Shopping for a New Look
Hoping to make the Sherman Oaks Galleria stomping grounds for a new generation of Valley Girls, developers announced the first slate of retail tenants for the reopening of the mall next spring.
The 300,000-square-foot retail-entertainment component will be anchored by a 16-screen Pacific Theaters, a Tower Books, Records and Video store that would be the nation’s largest, and restaurants including Cheesecake Factory and Johnny Rockets, according to Mike Keurjian, the mall’s general manager.
Once completed, the upgraded Galleria at the corner of Ventura and Sepulveda boulevards will shed its enclosed box-like look, morphing into an open-air complex with pedestrian promenades.
“We are transforming the Galleria from the standard department-store-anchored mall to more of an entertainment and lifestyle center,” Keurjian said.
But it will be more office building than mall. When the renovation is finished, there will be a total of 700,000 square feet of office space--300,000 in the existing Imperial Bank building adjoining the mall, and 400,000 square feet of new space.
New office tenants include Warner Bros.’ animation division, which will take 180,000 square feet of space early next year, said Gina Guarino of Douglas Emmett Co. of Santa Monica, the mall’s owner.
Keurjian said “almost all” the retail space at the facility has been leased. Other retail tenants include Starbucks Coffee, Quizno’s, Robek’s Juice and Ben & Jerry’s, he said.
He said the new Tower store--selling books, videos and recordings--would be 50,000 square feet, alone.
The Galleria, immortalized in the Frank Zappa song “Valley Girl” and films such as “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” shut down in late 1998 amid flagging sales. But this time, retailers will be aided by the additional business tenants, observers say.
“The business presence alone won’t support the center,” said Richard Giss, partner in the retail services group of Deloitte & Touche, Los Angeles, “But having it there is definitely a plus that makes it different from its previous incarnation.”
Mall operators are also banking on the 16-theater multiplex, with 4,000 stadium seats, to be a big draw. And despite scores of theaters populating the Valley from Burbank to Chatsworth, some say the Sherman Oaks Galleria will fare very well.
“Newer theaters do better than the older,” Giss said. “Seating, amenities and sound systems draw people.”
Robert Bucksbaum, president of Los Angeles-based box office tracking company ReelSource, said the addition of theaters at the Sherman Oaks Galleria will actually boost demand for moviegoing.
“It’s a new attraction that also provides entertainment. And that will draw interest from people who normally don’t go to movies or haven’t been as much since the mall closed,” he said.
