Warner Center, CA Experts in Container Rental, Sales & Customization

Rams owner Stan Kroenke has escalated his property buying spree in Woodland Hills with the $325-million purchase of an outdoor shopping center.

The Village deal, which closed last week, further signals the billionaire businessman’s intention to build a second sports-centric development like the one around SoFi Stadium in Inglewood.

His company, the Kroenke Organization, now controls about 100 acres in Warner Center that are expected by real estate industry observers to become part of a sprawling mixed-use complex that may include stores, restaurants, hotels and residences, along with a training facility for the NFL football team. It could become one of the largest new real estate developments in the region.

The popular Village, completed in 2015, is next to the largely inactive Woodland Hills Promenade mall and an unoccupied high-rise office building, both of which Kroenke acquired last year.

Representatives of the Kroenke Organization declined to elaborate on their plans for Warner Center but said in a statement that “we will continue to operate The Village as an open-air lifestyle and retail destination.”

The seller of the Village was Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, a Paris-based mall operator that said in April that it would unload all its U.S. properties and bet its future on Europe, where it is the largest owner of shopping centers.

The company still owns Westfield Topanga, another mall near Kroenke’s recent acquisitions. Other prominent neighbors are the Warner Center Towers office complex and a hotel, Warner Center Marriott Woodland Hills.

Los Angeles city officials are encouraging dense mixed-use development in the neighborhood that could include new housing, offices, shops, restaurants, hotel rooms and entertainment venues.

June 6, 2022

Assembling a 100-acre parcel that would be at the center of a more urban-feeling downtown for Woodland Hills is “pretty spectacular,” said retail property broker Bryan Ley of JLL, who was not involved in the sales.

“There are not many land sites sold around Los Angeles County that are 100 acres with this kind of density and location,” he said.

In Inglewood, Kroenke controls nearly 300 acres surrounding SoFi Stadium, in what was formerly the Hollywood Park horse racing venue. When the complex is completed, it will be 3½ times the size of Disneyland and contain a performance venue, hotel, stores, restaurants, offices, homes and a lake with waterfalls.

Kroenke is a longtime real estate developer whose company owns and operates retail centers in 39 states totaling 40 million square feet, according to the Unibail statement.

Wisteria at Warner Center, a senior living community in Woodland Hills, has officially broken ground.

Once completed, the Life Plan Community will span 17 acres at 5500 Canoga Ave.

Life Plan Communities are state-recognized continuing care retirement communities. Spieker Senior Development Partners broke ground on the six-story project in late April. All of Spieker’s California communities are Life Plan Communities.

Wisteria at Warner Center will have 486 homes, ranging from one-bedroom options to penthouses nearly 3,000 square feet in size. Resident amenities will include an indoor pool, fitness center, library, movie theater and performing arts center.

The project also has ground-floor retail and dining venues.

Wisteria at Warner Center, which is expected to open in 2025, will feature a health center next to the community with access to assisted living, memory care and long-term care in a skilled nursing center.

Troy Bourne, managing partner at Spieker Senior Development Partners, said he grew up in the Valley and was excited to bring a much-needed development to the area.

“I’ve known the Valley my whole life and it’s (senior housing) an unmet need,” Bourne said. “There are a lot of families that started their families here, raised their families here … and love life in the Valley.

“It’s a vibrant place, it’s a diverse place … and they’re not in a hurry to leave the Valley,” he added.

“Los Angeles has needed this community for so long, and we’re both excited and proud to bring the area’s first comprehensive Life Plan Community to the San Fernando Valley,” Wisteria Marketing Director Ernie Sandlin added in a statement. “The homes at Wisteria will be beautiful, but the real value to the area’s seniors is the combination of these new homes with best-in-class services, amenities, and access to higher levels of assistance and care if needed down the road. Thanks to the support of our forward-thinking community leaders, design and construction professionals, and future residents, we’ve reached a significant milestone in bringing this project to the Los Angeles market.”

Spieker Senior Development Partners, Bourne said, had been looking for a location in the Valley “for a long time.”

In order to build a community, he said the company needed a lot of space, not just a corner.

The Wisteria at Warner Center is a former Northrop Grumman site.

Beyond just meeting the necessary size requirements, Bourne said the site was desirable because it was a place where people “were already comfortable going to.”

He said that many already shop in the area and it’s close to many freeways, making it a good place for the development.

More than 500 families have already signed up for the development’s waitlist, Bourne said.

