up, and they'd be a short walk from the new café and the new grill.

The draft adds supporting measures as well:

• Wayfinding, pp. 87–88: one Township-branded system of vehicle and pedestrian signs, with real-time occupancy where feasible and signs on the roads into town that send drivers to public lots before they reach the business core.
• Online listings, p. 88: consistent lot names on Google, Apple and Waze showing hours, enforcement times and fees, plus pedestrian maps that support parking once and walking.
• Shared parking, p. 92: about 440 private spaces that could be opened by agreement, plus the Township's outreach to SEPTA about signing 152 station spaces for public use during off-peak hours.

How the North Wayne lot would change, step by step

The parklet has been proposed before. Commissioner Catherine Agnew noted at the September meeting that the idea dates to 2003. Business owners and residents raised parking concerns at the Sept. 14 meeting, and Ken Kearns, president of the Wayne Business Association, said he likes the idea but would prefer it be done in stages while the larger parking issue gets solved. Commissioners then voted unanimously to move forward, with two amendments: more signs pointing to other lots, and both construction phases pushed into next year.

As Township Manager Bill White laid it out, and as Main Line Media News and Patch reported, the sequence looks like this:

1. Phase one, now set for late winter: four green bump-outs at the corners, decorative planters, and retractable bollards at both lot entrances so cars can still get in when needed.
2. A test park opening in spring: public seating and planters that can be removed easily.
3. Phase two, after bidding: milling and an asphalt overlay dyed a brick color and stamped to look like brick, plus a parklet sign at the North Wayne Avenue entrance.
4. Hybrid use throughout: when the space is open for parking, it would hold about 17 cars instead of the current 24.

The $155,000 figure is an estimate, and White said the final price won't be known until the project is bid next year. Agnew's case for the project is that "converting a slice of standard parking spaces into a public Commons creates a safer, walkable downtown experience."

Where to park for Louella this fall

Louella Court's parking is still a proposal. These are the public options available now:

Township officials have said the problem is partly one of signage, since nearby lots are hard to find without it. Under Radnor's posted rules, kiosk and metered parking costs 25 cents per half hour, Monday through Saturday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. It is free after 6 p.m. every day, all day Sunday, and on Township holidays including Thanksgiving and the day after. So a Sunday breakfast on Louella Court costs nothing to park for, and so would a dinner at Old Friend that starts after six.

What Monday's vote settles

The Board of Commissioners meets at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 12. The agenda includes the master plan vote and a resolution authorizing a traffic study of the parklet to help decide its final form. Adopting the plan would make it the official vision for downtown, but it wouldn't approve any single project. A Louella Court lot, wayfinding signs and a SEPTA agreement would each still need their own approvals through the proper channels. The full draft and a 26-page executive summary are posted at avisionforwayne.com.

So for now the corner has a café opening this weekend, a grill aiming for late fall, and a parking lot that exists only on page 94 of a draft.

Changes like a new café on Louella Court or a parklet on North Wayne Avenue can affect the homes within walking distance, and they're the kind of detail that rarely shows up in a listing. If you'd like to talk through how downtown Wayne's plans relate to a home you own or are watching, The Robin Gordon Group follows these decisions closely. Contact Robin.

This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.