Film Revival : Multiplex Ushers in Era of Trendy, Upscale Marketing in Woodland Hills

It was just a party, really, but among neighborhood businesspeople, this weekend’s gala opening of the new AMC Promenade 16 multiplex was “like the Marines had landed,” as one executive of the movie-theater chain put it.

“It’s the most fantastic upscale theater complex I’ve ever seen,” gushed commercial real-estate broker Allen Young, as the multiplex prepared for its first weekend’s onslaught of 15,000 viewers. “This is the turnaround,” exulted gift-shop manager Kathy Cates. Even the spokeswoman for the new multiplex’s closest rival--Pacific Topanga Theaters--professed support.

America Multi-Cinema Inc. (AMC) has grown used to such warm welcomes. Its so-called “megaplexes” have become coveted prizes in today’s retail scene, and nowhere are the reasons more clear than here in affluent but stodgy Woodland Hills.

Signs of a new retail mood are everywhere, a testament to the power of big theater complexes to transform commercial areas and spur elaborately contrived retail combinations.

Posh shops like Restoration Hardware, a home-furnishings store, and sought-after restaurants like Wolfgang Puck’s Cafe have already signed leases in The Promenade of Woodland Hills mall, banking in part on the ability of 16 screens to draw thousands of day- and nighttime visitors.

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The $14-million multiplex even helped persuade Bristol Farms--a gourmet grocery store--to move in across the street and expand with a kitchen store. More restaurants, a bookstore and a cafe may soon follow, said Ken Bernstein, planning deputy for City Councilwoman Laura Chick. Even blocks away, interest in commercial leases has increased, brokers say.

“The theater is going to be great, it’s just unreal,” said Gary L. Barr, president of the Woodland Hills Chamber of Commerce. “Business is definitely picking up.”

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Perhaps nowhere is the festive mood more apparent than at the Promenade, where the theater is “the savior,” said Bernstein.

Renovated at a cost of $10 million in 1992, the Promenade was then hit by a crippling combination of department store consolidations and the Northridge earthquake. It lost or changed three of its anchors in three years. Robinson’s and I. Magnin were replaced by Bullock’s and Saks Fifth Avenue closed.

Meanwhile, rival Topanga Plaza--damaged only slightly by the quake--was enjoying some of its best years.

Left behind was the Promenade, a gleaming, sunlit mausoleum. Stuck with a 35% vacancy rate, the Promenade scared off new stores. “They’d say, ‘When’s all this department store hopscotch going to settle down? When it does, come see me,’ ” recalled Michael Strle, regional manager for the mall’s New York-based parent, the O’Connor Group.

When AMC came knocking, it was greeted like a rescuer, said Dick Walsh, senior vice president of the company’s western division. Even neighboring homeowners, who sometimes are multiplexes’ toughest opponents, backed AMC’s plan. “It was something to help the Promenade,” explained Shirley Blessing, a director of the Woodland Hills Homeowners’ Organization.

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Now that the complex is open, “the Promenade has finally turned the corner,” said Strle, the mall manager. He predicts that the mall will be 80% leased by year’s end.

It hasn’t always worked like this. A few years ago, AMC had to fight hostile neighbors and dubious retailers to locate theaters anywhere.

Now “anyone who doesn’t have a theater is hustling to get one,” said Walsh. AMC’s real-estate department is besieged with inquiries from developers wanting theaters to anchor their projects, and from cities hoping that multiplexes will revitalize blighted cores.

The change is a result of successful multiplex-retail combinations like the one in Century City. But it also reflects a tendency toward elaborate strategic planning in the retail business.

Movie theaters are sought these days because they help land other coveted tenants--popular restaurant chains, for example, or cutting-edge shops such as Restoration Hardware, which are relentlessly solicited by developers seeking the perfect mix.

“Ten years ago, leasing people could just sit back and take orders. Today, you really have to have a vision. You have to be strategic,” said Elyse Carian, leasing agent for the Promenade. Carian talks of “target lists” and “prospecting.”

This type of approach helps explain why the theater’s arrival has been accompanied by an outbreak of trendiness in stolidly upper-middle-class Woodland Hills.

From the new Bristol Farms, with its Italian spritzers and Kobe beef for $129 per pound, to the Wolfgang Puck’s, signs of a new and highly calculated mood are everywhere. “Everyone’s targeting these families, these yuppies,” said Barr of the chamber.

Woodland Hills was already in the midst of a yuppie makeover when AMC announced it would move into the vacated Saks at the Promenade. An upscale Ralph’s on Ventura Boulevard and a lavish Gelson’s chain in nearby Calabasas, complete with roaring fireplaces, helped move the process along. But the theater project has put the transformation into hyperdrive.

“You think it’s coincidence that Wolfgang Puck is located right next to the theater?” asked AMC’s Walsh.

In fact, the two chains were in touch before either decided to locate there. The same kind of strategic planning is evident in the placement of a KCET Store of Knowledge adjacent to the multiplex, according to mall managers. And other area stores, such as Bristol Farms, carefully took the theaters’ presence into consideration when they moved in.

“It will create a lot of night traffic for our cappuccino bar,” explained Jodi Taylor, the chain’s director of marketing.

Woodland Hills’ demographics have long attracted high-end retailers. The average Promenade mall customer is 39 years old with an annual household income of $75,000, said Strle.

But with the multiplex, Woodland Hills has gained something more in the eyes of retail experts, something akin to a hipness credential.

“You have a kind of customer here, who, when they were single, they were Westside people. They are culturally eclectic,” said leasing agent Carian.

Are Woodland Hills denizens trendy? Carian prefers to use the term “experiential,” meaning they like new experiences. Categories like this--and subgroups such as “Bohemian Mix” and “Young Influentials”--are used increasingly by malls to help choose their combination of shops, said Robin Faulk, marketing manager for Santa Monica Place.

Carian and others call such newfangled spins on demographics “psychographics” and predict that Woodland Hills’ future retail environment will reflect more measured attempts to anticipate consumers’ tastes.

And that’s likely to mean that more merchants will soon be targeting not just residents’ fat pocketbooks, but their presumed appetite for baby cauliflower, Mission-style furniture and public TV.

And yes, nights at the movies--maybe followed by a cappuccino at an Old World-style cafe.