LA City Council approves new Westfield mall in Woodland Hills after 7 years

The Los Angeles City Council has given the go-ahead to build the Village at Westfield Topanga, a major expansion for the Woodland Hills shopping center anchored by Costco. The vote was unanimous, capping a seven-year effort by the Westfield company to get the project approved.

The Village will sit between two existing malls, Westfield Topanga and Westfield Promenade. Planners say it will have an open-air design, with shops, entertainment, restaurants and, eventually, an office tower, a boutique hotel and a supermarket.

Even now, some have deemed the project "too suburban" for the dense Warner Center area, pointing in particular to the project's proposed 3,362 parking spaces.

The Daily News reported that one community member chided the planning commission at a seven-hour hearing on the center last October.

"The most valuable commodity we have is land," Shirley Blessing, an 85-year-old Woodland Hills resident, told commissioners. "And we shouldn't give it for football field-sized parking lots."

The original project included 150 condos, but neighbors complained at the same time the housing bubble burst.

So now, Costco will be the Village's primary tenant. This will be Costco’s seventh store in the L.A. area.

Westfield says the project will create thousands of jobs.

The first phase is scheduled to be completed in 2013.