Southern California's shopping centers are in the midst of a major building boom that promises to change the mall experience but also raises new concerns about how the retail behemoths fit into their surrounding communities.
The latest addition is likely to be developer Rick Caruso's 830,000-square-foot Shops at Santa Anita, which won unanimous approval from the Arcadia City Council last week. Caruso, considered Southern California's mall innovator, built the faux village-style Grove mall in the Fairfax district -- which gets more visitors a year than Disneyland -- and is building a similar "lifestyle center" in downtown Glendale.
Equally important, Caruso has helped spur competing malls across Southern California to rethink what they do.
The region's largest mall owner -- Westfield -- is spending $1 billion to expand and remake nearly a dozen retail centers, in some cases knocking down fortress-style buildings to replace them with more open shops, restaurants and theaters.
Westfield just finished a major expansion of its Topanga Canyon mall, has proposed a similar build-out of Fashion Square in Sherman Oaks, and plans to build hundreds of condos in its Century City mall. The company even plans to expand its shopping center next to Caruso's Arcadia development.
Others are following suit. Developers took the roof off the Huntington Beach Mall and turned it into a Grove-style village, naming it Bella Terra. Owners of Santa Monica Place recently proposed a similar transformation.
Malls have struggled in recent years as anchor department stores have closed, but owners are looking for ways to maximize their sprawling grounds by adding stores not traditionally found at malls, as well as housing.
The new versions of the mall usually are less monolithic, more stylized outdoor centers that resemble self-contained villages and often face inward. Stuccoed buildings open onto central courtyards or walkways that are designed to take advantage of the mild Southern California climate and allow patrons to linger a little longer and spend a little more.
Critics roll their eyes at what they consider glorified Hollywood sets. But land-use planners say the village look speaks to shifting consumer tastes -- away from the sprawling, sterile suburban mall and into something with a more intimate, urban feel.
"The era of the cookie-cutter shopping center is ending," said Michael Beyard, a senior resident fellow for retail and entertainment at the Urban Land Institute. "What were suburbs are really now urban."
