Village at Westfield Topanga Ditches Hotel Tower...For Now

The controversial Village at Westfield Topanga, scourge of neighbors and Southern California taxpayer advocates alike, is shrinking.  According to an economic feasibility study commissioned by the LA City Council, the Australian mall developer has dropped its plans for a hotel as part of the first phase of their Warner Center mega-project.  The hotel, which Westfield may still pursue at a later date, would have risen 16-stories from the intersection of Topanga Canyon Boulevard and Erwin Street.  The Daily News reports that it had been envisioned as a 158-room Hyatt.  However, it's not all bad news coming out of the West Valley.  As an olive branch to the neighbors, City Hall and the Westfield Group have carefully negotiated a community benefits package to be included with the project.  These amenities include $3.325 million trust fund, a new location for the Valley's "Walk of Hearts," event, digital signage and public art.

Predictably, the feasibility study states that the amount of parking has decreased with the reduction of the hotel tower.  However, the report hints that the street fronting surface parking seen in renderings will still be part of the project.  Certainly a huge urban design flaw for Warner Center, which purportedly aims to be a "pedestrian and transit focused community."  The feasibility study also announces that the Village will implement a paid parking program, expected to generate over $2 million per year in revenue.  While parking fees have become the norm at other Southern California shopping centers (like Westfield's flagship Century City location), few malls in the San Fernando Valley have implemented such a program until now.  Regardless of these changes, the project is still moving forward, with permits for the controversial Costco outpost currently in the works.

A Closer Look at the Village at Westfield Topanga Development

One of the more controversial mega-developments in Los Angeles at the moment is Westfield's proposal to build a massive mixed-use complex at Warner Center.  Adjacent to the Westfield Topanga shopping mall, the project is appropriately named the Village at Westfield Topanga.  This is the same development that recently raised eyebrows when the LA City Council voted unanimously to forfeit 42% of the tax revenue created by the project over the next 25 years.  Westfield of course claimed that this was a financial necessity in order to build the project in one phase.

Bird's eye view of the proposed development.

Westfield's bread and butter is retail, and this project has it in spades: 444,744 square feet in total.  This includes a 165,759 square foot Costco, which has been one of the main issue of contention with this project.  The Woodland Hills Homeowners Organization filed a lawsuit back in April, arguing that the Costco and its accompanying gas station violates the Warner Center Specific Plan by encouraging car use.  I'm no lawyer, but I can't imagine how one could possibly argue that a gas station doesn't encourage car use.

The "Village," also includes a second anchor tenant in the form of a 275 key high rise hotel.  The 247.5 foot tall hotel comes complete with a two story podium filled with even more retail and restaurant space (duh).

The final aspect of the Village is 285,000 square feet of office space set to fill either one or two towers rising as tall as 247.5 feet.  Frankly, I'm not sure what to make of this.  Metro Los Angeles' overall office vacancy stands at 19% as of Q2, with the West San Fernando Valley at an anemic 36.9%.  At the same time, Farmers Insurance recently relocated their corporate headquarters to Warner Center, signing a 274,000 square foot lease.  Perhaps the fortunes of the Valley are turning?
 
Anyway, here we see the present condition of the site, mostly vacant land and underutilized surface parking:

And here is the master plan illustrated over roughly the same view:

Moving on, let's take a look at some ground level renderings:

People never look this happy when they're at Costco.

Westfield is clearly shooting for the same kind of atmosphere as their Century City location, which makes sense given the upper-middle class population of Woodland Hills.  You have to wonder if outdoor shopping in the brutal SFV summers could be a turnoff, though.

Different view of the retail paseo.  Who is this chick in the bottom left hand corner smiling at?

Now back to the bird's eye view:

Viewed from this angle, it looks more 3rd Street Promenade than Westfield Century City.  The architecture is pretty generic, but not an eyesore.  I'm sure artistic liberty also spruced it up a bit for this picture.

One last view from across the street.  I see a lot of surface parking.

So there we have it.  While it's nice to see something besides low rise apartment buildings going up in the Valley, this is pretty disappointing from a urban design perspective (surface parking lots fronting the street?!).

Warner Center isn't really that accessible by transit (despite the Orange Line), nor is there much population density in the area to provide organic foot traffic. I can understand the 3,000+ parking spaces to some extent, but Westfield isn't even trying here.  Putting surface parking in between the sidewalk and the stores makes this project look like a strip mall on steroids.  Adding in a gas station station just furthers that comparison.