Westfield Fashion Square sits on the block between Riverside Drive and the Ventura Freeway in Sherman Oaks, California. It's an enclosed two-level mall with a parking deck on top.
It opened in 1962 as Bullock's Fashion Square, a set of separate buildings with outdoor walks between them. A rebuild finished in 1990 put a roof over the old mall and hung a second floor of shops underneath it.
The pedestrian entrance from Riverside Drive came out during that work. A $200 million plan to enlarge the mall was drawn up in 2007 and never got built.
Now the new uses go into old space. Restaurants have taken the shop floor, fitness studios hold mall units, and three courts sit on the parking roof. The mall is still finding uses for the space it already has.
Fashion Square opened outdoors in 1962
In 1959 the block between Riverside Drive and the Ventura Freeway, with Hazeltine Avenue on one side and Woodman Avenue on the other, held the McKinley Home for Boys and an elementary school.
Bullock's bought the land that October, and the sale depended on the city rezoning it for commercial use.
Bullock's, I. Magnin, and Desmond's opened at 9:30 a.m. on April 30, 1962.
The rest followed in phases, and on August 13 the center opened as a whole: 31 more stores, and La Casita, a pavilion of specialty shops with rooms the community could use for meetings.
The center was open to the air.
Five new buildings went up in rough-textured brick and ceramic tile, and the architects gave each tenant its own storefront treatment instead of running one design down the row.
People walked between the buildings outside, past planted areas. A Westward Ho Market of about 18,000 square feet sat apart from the shops.
By 1966 the center had about 422,900 square feet of leasable space, 36 stores, and free parking for about 2,700 cars.
That center is now Westfield Fashion Square, an enclosed regional mall at 14006 Riverside Drive in Sherman Oaks, California, anchored by Macy's and Bloomingdale's.
Seven buildings under one 5.6-acre roof
A westward expansion was announced in April 1976.
The Broadway opened at the west end on November 5, 1977, three levels and about 183,000 square feet, with two blocks of shops and two parking structures beside it.
I. Magnin doubled its own space the following year.
The center now covered about 682,200 square feet and held roughly 55 stores, against 422,900 square feet and 36 stores 12 years earlier.
It was still open-air, and it was still a group of separate buildings.
The Sherman Oaks Galleria had opened enclosed and air-conditioned in 1980, and it drew customers through the decade.
City Freeholds bought Fashion Square in late 1985, and in June 1988 it started putting a roof on.
The work cost about $50 million and joined seven buildings into one.
A skylighted roof covering 5.6 acres went up on trusses about 17 feet deep, some of them 208 feet long, fabricated in halves in Santa Fe Springs and welded together on site.
The second shopping level was hung from those trusses rather than built up from the ground.
The interior gained fiberglass skylight domes, about 30 trees planted to grow toward the roof, an underground aquarium, and a food court on the new upper level.
The north side changed too.
Pedestrian access from Riverside Drive was removed, and the street edge was replanted with trees, shrubs, hanging trellises, and screen walls, some of it using trees moved from the old center.
The rebuilt mall was dedicated on September 8, 1990 with about 135 stores. There was no longer a way in on foot from Riverside Drive.
The earthquake, then two new anchor names
The Northridge earthquake hit on January 17, 1994 and closed both department stores.
The mall itself held up, but about 30 percent of its storefronts had broken glass, tempered glass shattered at escalator railings and an elevator, and the parking structures took the worst of it.
Bullock's came back in stages, the first two selling floors on June 9.
While its own floors were being repaired, it sold women's clothing out of 40,000 square feet that I. Magnin had already vacated.
The Broadway reopened its first two floors on July 2.
One three-level concrete garage was demolished.
City Freeholds spent $6.5 million on an all-steel replacement, chosen partly because steel could be finished faster, and it opened in November 1994 in time for the holiday season.
Two years later both anchors changed names without moving.
Bullock's became Macy's, and Bloomingdale's opened in the enlarged Broadway building on November 16, 1996.
The addition that stayed on paper
In 2007 Westfield proposed a $200 million expansion: a two-level retail building over underground parking, a six-level garage south of Macy's rising to about 75 feet, and opening hours stretched to 5:30 a.m. through midnight.
Homeowners objected over traffic on Riverside, Hazeltine, and Woodman.
Public comment pushed the city from a limited environmental finding to a full environmental impact report, and the draft circulated in 2008.
Nothing was built. In 2016 Westfield was still using the 975,000-square-foot cap the city had approved in 1995.
The work that did happen stayed inside the existing walls.
A renovation began in 2011 and rebuilt the food court as the Dining Terrace, with new storefronts, furniture, and restrooms, and seating roughly doubled to about 550.
The children's play area was re-floored, a fish tank went in, and a family lounge opened with private nursing stations, bottle warmers, changing stations, and a microwave.
The Dining Terrace was introduced over three days in May 2012, with a school show choir and a San Fernando Valley Museum exhibit.
The mall was already holding weekday parking for two nearby schools by 2008: 100 spaces in the east lot for the Buckley School and 60 for Notre Dame High School, from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Eight restaurants and a 10 p.m. driveway rule
Zoning let Fashion Square run three sit-down restaurants.
In 2016 Westfield asked for as many as eight more, converting 36,000 square feet of shop and back-of-house space rather than adding to the footprint.
Neighborhood meetings in April and May changed the application before the city voted.
Westfield pulled proposed closing time back from 2 a.m. to 11 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and midnight on Friday and Saturday, and agreed that the Riverside Drive driveways would shut after 10 p.m. It put $100,000 toward traffic calming near Matilija Avenue and $50,000 toward Library Square.
City transportation review counted 14 new trips in the Saturday peak hour and two in the weekday morning peak, and required no mitigation.
The money and the driveway hours were given anyway.
The council adopted the action on January 10, 2017. Kura Revolving Sushi Bar opened in April 2021, and Panini Kabob Grill trades beside Macy's now.
Padel courts on the Fashion Square roof
In August 2024, Pura Padel opened three courts on the rooftop parking deck, with training space and a lounge.
The club runs from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily, later than the stores below it.
Downstairs, UNIQLO opened on level 1 near Center Court on March 21, 2025.
Orangetheory, BoxUnion, and Lia Pilates hold mall units, Tesla has a showroom, and the Sherman Oaks Farmers Market uses the property.
Westfield runs blood drives at the mall.
Occupancy was 83.9 percent at the end of 2020. At the end of 2024 it was 91.1 percent.
In August 2026, the directory lists 104 shops and 24 food and drink entries, two of them marked as coming soon.
No redevelopment has been announced for the block, and the last large plan for it was the 2007 project that never got built.
Macy's still trades in the 1962 Bullock's building and Bloomingdale's in the enlarged Broadway building.
The UNIQLO on level 1 is hiring seasonal sales associates at $18.50 an hour, at least 12 hours a week, from August through December 2026.
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