$35-Million Upgrade Set for Promenade
Confirming plans for a major overhaul, the owner of the Westfield Shoppingtown Promenade mall has announced a $35-million upgrade to transform the mall’s ground floor into a retail/entertainment center.
Plans include construction of a new exterior facade and addition of new restaurants and entertainment venues, Richard Green, co-president of mall owner Westfield America Inc., said Thursday.
One potential tenant is Jillian’s, a 67,000-square-foot “entertainment” restaurant with billiards, electronic games and a 14-lane bowling alley.
The Kentucky-based company has signed a lease, but the company must obtain a variance from the city of Los Angeles to sell alcohol and offer dancing. A hearing on the variance is scheduled for May 25.
Green said the company hopes to begin construction by early summer and complete the overhaul by spring 2001. The mall would remain open during construction.
After declining to confirm the rumored plans for months, Westfield America officials disclosed details in a first-quarter earnings report released Monday. A company statement referred to the current mall as a “weak, high-end specialty center.”
“The history of the Promenade has been a high-end center that didn’t function correctly,” Green said. His company purchased the mall in 1998.
Youth Not the Targeted Customers
Richard Giss, partner in the retail services group of Deloitte & Touche, Los Angeles, says the key for the Promenade will be signing the right tenants to attract the targeted customers--adults with disposable income. That contrasts with stores and venues that appeal to so-called mall rats, young people who hang out but spend little--and sometimes drive customers away.
“You want to draw your target demographic,” Giss said. “You don’t want to become an entertainment venue with teenagers, because they don’t buy.”
Green believes Westfield will hit the right note.
“I am highly confident that this is what the community wants and it’s what makes sense,” he said. “It’s leveraging off what’s working there now, and making it bigger and better.”
Changing the Promenade from an upscale specialty center into a retail/entertainment center is a dramatic step that reflects long-standing problems with the 600,000-square-foot, 27-year-old mall.
With high-end retailers such as former tenants I. Magnin and Saks Fifth Avenue, the Promenade once aspired to become the Rodeo Drive of the Valley. But it never attracted the traffic backers had hoped for, especially compared with the highly successful Topanga Plaza--known as Westfield Shoppingtown Topanga after Westfield became the 100% owner in November 1998.
An exception has been the AMC-16 movie theater mega-plex and the restaurants nearby at the mall’s south end. While the rest of the mall has been an under-performer, the theaters and food court pull in the crowds, which Westfield is hoping to build upon.
Green said he was not at liberty to identify potential new tenants, but he said the mall will broaden its appeal with a host of new family restaurants, including some serving Italian and Japanese cuisine.
Construction is already underway, however, on one new restaurant, P.F. Chang’s China Bistro. The eatery will fill the space formerly occupied by the Bob Burns restaurant in the parking lot adjacent to the AMC Theatres. It will open in July, if construction proceeds on schedule.
The planned Jillian’s venue could face opposition from neighbors, according to Gordon Murley, president of the Woodland Hills Homeowners Organization.
“We’ve already told them [Jillian’s] we have great problems with the alcoholic part of it, and how they’re going to control the dress code, and how they’re going to control outrageous teenagers we already have,” Murley said.
Dave Sanclemente, vice president of operations for the West Coast, Jillian’s Entertainment, said the restaurant maintains tight security and will probably not allow minors to enter the facility after 9 p.m. “Most likely, that will be in the language of the conditional use permit,” Sanclemente said.
Sanclemente stressed Jillian’s is family oriented but said he’s aware the homeowners’ group is skeptical. “Our conceptual design plays very well to mom, dad and a couple kids,” he said. “We have no interest in doing business with an 18- or 19-year-old that may be trying to illegally get his or her hands on alcohol.”
2 Sister Malls Serve Distinct Niches
Currently, there are many empty storefronts at the Promenade as Westfield prepares for the changes that some tenants welcome.
“I’m ecstatic. It’s going to be great,” said Karl Buckman, general manager of the Wolfgang Puck Cafe at the Promenade. “It will improve the traffic flow.”
As Westfield rebuilds the Promenade, its long-term goal remains to create greater synergy with its sister facility less than a mile away, Westfield Shoppingtown Topanga.
Westfield officials believe the two malls will complement each other because they serve distinct niches--one, fashion-oriented (Topanga), and the other geared toward lifestyle and entertainment (Promenade).
Eventually, Westfield may tie the malls together by providing a connecting tram service, Green said, though he said that’s only an idea. “This is not cast in concrete,” he said.
For now, Westfield is focusing on redoing the Promenade. But eventually the company will address how to best develop land it owns in the long block between the two malls, Green said. There are no plans now in place but if demand for office building space heats up, company officials say Westfield might consider developing the block in such a way.
Westfield’s actions at the Promenade are said to be mirroring a national trend.
John Konarski, senior vice president of the International Council of Shopping Centers in New York, said most new malls built today include entertainment elements. “Malls today want to be seen as destinations, and part of the formula for destination is entertainment,” he said. “This is a common theme across the country.”
But Konarski said adding entertainment venues is not a panacea for fixing a troubled mall.
“Running a mall is a complicated business,” he said. “It all varies, and it depends upon the execution.”
