Westfield's Shops at The Patio Debuts
It’s been a slow year for mall developers, but on Nov. 11, Westfield Group debuted Shops at The Patio, a lifestyle-center extension of Westfield Valencia Town Center in Santa Clarita, Calif.
(Indeed, 2010 saw few new malls open. According to the International Council of Shopping Centers, only one super-regional mall debuted, and only four lifestyle centers opened in America in the past year.)
The new open-air center Shops at The Patio features 40 boutiques, including BCBGshy;MAXAZRIA, True Religion, Michael Kors and White House | Black Market stores. The Shops cost $130 million to construct. Plans to make the lifestyle center had been approved in 2006. The new center will bring more than 700 jobs to Santa Clarita, according to a Westfield representative.
With a population of 178,000, wealthy Santa Clarita is the fourth-largest city in Los Angeles County, and the Westfield Valencia Town Center and its Shops extension are the only fashion malls in town. Santa Clarita also offers stand-alone fashion boutiques in the city’s strip malls and on its streets.
The architectural details of Shops at The Patios feature verandas, fountains, koi ponds, fire pits and walls composed of natural-looking stone.
On Nov. 11, Larry Green, Westfield’s senior vice president of development, attended the opening ceremony for The Shops and made an unspecified contribution to the Santa Clarita chapter of Veterans of Foreign Wars.—Andrew Asch
