Ask a Commons regular why the Regency closed and the answer comes fast: nobody goes to the movies anymore. That explanation isn't false. It's also not what actually decided the fate of that parking lot on the west side of the property, and the property's own paperwork says as much. A movie theater at The Commons, according to the center's construction FAQ, is "no longer a sustainable use." That's a real estate sentence, not a cultural one. It means the square footage a multiplex needs to break even doesn't compete with what else you can put on that same dirt.
Right now, if you drive past the old Regency footprint, you're looking at the answer to that math problem taking physical shape.
What the numbers actually trade
The redevelopment, which Caruso has branded Commons Lane, adds roughly 190,000 square feet of new construction to a property that has operated for nearly three decades in a bit more than 200,000 square feet of existing shops and restaurants. Read quickly, that sounds like The Commons is almost doubling its retail footprint. It isn't. Of that 190,000 square feet, only about 27,000 is new retail and dining space, spread across 12 to 14 storefronts. The rest, close to seven out of every eight new square feet, is housing and the parking structure built to serve it: 80 apartment units.
The building replacing the old theater carries the height to prove it. Calabasas approved that structure at up to 85 feet, well above the 46-foot cap set for the buildings going up in the former parking lot. It will be the tallest thing Caruso has ever built at this address. The theater didn't lose its lease because the property got tired of hosting movies. It lost its lease because 80 apartments and a compact strip of curated storefronts pencil out better on that particular parcel than a single-screen anchor tenant ever could again, a calculation that plays out at retail centers across the country as streaming reshapes what a multiplex is worth to a landlord.
Mayor James Bozajian, who also held the office when The Commons first opened in 1998, put it in plainer terms when the council approved the project: the concept of mixed-use development looks nothing like it did 30 years ago, when the same kind of proposal would have gone nowhere.
What construction actually changes this week
None of this means the property you know is disappearing. The construction is contained to the west side, where the Regency and its surrounding parking lot used to sit. If your routine runs through Gelson's, or dinner at Porta Via, or the restaurants clustered on the north and south ends of the center, that part of The Commons is untouched.
A few things are different in the meantime. Valet parking still runs Friday through Sunday, staged near Sugarfish by Sushi Nozawa and Polacheck's Jewelers, though the hours are worth checking before you rely on it for a Saturday dinner. A stretch of the two-way drive aisle between the two new buildings has been switched to one-way while crews finish the parking structure that will serve the apartments. As of this fall, the property's own timeline puts the work through September 2026 in a phase focused on turning spaces over to new tenants so they can start their own build-outs. The apartment building itself won't be ready until fall 2027.
The tenants who left, and the ones already settled in
The Regency wasn't the only long-running name to go. Marmalade Cafe closed after 28 years at the property, with its parent company citing a decline in business tied to the ongoing construction throughout the shopping center. That's a different story than the theater's. The Regency was traded on purpose for something the property bet the neighborhood would rather have. Marmalade's closure came as the construction period reshaped foot traffic across the center, something any multi-year renovation on an occupied property brings.
Elsewhere, the churn has looked more like a normal retail refresh than a redevelopment. Bacio di Latte, an Italian gelato shop founded in 2011 by Edoardo and Luigi Tonolli, took over the space that had been Jenny's Ice Cream. BLVD Steak, an extension of the original Sherman Oaks location, moved into the footprint near King's Fish House that had been CrossRoads. Superba Food + Bread, the California brasserie with roots in Venice Beach going back to 2014, opened in the existing complex in a space next to Polacheck's Jewelers. KazuNori, the hand roll counter named for chef Kazunori Nozawa, and the Australian fashion label Zimmermann rounded out that same wave of new tenants, all of it landing in the property's original 200,000-plus square feet, separate from the west-side construction still underway.
Worth keeping straight: those five names arrived before Commons Lane broke ground. They're evidence of how the property was already turning over tenants even before the bigger redevelopment started, not a preview of what's coming in the new 27,000 square feet.
What actually lands in the new space
The FAQ Caruso's team maintains for the project describes the new west-side buildup as 12 to 14 shops and restaurants, with some spaces already being turned over to tenants for their own construction. Builders have said some of those stores and restaurants could open by the end of 2026, though the property hasn't published a tenant roster for that specific batch of storefronts the way it did for the earlier wave. The green space that's supposed to replace the old parking lot, designed for outdoor gatherings and built specifically as a shared lawn rather than an indoor screen, arrives on the same fall 2027 timeline as the apartments.
That gap between what's already leased and what's still being negotiated matters if you're the kind of Commons regular who plans errands around what's open. The next few months are the part of the project where you'll see spaces get finished out behind construction fencing, but you likely won't get a firm list of who's actually moving in until closer to those openings.
The corridor lost more than one screen
The Regency's closing on December 28, 2025 didn't happen in isolation. It was the third theater closure in this stretch of the Valley in recent years, following shutdowns in Agoura Hills and Westlake Village. Calabasas hasn't had another on-site option since. Whatever ends up in the new green space at The Commons, built explicitly with outdoor movie nights in mind according to the project's own materials, will be doing double duty as the only screen-adjacent gathering spot left in a corridor that used to have several.
That's the actual shape of the trade happening on Commons Lane. Not a story about people who stopped watching movies, but a story about which use of a finite, expensive piece of land wins out once the multiplex stops paying its way. The fencing on the west side of The Commons is that argument, built in real time.
If you're curious how changes like this tend to ripple through daily life in Calabasas, or you've got a question about what's actually happening on a specific block, Malibu Premier Homes is happy to talk it through.
