Westfield Topanga

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Westfield Topanga


Location	Canoga Park, Los Angeles, California, USA
Opening date	February 10, 1964
Developer	May Centers, Inc.
Management	The Westfield Group
Owner	The Westfield Group
No. of stores and services	347 ^[1]
No. of anchor tenants	4
Total retail floor area	1.6 million sq.ft. ^[2]
Parking	5,448^[2]
No. of floors	2
Website	westfield.com/topanga

Westfield Topanga, formerly known as the Westfield Shoppingtown Topanga and more commonly known to locals as the Topanga Mall or Topanga Plaza, is a two-story shopping mall consisting of 230 tenants spread across three sections. It is located on Topanga Canyon Boulevard on the border between the communities of Canoga Park and Woodland Hills in the western part of Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley and is owned and operated by The Westfield Group.

Nordstrom, Robinsons-May, and Sears previously anchored the center. While all three stores continue to do business in the mall, the Robinsons-May was renamed Macy's on September 9, 2006, the Nordstrom was moved to a custom-built new building on the opposite side of the mall during restructuring, and a Neiman Marcus will soon occupy a new building on the former site of the Nordstrom.

A massive $330,000,000 expansion meant to refresh the mall and make it more upscale began in 2006, with work set to be finished by late 2007. Over 100 new stores including a large new Target, several new restaurants, a "dining terrace", a two-story indoor carousel and three new parking structures are key parts of the expansion, along with the new Neiman Marcus, which is set to open in 2008 as part of phase two of the expansion.

1 History
2 2006-2008 Expansion
3 Future expansion
4 Anchors and Majors
5 References
6 External links

[edit] History

Opened February 10, 1964, Topanga Plaza was California's first enclosed shopping mall. It was originally anchored by The Broadway, May Company and Montgomery Ward. Nordstrom was added in 1983.

In 1992 May Centers, Inc., the original developer, was renamed CenterMark Properties and sold by May Department Stores in 1993 to a consortium led by Westfield Holdings, Ltd., a predecessor of The Westfield Group.

The May Company location was renamed Robinsons-May in 1993 and completely rebuilt following the 1994 Northridge earthquake, The Broadway location was sold to Sears in 1996 after its acquisition by Federated Department Stores, and the Montgomery Ward closed in 1999 following the chain's bankruptcy. As previously mentioned, Robinsons-May was renamed Macy's in September 2006, and despite rumors to the contrary, the store will continue operating despite the close proximity of a second Macy's store at the Westfield Promenade up the street.

[edit] 2006-2008 Expansion

The Westfield Group recently completed the first phase of an expansion project, which added over 100 stores, including a large two-story Target, and three-story Nordstrom department store. A stunning "Canyon" court area, several new restaurants with a cafe-style dining terrace, "Westfield Playtown" for children, "family lounge", and indoor carousel were also added to the existing mall. The former Montgomery Ward, which had been largely out of use for years, was demolished as part of this project.

The Nordstrom was moved to a new building at the southeast corner of the parking lot, which faces Victory Boulevard and Owensmouth Avenue. The Neiman Marcus will be opened in fall 2008 at the site of the former Nordstrom building, on the mall's west end; demolition of the old Nordstrom is currently completed, and construction on the new Neiman Marcus has begun (June, 2007). Three new parking structures have been erected to supplant the ground level parking lost when the mall's outer walls were expanded to accommodate the new stores, the largest of these being the five-level Owensmouth Garage complete with an electronic parking space indicator system.

[edit] Future expansion

A plan which would connect the Topanga Mall to the Westfield Promenade has been announced (July, 2007). The proposed idea is to convert the existing land between the two malls into a mixed use outdoor mall, consisting of retail, office, and residential space. A 300 room, four star hotel would be a part of the new mall, as well as 550,000 sq ft (51,000 m²) of leasable retail space. The construction cost would be close to $750 million. How the three malls will be connected is still up for debate. When the project is completed, the 3 mall behemoth will be the largest in California with a total of 3,800,000 square feet (353,000 m²).