Drive through The Commons at Calabasas this month and you will see orange fencing, a parking structure going up where the movie theater used to sit, and a handful of storefronts that look mid-buildout. It is easy to read that as one big project swallowing the whole center. It is not. Only the west side, where the old Regency theater stood, is actually torn up right now. Everything else at The Commons is open, several restaurants there are brand new, and a completely separate restaurant boom is happening right now in Old Town, a few minutes away, with no connection to Caruso's project at all.
If you live here, that distinction matters more than the renderings do. Here is what is actually happening, in three separate places, on three separate timelines.
What's Actually Torn Up Right Now
The construction you're seeing is the Commons Lane expansion, the mixed-use addition Caruso broke ground on February 3, 2026. Rick Caruso himself was on site for the groundbreaking, along with Calabasas Mayor James Bozajian, City Manager Kindon Meik, and council members David Shapiro, Alicia Weintraub and Ed Albrecht. The project adds roughly 190,000 square feet of new construction on the site of the shuttered Regency Calabasas theater, which closed for good at the end of last year, plus a chunk of the surrounding parking lot.
When it's finished, Commons Lane will bring 80 apartment homes, roughly 27,000 square feet of new commercial space for a dozen or so curated shops and restaurants, and a pedestrian paseo connecting it all to the existing center. Caruso CEO Corinne Verdery framed it as continuity rather than reinvention: "For nearly 30 years, The Commons at Calabasas has been a place where the community comes together." Caruso put it more bluntly at the groundbreaking: "We want to have our capital here. We want to be a partner here."
According to the property's own construction updates, the current phase, running from July through September of this year, has crews working on the parking structure that will serve the new apartments while some retail spaces are just now being turned over to tenants so they can begin their own buildouts. That means nobody has actually opened a storefront in the new wing yet. The council approved this project back in December 2023, and it still took more than two years to break ground. If you're wondering why a "we broke ground in February" project doesn't have open restaurants by September, that gap is the answer. Builders are targeting some retail and restaurant openings by the end of this year, with the apartments coming online in 2027 and full completion of the project targeted for fall 2027.
What's Fine (Because It Was Never Touched)
Here is the part that gets lost in the construction talk: the north and south ends of The Commons, where Gelson's, Barnes & Noble, and most of the existing restaurants sit, were never part of the demolition. Sugarfish, King's Fish House and Marmalade Cafe are all still exactly where they've always been.
Better than fine, actually. Over roughly the past eighteen months, that untouched section has quietly picked up several new tenants that have nothing to do with Commons Lane. Superba Food + Bread opened its Calabasas location in March of last year, bringing the same seasonally driven brasserie menu and in-house bakery it built a following for in Venice Beach. Since then the center has also added KazuNori, BLVD Steak, Bacio di Latte, and the fashion label Zimmermann.
| Recent addition | Type | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Superba Food + Bread | Brasserie, bakery | 4799 Commons Way |
| KazuNori | Hand roll bar | Existing Commons footprint |
| BLVD Steak | Steakhouse | Existing Commons footprint |
| Bacio di Latte | Gelato | Existing Commons footprint |
| Zimmermann | Fashion | Existing Commons footprint |
None of this required a city council vote, a groundbreaking, or a two-year entitlement process. These are ordinary lease signings in a shopping center that was never under construction to begin with. If your mental model of The Commons right now is "half a construction site," it is more accurate to say "a mostly finished shopping center that keeps adding restaurants, with one active job site tucked into its west corner."
A Few Blocks South, Old Town Is Running Its Own Clock
None of what's happening in Old Town Calabasas has anything to do with Caruso, Commons Lane, or a public entitlement process. It's a separate strip of Calabasas Road, with its own landlords and its own leasing cycles, and it is having a moment on its own terms.
Jon & Vinny's, the California-Italian spot known for handmade pastas and wood-fired pizza, opened its Calabasas location on July 27 of this year at 23538 Calabasas Road, directly across from Sagebrush Cantina. A few blocks away, Salsa & Beer, the family-run Mexican grill with locations in Lake Balboa and North Hollywood, is finishing construction at 4895 Las Virgenes Road, the long-vacant former Coco's site near the 101. That storefront had signage up for a Salsa & Beer location back in 2020 before the project stalled for years. It's finally close to actually opening.
And Sagebrush Cantina itself, the restaurant both of those newcomers are essentially orbiting, has been a fixture on Calabasas Road since 1974, recently passing its 50th anniversary. That puts the current wave of Old Town openings in a slightly different light: this isn't a neighborhood chasing a trend, it's new operators choosing to plant themselves next to a half-century-old anchor.
Old Town also still runs the Calabasas farmers market every Saturday from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Calabasas Road just west of El Canon Avenue, directly across from Sagebrush Cantina. It has run on that same corner for years, rain or shine, and it is the one constant tying this entire stretch of Old Town together while the restaurant lineup around it keeps shifting.
What This Actually Changes On A Saturday
If you're mapping your own weekend, the practical version is simple. The Commons is not harder to get to or park at than it was last year. The theater lot is gone and a parking structure is going up in its place, but the rest of the center, including Gelson's and the existing restaurant row, functions exactly as it did before Caruso ever picked up a shovel. The new Commons Lane storefronts won't have anything open to walk into until at least late this year, possibly not until 2027 for the full build-out, so there's no reason to wait around for that wing before making weekend plans.
Old Town, meanwhile, is worth a fresh look regardless of what's happening a few minutes north. Between Jon & Vinny's, Salsa & Beer's imminent opening, and a 50-year-old anchor like Sagebrush Cantina still running the show, that stretch of Calabasas Road has more going on right now than it has in a while, and none of it is contingent on a construction schedule.
The two stories will eventually merge, at least geographically. When Commons Lane finishes in 2027, Calabasas will have two active dining corridors within walking distance of each other instead of one center and one side street. For now, they're moving at completely different speeds, and knowing which is which saves you from either avoiding a fully open shopping center or waiting on a restaurant scene that hasn't opened its doors yet.
Calabasas has always been a place where the details of daily life, which market is open, which restaurant just signed a lease, which corner still runs the same Saturday routine it has for years, tell you more about the town than any single headline does. Watching how these three threads unfold, the Commons Lane build-out, the quieter reshuffling in the rest of the center, and Old Town's own momentum, is as good a way as any to understand what Calabasas is actually becoming.
If you're weighing a move here, or thinking about what a growing town center like this means for your own home's place in it, Renee Rosen has been tracking Calabasas street by street for years and is happy to talk through what any of it means for you.
