In today’s age of online shopping, mall owners also seek to lure shoppers by signing leases with gyms or spas, McAvey said. Now planners crave the hustle and bustle of urban life, placing an emphasis on outdoor dining and landscaping. “Cities, at the time, were seen as sort of old and decaying,” she said.Ĭities nationwide have undergone dramatic revitalization, especially in their downtowns. Mall owners sought to create a “captive experience” for shoppers - one off the street in a seemingly safer environment, said Maureen McAvey, senior fellow for retail at the Urban Land Institute. Those malls opened in the 1960s and 1970s - a time when planners sought to enclose the shopping experience as suburbanization swept the country. The project’s open design contrasts sharply with the company’s adjacent indoor malls - Promenade and Topanga. Negotiations are underway to add a gourmet grocery store as well, said Larry Green, senior vice president of U.S. There will be roughly 100 tenants, including Costco, Larsen’s Steakhouse, YogaWorks and the boutique M Fredric. The Village open-air mall - at Victory and Topanga Canyon boulevards - received a boost in March when the City Council approved a controversial tax break that Westfield argued was needed to speed development. That project would take at least a decade to build, according to a land-use consultant for the redevelopment. And there are plans to transform the closed 47-acre Rocketdyne site on Canoga Avenue into a 6-million-square-foot mixed-use urban center with thousands of residences and a central park. Upcoming projects will probably help the area achieve that goal.Ĭonstruction is underway on a 395-unit apartment project at De Soto Avenue and Erwin Street that the Dinerstein Cos. “We want it to be a full-service urban center out here in the suburban areas of Woodland Hills and the West Valley,” said Scott Silverstein, chair of the Woodland Hills Warner Center Neighborhood Council. Some residential complexes will have retail space on the ground floor. The plan seeks to make the area more pedestrian-friendly, add entertainment venues and thousands of new residences. “It was not designed for people to be biking and walking around,” Blumenfield said.īut in keeping with the latest in urban planning, the Los Angeles City Council last fall approved a new master plan for the area, which divides Warner Center into eight districts, including an uptown and a downtown. Designed for the automobile, office buildings are set far back from wide streets and pedestrians must traverse long blocks to reach their destinations. Largely developed in the 1980s, Warner Center was seen as the Valley’s attempt at a downtown. The open-air mall is being built on land that was once a part of an expansive horse ranch owned by Harry Warner, co-founder of Warner Bros. There will also be patios with fire pits, shaded overhangs, a bocce ball court, and courtyards for concerts and performances. And visitors can walk past water features on their way to outdoor cafes and a yoga studio. Native California grass and agave will line courtyards. Shoppers will stroll past 100-year-old California sycamores, olive trees and Mexican fan palms. Westfield says it wants to evoke a feeling of the Valley’s past - before agriculture gave way to suburban development. “It’s open-aired, it’s pedestrian-friendly and it’s part of the new vision of what this area is going to look like.” “It’s going to be a first-class destination,” said Los Angeles City Councilman Bob Blumenfield, who represents the area. The $350-million development is slated to open in fall 2015.
The Village at Westfield Topanga will include boutique stores, restaurants, a gym and a luxury spa. Construction has begun on an upscale open-air mall at Warner Center, a key step in a roughly 50-year quest to build a downtown for the sprawling San Fernando Valley.Īustralian shopping giant Westfield Group unveiled design details for the 550,000-square-foot mall last week, and workers finished the first concrete pour Tuesday.
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