[As I’ll soon be tied up in an all day meeting, an observation on the news whilst the tea cools…]
Do you know where one of Southern California’s largest shopping centers will soon be? If you guessed the San Fernando Valley, you’re right!
The Daily News is reporting how Westfield of Borg has announced their plans to unite the Westfield Prominade and the Westfield Topanga malls with a $750 million outdoor retail complex called The Village in Warner Center. The village, which will be build on land currently containing a dead theatre, dead restaurants, a dead miniature golf course, and soon to be dead businesses, will include a 300-room, four-star hotel, 150 condominiums and apartments, offices, and 550,000 square feet of shops and restaurants. At 3.8 million ft2, the three-mall complex will be larger than South Coast Plaza in Orange County and Del Amo Fashion Center in Torrance. Construction is expected to start in two years. When finished, The Village could draw 10 million visitors a year – in addition to the 15 million who visit Topanga each year and the 9 million who stop by the Promenade. Officials believe the new mall will create 2,500 temporary construction jobs and 7,500 permanent jobs, plus $6 million in sales tax revenue.
The article includes some conceptual drawings as well as a locator map.
I predict parking in that area will be a mess, however, even though the new project will include 4,100 parking spaces above and below ground. It is still unknown how the two malls will be connected, transit-wise. I’ll note there’s also another “big box” complex not that far away.
Who will be in this mall? Westfield has indicated that there will be no department stores; tenants will include restaurants and national chains that don’t depend on department stores for consumer traffic. It will be one of the few outdoor malls in the valley… and it will be in Woodland Hills, one of the hottest parts of the valley.
