Open-Air Malls Lead Retail Megadeals In Los Angeles

Los Angeles-area malls, especially the open-air variety, led a comeback for retail assets to start 2026.

Malls are having a moment nationwide, with teens partying like it’s 1999 and driving up foot traffic at shopping centers rather than patronizing online stores like their older counterparts.

Combined with generally improving retail fundamentals and constrained supply, investors have proven increasingly willing to drop up to nine figures on LA-area malls.

“Big deals are becoming more popular again,” said Bryan Ley, a managing director on Northmarq’s commercial investment sales team. 

The latest deal — the largest in recent memory — is the sale of Victoria Gardens in Rancho Cucamonga. The open-air mall sold to Redwood West and the family investor Panattoni for $530M in March, capping a busy quarter for area retail deals.

Edens’ purchase of the Long Beach Exchange shopping center for $135M and Cedars-Sinai’s acquisition of Beverly Connection for $270M rounded out the first-quarter megadeals.

The number of single-property retail transactions rose 29.9% year-over-year in the LA metro in 2025, and dollar volume increased 4.8%, from just under $4.4B in 2024 to $4.6B in 2025, according Altus Group data. 

Open-air malls seem to have the biggest draw, according to Green Street senior associate research analyst Naishal Shah.

“I think we'll continue to see the open-air centers continue to catch a bid,” she said. “There's just significantly more investor interest there. Enclosed centers just do not have that same level of engagement.”

Successful open-air lifestyle centers have created community gathering places, attracted popular brands and managed to drive traffic to the businesses they house, according to Redwood West Managing Partner and co-founder Benjamin Gott. That dynamic is what drew Redwood West and its partners to Victoria Gardens, Gott said.

“The No. 1 driver for us is, how can we create an experience for our customers and visitors alike — a place that they want to go to, a place that they want to come back to, places that constantly have new tenants in there, fresh ideas, new offerings?” Gott said. 

One of the ways ownership will do this is by increasing the programming offerings at the property to ensure that it is appealing to “every different demographic possible,” Gott said. 

Redwood West is also planning to spend $50M on property upgrades, which Gott said would go toward elevating the public spaces on the property, improving the arrival experience to the site and storefront consistency, as well as general infrastructure improvements. 

“We came into something that already works,” Gott said. “Our job here is really to refine it, elevate it and future-proof it.” 

One practical reason open-air and outdoor properties are attractive to investors and buyers is their lower capital expenditures for things like HVAC and roofing compared to more enclosed shopping centers, Shah said. 

But they also seem to have more shopper interest, meaning foot traffic, he said. 

Indoor malls and open-air centers have clocked consistent year-over-year foot traffic growth, according to a national Placer.ai report published in March. 

However, only open-air centers were found to have “a higher share of short, weekday visits — along with strong appeal among affluent families,” a fact that Placer.ai said emphasized these centers’ success positioning themselves as convenient and essential for their shoppers. 

Visits to open-air malls, enclosed malls and outlets were up year-over-year in the first three months of 2026, according to an April Placer.ai report. Open-air malls led the pack, with a 5.1% increase in visits. Visits also increased at open-air malls in each month of the quarter, and it was the only mall type to see growth every month.  

Avison Young retail market intelligence principal Meghann Martindale said that in many ways, open-air lifestyle centers anticipated a retail landscape in which ownership had to have a variety of uses on offer, beyond just dining and retail, to drive traffic to the property. 

In LA County, retail’s rise was even more pronounced, with total dollar volume increasing 44% year-over-year in 2025 and transaction count increasing 37%, according to Avison Young data. The firm found that the average price per square foot remained relatively flat from 2024 to 2025, when prices were approximately $315 and $310 per SF, respectively.  

Avison Young’s first-quarter data shows the upward trend continuing, as transaction pricing grew to nearly $350 per SF. The year-over-year sales volume by dollars was almost 67% higher at the end of Q1 2026 than in Q1 2025.