KTGY is designing the project, while W.E. O’Neil Construction is building it.

Spieker Senior Development Partners’ closest location is in Thousand Oaks. Bourne said the company is currently working on a project in Northern California, but does not have other Southern California projects slated. One of the biggest challenges with creating these communities, he said, is the amount of land needed. It can also take a really long time to develop a community. Even after finding land, he said, it can be 10 years before a project is completed.

“It’s a process, and it doesn’t happen quickly,” he said.

The Los Angeles City Council cleared the way Wednesday for a sprawling development planned for the west San Fernando Valley, signing off on a new sports arena, two hotels, a 28-story office tower and more than 1,400 new apartments.

On a 14-0 vote, the council approved Promenade 2035, which is expected to cost more than $1 billion, replacing a closed shopping mall in Warner Center with a new “downtown district” featuring a supermarket, public plazas, high-density housing and a 10,000-seat entertainment and sports venue.

Councilman Bob Blumenfield, who represents the area, said the project’s combination of restaurants, stores, homes and workspaces makes it “the future of green planning.”

Promenade 2035 will offer a “mini-city ... within this larger city,” he said, “where you can get your culture and entertainment and jobs and work — all in a smaller area for less of a carbon footprint.”

Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, the project’s developer, agreed to set aside 5% of the project’s housing units for very low-income families, serving households that earn less than 50% of the area median income, which is currently $77,300 per year. Another 5% would be allocated for “workforce” housing, targeting households that earn 120% to 150% of area median income, a Blumenfield aide said.

California

Dec. 1, 2020

The developer is hoping to begin construction within two years, with the work carried out in phases.

The Woodland Hills Homeowners Assn. initially challenged the project but later dropped its opposition. That left businessman Jeff Bornstein, who contends the planning department’s evaluation of the project failed to comply with state environmental law, as the remaining opponent.

Jamie Hall, Bornstein’s attorney, said planning department officials allowed the developer to make “major modifications” to the proposal, changing the number and location of the buildings without allowing the public to properly weigh in. He also said officials did not notify him of Wednesday’s council meeting until late Tuesday afternoon, when he received an email from the city clerk.

“We intend on objecting to their failure to provide the notice required by law and will be seeking a remedy from the courts,” Hall said.

Stuart Waldman, president of the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn., offered much more favorable reviews of Wednesday’s decision, saying the project would keep Valley residents from having to drive downtown or to the Westside for entertainment.

Luis Porres, business agent for the Plumbers and Fitters Union Local 761, said Promenade 2035 will offer hope to workers during difficult times, ultimately creating more than 19,000 jobs.

“We need this project,” he said. “And we need to send a message to our other longtime businesses in the city to invest and start planning for our recovery.”

Times staff writer Roger Vincent contributed to this report.

In a year filled with high-profile L.A. real estate deals, Stan Kroenke’s ranked among the biggest.

Last March, the billionaire developer and owner of the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams bought the Promenade, a “zombie mall” in the Warner Center district of Woodland Hills, for $150 million. A couple months later, in June, Kroenke added an adjacent site, the 13-story former Anthem Blue Cross office tower and surrounding block, for $175 million. In December he picked up The Village, a newer outdoor mall in the same area, for $325 million — creating a three-property, $650 million, 96-acre assemblage in a part of the San Fernando Valley that’s long been poised for major redevelopment.

In recent weeks, thanks to a new city planning application for a Rams practice facility at the Anthem site, the first iteration of Kroenke’s plan has been confirmed.

But 16 months after The Kroenke Group’s first marquee Warner Center purchase, the billionaire still hasn’t shown his cards on his vision for a development that could end up as a signature new landmark for both Warner Center and the broader San Fernando Valley.

“I assume he bought all that land not just to sit on it,” said L.A. Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, who represents the area and has long championed Warner Center development. “I’m eager to see what he wants to do — I like getting things moving, and I think the investment would be very positive.”

Yet so far Kroenke — a lifelong businessman and longtime sports owner whose low-key personality once earned him the nickname “Silent Stan” — has been characteristically tight-lipped, revealing nothing of his wider plans. His firm The Kroenke Group also has not applied for any new projects and, despite widespread speculation, has not hinted at what’s to come. The firm also did not respond to an inquiry from TRD.

The recent project application did illuminate Kroenke’s plans for the team, which plays its home games at the new SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, about 30 miles to the southeast of the Warner Center assemblage. The San Fernando Valley location is some 20 miles closer to SoFi than the team’s current practice facility at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks.

