Westside Pavilion

Westside Pavilion

Westside Pavilion, 2008
Location	West Los Angeles, California
Opening date	1985
Owner	The Macerich Company
No. of stores and services	150
No. of anchor tenants	6
Total retail floor area	739,822 square feet
No. of floors	3
Website	www.westsidepavilion.com

The Westside Pavilion is a shopping mall located in West Los Angeles. It is owned and operated by The Macerich Company. It is a three-story urban-style shopping mall with 150 shops and is anchored by a Macy's (formerly May Company and later Robinsons-May) and a Nordstrom. A 12-screen movie theater owned by the Landmark Theatres company opened at the mall in 2007, which serves as the flagship location for the company.

Before the Westside Pavilion was opened in 1985, the site was occupied by a mini mall known as Westland and a free-standing May Company building that was later incorporated into the mall. Part of the current mall occupies the site of the Pico Drive-in movie theater - which was located there from 1934 to 1950 - and is considered only the fourth drive-in in the United States, and the first in California.

The first Aéropostale clothing store opened at the mall in 1987.

The plans to build the mall caused an uproar from the surrounding community over concerns of increased traffic and parking on the street. The community responded by banning street parking to non-residents and the developers agreed to provide adequate parking within the mall, as well as retain the Vons supermarket that existed in the previous shopping center. The mall was designed by the same architect who designed structures for the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles and had a look that was a cross between 1980s kitsch, a "palace" of geometrical shapes of different bright colors, and a Parisian shop-lined street. The mall quickly became a Westside landmark.

There was a plan to build a massive movie theater complex on the opposite side of Westwood Boulevard from the mall in 1986. That plan eventually evolved into an expansion of the mall, designed by the mall's original architect, Jon Jerde, which included new shops and al fresco restaurants all connected to the rest of the mall by a bridge over Westwood. The addition to the Westside Pavilion opened in 1991 despite criticism from many, including Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley, The addition, officially known as "Westside Too", opened up with great fanfare and was very popular for the first couple of years, but its popularity soon began to decline as clients favored the original part of the mall.