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Friday, Mar 29, 2024

Short on Sales?

Nearly six months after the launch of the Village at Westfield Topanga, tenants are growing frustrated and shoppers are still scratching their heads about Westfield Corp.’s $350 million outdoor shopping center. Though the Village’s two dozen restaurants and eateries are flourishing, visitors looking to shop are hard pressed to buy much from the center’s limited approach to fashion retailing. Worse, some tenants are grumbling about a lack of foot traffic and sales. The Village is supposed to act as a connector between Westfield’s Topanga and Promenade malls, combining the three properties and totaling more than 300 tenants. But while the Topanga continues to thrive and the Promenade awaits a different fate, traffic is not flowing from one property to the next and some tenants say the traffic the outdoor mall does get is not translating into sales. A beauty store employee who requested anonymity said that while restaurants and service-oriented tenants such as 24-Hour Fitness seem to be thriving, retailers are not faring well. “What I do know is that our neighbors are not happy,” the employee told the Business Journal. “Most people come over here for restaurants and for the gym but not for shopping. You don’t see people with bags.” When the developer spoke with the Business Journal back in August, Westfield said the three combined properties would generate 20 million shopper visits and ring up $1.3 billion in sales every year. Since its launch on Sept. 18, the Village alone has hosted about 3.2 million visitors, with 600,000 in the retail-challenged month of January, according to Westfield. Anthony Valerio, owner of ConfeXion Cupcakes, a Pasadena-based gourmet sweets shop and two-time winner of Food Network’s “Cupcake Wars,” said the mall is not generating nearly as much traffic as Westfield initially projected. Valerio’s ConfeXion is the first tenant at the Village to close its doors. The co-founder attributed the closure to statistics showing less than 25 percent of the foot traffic Westfield projected when he signed his lease. “The first few weeks we were open were decent, (but) were certainly below our expectations and I had immediate concerns, which I voiced to Westfield,” Valerio said. “After the pay-for-parking got instituted, our sales numbers and the traffic numbers fell more than 50 percent.” Tenant mix Valerio’s shop closed in December, just two months after the Village’s opening. This followed the exit of pop-up shops Nathan Turner’s American Style and M. Frederic’s children’s store, bringing the mall’s total down to 85 tenants. While the Village is home to a range of beauty and wellness businesses, electronics and specialty retailers as well as financial services such as Charles Schwab and Wells Fargo, when it comes to fashion, apparel retailers are few and far between. “It’s not a lot of choices to shop; there are really only a handful,” said West Hills resident Stacy Andrews, who has visited the mall on several occasions. “M. Fredric’s is somewhat decent but most of the people that I know mainly go for the restaurants.” The most high-profile cause for complaints about the mall, according to Valerio and shoppers alike, stems from the rollout of faulty paid parking meters, a congested parking structure and a confusing navigation scheme. Initially parking was free, but a month after the launch the center instituted paid parking in the structure. “One of the things we have to recognize in our market, particularly for the West Coast shopper, is that we’re time and money challenged,” said Paco Underhill, retail consultant and author of the books “Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping” and “Call of the Mall: The Geography of Shopping” in New York. “Being time poor is a major consideration. If shoppers pull up to a place like (the Village) and feel that their time has not been well served, it is a good reason not to come back.” But Westfield, which trades on the Australian Securities Exchange as Westfield Financials Inc. and has 34 shopping centers in the United States and Europe, said it has a plan to work out the kinks. The Century City-based developer has taken visitor complaints into consideration and will bring in more fashion retailers this year, in addition to addressing parking concerns, said Anthony Sion, vice president of marketing for the company. In speaking with the Business Journal, he said the Village was always meant to be an extension of the adjacent Westfield Topanga mall, not a competitor. “When we opened the Village, the premise was to create a lifestyle destination,” said Sion. “The center has a lot of restaurants and we have lifestyle (tenants) there like the Burke Williams Day Spa and some homeware stores. You’ve got the Topanga (next door), which is a powerhouse shopping center; the Village was meant to be lifestyle.” Destination location The Village at Westfield Topanga has opened at a time when the entire mall industry is retooling. Smaller, conventional shopping centers are taking a backseat to larger upscale megamalls and e-commerce sales. Underhill the consultant said malls are no longer just about generating traffic. Today, people want an experience, they want to linger and socialize, and developers worldwide are catering to that desire. “No one is talking about malls, they’re talking about ‘alls.’ The modern shopping malls have housing and a wider variety of tenants than typical malls,” he said. “For a West Coast shopper, you (need) a place where you can go to one location and get everything done and go home.” In keeping with this broader service strategy, Westfield has taken steps to make the Village a cultural venue in addition to a shopping center. For example, radio station KCSN (88.5 FM), licensed to Cal State Northridge, broadcasts daily programming from the mall and hosts weekly live concerts. Westfield also has farmers markets on Sundays operated by Calabasas market organizer Raw Inspirations and provides amenities for pets and children. “It really is lifestyle and has a relaxing environment where you can stroll around and grab a coffee with friends,” Westfield’s Sion said. As for the closures, he said, “as a brand you want to bring in the latest and greatest and sometimes that must come in as a pop-up.” Fred Levine, founder of M. Fredric, said the closure of the baby shop had nothing to do with a lack of sales. “Kids was (always) a pop-up until they could get it leased,” Levine said to the Business Journal. “We are in talks to take a permanent Kids space later this year.” Westfield is also bringing new fashion and apparel tenants onboard this year to broaden the Village’s appeal. Emphatic Inc., a women’s clothing store in Santa Monica, will take up residence in the former Nathan Turner’s space by the end of this month. LeSportSac, a sports bag chain in New York, will open in the former M. Frederic pop-up location April 1. “Customers are saying they want more fashion. Great, we’re listening to the customers and bringing more fashion – not to be counterproductive to the Topanga but to add to their experience,” Sion explained. Mall navigation When Westfield instituted paid parking a month after the Village opened, it jumped to the top of shoppers’ complaint lists. At the time, both tenants and shoppers claim they were unaware that parking for the center would not remain free, and traffic suffered as a result. “I think (they) ended up configuring something that isn’t the most conducive to shopper traffic,” said public policy and land-use expert Robert Scott, executive director of the Mulholland Institute in Calabasas. “I was previously on the planning commission and we were talking about reducing parking and encouraging people to use active transportation. (But) there is almost no way to walk to it. I don’t think making it unpleasant for automobile traffic will increase active transportation; it will discourage people from patronizing.” However, Westfield said any claims about being unaware of paid parking were made in error, as every tenant’s lease contract includes a clause about controlled parking. At present, metered parking in the outdoor lots at the Village is free. Westfield shut down the parking machines along Topanga Canyon Boulevard in November due to customer complaints about defective meters. “The meters will be reinstated. We’ve ordered more units and upgraded the current units so when we reintroduce it the customer’s experience will be easy and uncomplicated,” Sion said. Westfield said in a statement at the time that repairs had been ordered and the meters would be re-implemented once the problems had been addressed. Parking in the covered structure is free for the first hour. Visitors are then charged $1 on the hour for the next five hours. Parking prices increase from there. “We’re an international company and we do a lot of research behind whatever we do,” Sion explained. “Our customers are very important to us and we try to listen to them. I know they had some concerns in the beginning and we’ve tried to mitigate that.” Though paid parking is not ideal, it is not a foreign concept for shoppers in the Valley, according to Matthew May of May Realty Advisors in Encino. “If customers are looking to have the convenience of the location for big-box retailers in dense suburban areas, then there are compromises which need to be addressed and accepted,” he said. “It is the same thing they have in the multileveled Target in Sherman Oaks (and) another example of the parking structure element is the new Ralph’s on Ventura Boulevard.” Westfield has also made changes to address concerns about navigating the mall itself. The company said visitors have found difficulty in locating their destination from the parking lot and not knowing which entry point to use when circling the very linear two-story shopping center. “When you’re going to walk the outside of the center and you move down to one end, it doesn’t make you want to walk inside; it feels like two different centers,” said May. In hopes of minimizing confusion, Westfield has placed directional signage about the property to help shoppers find their way through the Village, in addition to an app that features a map of the property and pinpoints where users are. Despite the struggles since launching, some tenants believe the mall is a success. A manager for Barista Society, a specialty coffee shop based in Los Angeles, said though the traffic runs a bit slow during the week, it really picks up on weekends. She agreed that at present traffic is slow, but as word spreads about the presence of the mall, people will flock to it. “It’s new and it needs time to grow and thrive. But it has a lot of potential once people learn about it,” she said.

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