The document was filed by TKG Management, a subsidiary of The Kroenke Group, last month, and calls for two adjacent natural grass practice fields on the parking lot of the former Anthem building. It also outlines plans for a new, roughly 65,000-square-foot training facility near the fields, which would connect to the office building via a series of modular structures, and calls for the demolition of one existing 9,000-square-foot visitor center and one 6,400-square-foot movie theater building that was part of the shuttered Promenade mall.

The team has said the training facility will be temporary, so the team can move in later this year while working on longer term plans. The Rams also intend to move its offices to the former Anthem building from Agoura Hills.

“Our long-term vision is to build a permanent practice facility at the Woodland Hills site that Stan Kroenke purchased over the past year,” a team spokesperson recently told the L.A. Daily News.

The practice facility plans have both political and business support. Last month Blumenfield sent out an enthusiastic letter to constituents that promised to help “ensure their review gets rolling so the Rams can call Warner Center home as soon as possible.” The West Valley Warner Center Chamber of Commerce CEO has said the facility will offer an economic boost and “bring prestige to Warner Center.”

Kroenke’s grander development vision could have a much larger impact.

Warner Center, a special district that was created decades ago within the neighborhoods of Woodland Hills and Canoga Park, was originally envisioned as a higher-density “downtown” for the mostly suburban San Fernando Valley. In 2013, Blumenfield helped push through the Warner Center 2035 Plan, which created a development-friendly blueprint, including a streamlined environmental impact report process, for 14 million more square feet of commercial building and 20,000 residential units.

“Projects get approved in Warner Center faster than anywhere else in the city,” Blumenfield said.

And because Kroenke’s assemblage is entirely within the district, which has very few development restrictions, the owner could have wide leeway to create a new commercial district, the councilman pointed out. While Kroenke hasn’t spoken about his plans, since he started buying up the parcels analysts have speculated that he intends to build a Rams-centered complex that resembles a smaller version of his Hollywood Park at SoFi, where plans ultimately include a near 300-acre “unparalleled sports and entertainment destination” featuring shops, office space, a hotel, apartments and outdoor space.

At Warner Center, the Rams owner could decide to take advantage of entitlements that are already in place. In late 2020, before the French firm Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield ended up selling the Promenade site to Kroenke’s group, the L.A. City Council unanimously approved a plan, called Promenade 2035, to repurpose the derelict mall into a major mixed-use complex with around 1,400 residential units, 280,000 square feet of restaurant and retail space, over 700,000 square feet of office space, two hotels and a 10,000-seat entertainment center.

That project amounted to the largest ever proposed in Warner Center, and generated plenty of excitement and criticism, including from residents who saw a new invigoration for the West Valley and others who worried about traffic congestion and affordability.

Kroenke’s larger development plans, whenever they come to light, are likely to reignite the same emotions.

“We lived through the entitlement process and went through the slings and arrows,” Blumenfield said of the Promenade 2035 plan. “But since Kroenke has been so silent about what they’re going to do, and whether they’re going to [follow the Promenade plans] or do their own thing, it hasn’t become an issue.”

“I’m more just eager to see how this is going to play out,” Blumenfield added. “That Promenade site has been sitting vacant for a very long time.”

A massive Warner Center parcel that formerly housed a manufacturer of rocket engines that propelled American astronauts to the moon has been in escrow since April as the owner of the Mall of America has been trying to purchase the site.

The 47-acre parcel, owned by United Technologies Corp., is being marketed as a high-rise urban neighborhood, according to real estate data firm CoStar, and is expected to cost about $150 million. CoStar’s spokeswoman, Megan Sweat, said the sale is expected to close in early 2019.

Representatives for Triple Five Group Ltd., the owner of the Mall of America, did not have an immediate comment.

But state officials say it could take years and millions of dollars to clean up the property, which is polluted with cancer-causing chemicals, including trichloroethylene (TCE), tetrachloroethylene (PCE) and total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH), left from decades of rocket testing.

“It all comes down to conditions of the site, in terms of geology and what kind of soils there are and whether groundwater moves easily or not,” said Arthur Heath, an environmental program manager at the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board. “Depending on the technology, it can take years to clean it up. You can’t clean it up in a day or year.”

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Heath added that he didn’t know the exact cost of the cleanup but said it could range from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars.

Officials acknowledge the cleanup process is complicated because the toxins seeped into the soil and groundwater, at approximately 15 to 19 feet below the surface. Soil and groundwater cleanup activities are currently ongoing at the site, according to the Regional Board’s website.

