We present H and K photometry of ～ 42,000 stars in an area of ～250 arcmin~2 centered on the Galactic center. We use the photometry to construct a dereddened K-band luminosity function (LF) for this region, excluding the excessively crowded inner 2? of the Galaxy. This LF is intermediate between the LF of Baade's window and the LF of inner 2′ of the Galactic center. We speculate that the bright stars in this region have an age that is intermediate between the starburst population in the Galactic center and the old bulge population. We present the coordinates and magnitude for 16 stars with K_0 ≤ 5 for spectroscopic follow-up.
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