Rebirth of Palisades Village in Los Angeles, CA

Pacific Palisades is one of Los Angeles’s most coveted neighborhoods, with views of the Santa Monica Mountains and the Pacific Coast. The highly anticipated redevelopment of Palisades Village, a 3.17-acre property along Swarthmore Avenue, offers a unique opportunity to create something wonderful that adds to the Palisades lifestyle, and preserves the small town feel.

The huge makeover will revitalize the Pacific Palisades community creating a pedestrian neighborhood with exciting new retail, dining, shopping and beautifully landscaped community gathering areas. The demand for close proximity to nearby amenities continues to be a major trend for home buyers. This development affords buyers one additional, important, and exciting reason to invest and live in Pacific Palisades.

A collection of charming storefronts including a variety of shopping, a specialty grocer outdoor dining and personal services will be oriented around Swarthmore Avenue and a central park. The project also involves the exciting rebirth of the historic Bay Theater, which closed in 1978 after being open for three decades. The original renderings were found for the Bay Theater, designed by famous theater architect S. Charles Lee, and they plan “to create the theater as he intended in 1948″ on its original footprint and possibly greater,” says Caruso. The new Bay Theater will have five-screens and is intended to evoke the great movie theaters of that period while providing the highest quality entertainment experience.

There will be six residential apartments above the retail shops, a park and a community room. Swarthmore Avenue will be turned into a one-way street and provide diagonal parking for 50 or so vehicles. Car traffic will be reduced from two lanes to one and parking will be doubled, including both the on-street parking and in an underground garage. The Pacific Village project website states that the existing surface parking lot will be turned into a 13,000-square-foot beautifully landscaped “neighborhood green” with mature trees and an adjacent dining area. The two levels of underground parking will be directly beneath it. The park will be a place for relaxing, hosting community events and where children can play in a safe and secure environment. The community room offers residents and groups a place to meet and conduct community meetings and other local gatherings.

Rick Caruso is the man behind many exceedingly successful developments including The Grove and Americana at Brand. Caruso Affiliated properties have a reputation for fusing outstanding retailers and customer service with neighborhood scale, becoming the gathering places of their communities. The Pacific Village redevelopment is expected to be just as exciting and successful, while fitting into the overall feel of the neighborhood. Palisades Village will once again be a favorite gathering place and centerpiece of the neighborhood.

Caruso Affliates completed the purchase of the Pacific Village property two years after Caruso agreed to buy it. They are also in escrow on the Mobil site at Sunset and Swarthmore. A discovery of toxic materials in the soil released over 30 years by a dry cleaning business there slowed the sale, according to The Los Angeles Business Journal. The article says the developer worked with the state to come up with an approved plan for clean up before closing escrow. The company will oversee the relocation of a storm drain and cleanup of the hazardous materials at both the dry cleaners and the gas station.

“The early ’50s mid-Century mixture on Swarthmore of flat roofs, angled elements, pitched walls, cut-outs and so much more speaks to our community image and growth from a special postwar time in the development of not only Los Angeles but the small township of the Palisades,” said Caruso in an interview with the LA Times. The makeover involves demolishing the existing buildings and replacing them with a mix of eclectic storefronts — Cape Cod, Georgian, contemporary — that would evoke the Hamptons and other swank locales. As Caruso puts it, he intends to give the Pacific Palisades an “award-winning identity and sense of place.”

The LA Times article written by Martha Groves reported on the overall receptivity of the Pacific Palisades residents. “Most people are just ecstatic,” said Nicole Howard, a mother of two teen boys who has lived in the upscale enclave for 17 years. “The scale of the plan, the aesthetics … every single part of it — honestly, he was spot-on.” Barbara Kohn, president emeritus of the Pacific Palisades Community Council said, “People are so eager for something viable to be there, something usable.”

Caruso said his many conversations with residents made it clear that they want distinctive retailers rather than chains, ample parking and a specialty grocer. His company is considering Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s and Bi-Rite, a two-store San Francisco operation. Caruso has promised to install an ice cream store to replace the closed Baskin-Robbins – sure to please children and adults alike. Existing Swarthmore tenants — including Maison Giraud restaurant and Bentons will be offered incentives to return”

“The undertone is the residents don’t want to have to leave their neighborhood,” Caruso, who lives in nearby Brentwood, said in an interview at Caruso Affiliated’s offices at the Grove. Donna Vaccarino, a local architect who has facilitated some of the redevelopment conversation, said Caruso “really gave the community back their wish list.” “It has the stamp of Caruso architecture, but I hope he goes further to create design specific to the Palisades,” she added. “One must wait for the fairy dust to settle.”

Swarthmore serves as the main drag of Pacific Palisades. The new Swarthmore is designed to be “pedestrian-friendly and appropriately scaled,” says Caruso. Currently there are many empty storefronts which stands in juxtaposition to a community of multi-million-dollar houses. The revitalized Pacific Village will invite a “diverse group of specialty independent merchants and unique brands, including some opening their first stores on the Westside,” according to a Caruso Affiliated statement. The renewal of this area will once again meet the needs of locals and visitors alike.

According to a study “Assessing Benefits of Neighborhood Walkability to Single-Family Property Values”, “investments in neighborhood amenities and sidewalks will yield a greater home price increase in a walkable neighborhood than in a car-dependent neighborhood. Also, according to an article in The Washington Post, the strongest housing markets are in walkable urban areas. The article states that the popularity of these neighborhoods can be reflected in real estate listings. Often “walk scores” are included in real estate listings, pointing out what is within walking distance of a property.

Luis Rodriquez, a housing and urban planning consultant, writes in Planetizen, “More and more people around the world want their communities, neighborhoods, villages, towns and cities to be more liveable.” Well-designed pedestrian-oriented shopping streets can be key to making a goal a reality. Pedestrian neighborhoods provide residents with opportunities to enjoy a high quality of life by allowing them to live in a variety of housing options and to walk, bike or take public transportation to places they most need to go every day. These neighborhoods can also “attract big crowds of people of all ages and from all walks of life every business day, thus increasing the potential for participating real estate owners and entrepreneurs and commercial retailers to succeed in their business,” says Rodriquez.

Both current Pacific Palisades residents and potential home buyers are responding enthusiastically to the redevelopment and rebirth of this charming community. The new Palisades Village is anticipated to open in late 2017.

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