“It’s going to be a long-term cleanup,” said Ana Townsend, a water resource control engineer with the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, adding that her team is currently evaluating the vapor data submitted by the landowner as part of the cleanup plan.

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Developed in the mid-1950s, the property, near the 101 Freeway and bounded by Canoga Avenue, Vanowen Street, Owensmouth Avenue and Victory Boulevard, was used for machining, welding, metals plating, painting and engine assembly, according to the regional water quality board.

Between 1956 and 1960, one of the buildings at the corner of Owensmouth Avenue and Vanowen Street was occupied by Atomics International and housed two small nuclear reactors, known as L-47 and L-77, used for the Systems Nuclear Auxiliary Power, or SNAP, program which developed nuclear power systems for NASA, according to the U.S. Department of Energy website.

In 1960, Atomics International moved to another facility on De Soto Avenue in Canoga Park, and all radiological activities were transferred to the new site, the U.S. Department of Energy website said. Years later, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission confirmed that the reactor operating licenses for L-44 and L-77 were appropriately terminated by the Atomic Energy Commission. The Vanowen building was demolished in 2006.

Before United Technologies acquired the site in 2005, it was owned by the United State Air Force, Rockwell International and The Boeing Company. Numerous environmental investigations and cleanup activities have been conducted across the site since 1984 that have identified elevated levels of tetrachloroethylene, trichloroethylene and total petroleum hydrocarbons from historic manufacturing activities at the site, according to the Regional Board’s website.

In 2016, the former Rocketdyne Propulsion & Power plant, which once housed tens of thousands of scientists and engineers from across the San Fernando Valley, was razed. For several months in 2017, work crews removed nearly 8,900 tons of impacted soil with tracked excavators and deposited them off-site, according to the September letter.

But officials with the Regional Board said that the cleanup did not address remediation of elevated concentrations of toxins found above the groundwater, or in the vadose zone, soil vapor at the site, according to the document.

Meanwhile, experts say toxins found underneath the site can cause some serious health problems.

“Some of the chemicals such as tetrachloroethene and trichloroethane are known human carcinogens that damage the liver and kidney,” said Jill Johnston, an assistant professor of preventive medicine in the environmental health division of USC’s Keck School of Medicine. “If they are exposed to really high levels, people feel dizziness, headaches and can get respiratory irritation.”

Bonnie Klea, a West Hills resident and former worker at the Canoga Park facility, said she was not surprised when she heard about the pollutants found underneath the Canoga Park property. She worked for Rocketdyne Propulsion & Power plant, as a secretary in the early 1970s and experienced headaches every time she visited the site. Then in 1995, she was diagnosed with bladder cancer. Klea soon found out that she was one of many former Rocketdyne workers who were battling the deadly disease.

Nearly 878 cases were filed by former workers of the Canoga Park facility who suffered from cancer. About $55.5 million has been paid out, according to the United States Department of Labor’s website.

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Klea added that she was concerned about communities that live around the site.

“I am very hesitant about the development there,” she said. “I know what happened in the past and that’s’ awful.”

Jane Williams, the executive director of California Communities Against Toxics, said United Technologies, the landowner needs a long-term plan to remediate groundwater underneath the site to protect current and future residents who live nearby.

“The groundwater can take centuries to cleanup,” she said. “But development companies get in, develop, get their money and go home. They are not designed to do these long-term cleanups.”

But state officials say the polluted groundwater is “fairly deep” to put residents who live near the facility at risk.

“In order to be exposed to the contaminants in the groundwater or soil, you need to be able to breathe and touch them,” said Heath of the regional board. “In this case, the groundwater is at the point where — the contaminated part of it — no one is directly exposed to it.”

Over the years, the groundwater has traveled off-site and is now being remediated, Townsend said, adding that no drinking water wells have been impacted.

Earlier this year, United Technologies asked the Regional Board to begin tackling the soil vapor issues and install vapor mitigation systems beneath all future on-site buildings.

But before the landowner moves ahead with the process, the company needs to file a remedial plan by Jan. 20 with “feasible remedial technologies” to cleanup soil vapor, according to correspondence filed with the Regional Board. Townsend said once United Technologies completes the soil cleanup, the company may move on with developing the site even while the groundwater cleanup efforts are still underway.

“Once they get a closure — depending on what kind of closure they get — they can build even though they are remediating the groundwater.”