If you've driven past The Lakes at Thousand Oaks in the last year, you've probably noticed the signage changing faster than usual. A vitamin shop closed. A grocery chain most people associate with Los Angeles moved in. A new Italian restaurant with a live band showed up a few blocks east. A chicken finger chain drew a line around the building on a Monday morning in August. If you clocked all of that as scattered, unrelated turnover, you're not alone, and you're also missing the thing that actually explains it.
The tenant mix at The Lakes is changing because the theater next door just got a lot more interesting, and the timing between those two facts is too tight to be coincidence.
What Actually Left, And What Replaced It
The clearest starting point is Lassens Natural Food & Vitamins, which had operated at The Lakes for seven years before closing on May 1, 2025. The closure wasn't quiet. A resident named Kamiel started a Facebook group called SaveLassensTO that grew past 100 members, and two residents spoke against the change at the Thousand Oaks City Council meeting on April 8 of that year. The property is owned by Caruso, the same company behind The Promenade at Westlake and The Village at Moorpark, and the plan from early on was to replace Lassens with an Erewhon market.
That plan became real on August 26, 2026, when Erewhon opened its doors at 2150 E. Thousand Oaks Boulevard. It's the chain's first location in Ventura County and its first store outside Los Angeles County entirely. The grand opening ran from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. with gift bags, fresh flowers from Flower Truck LA, and a Thousand Oaks exclusive called the Amidst the Oaks smoothie, a blend of pineapple, ginger, basil, spirulina, and mint, with part of the proceeds going to Manna Conejo Valley Food Bank. Regular hours are 7:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.
That's one swap. It's not the whole story.
| Arrival | Location | Status as of late August 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Erewhon | 2150 E. Thousand Oaks Blvd, The Lakes | Open, grand opening August 26 |
| Sette Sorelle | 495 N. Ventu Park Rd | Open since January 21, 2026 |
| Raising Cane's | 400 N. Moorpark Rd | Open since August 10, 2026 |
| Sora Temaki Bar | 2200 E. Thousand Oaks Blvd, The Lakes | Still listed as "coming soon" |
Sette Sorelle is the newest project from chef Jacopo Falleni, who also co-owns Nonna in Westlake Village. It opened to the public on January 21 after a deliberately quiet soft-launch period, and it has already built a reputation locally for live music, a full bar, and event space that runs past 14,000 square feet, big enough to handle a party of eight or a gathering of 250. Raising Cane's opened at 400 N. Moorpark Road on August 10, drawing a line early enough that the first 100 customers walked away with a combo card and a trucker hat.
Then there's the one that hasn't happened yet. Sora Temaki Bar, the hand-roll concept out of Savta Hospitality Group, announced a second location inside The Lakes back in September 2025, with an original target of spring 2026 and a later date of June 1 floated by the ownership. As of this writing, the brand's own website still lists the Thousand Oaks address as "Opening Spring 2026," and there's no storefront activity to suggest that's changed. Spring is long gone. If you've been watching that unit and wondering what happened to it, you're not missing something. The opening simply hasn't landed yet.
The Reason This Isn't Random
None of these four moves happened in isolation, and none of them make much sense as an isolated retail decision either. A shopping center doesn't typically trade a departed vitamin shop and a vacant chain restaurant for an organic grocer with a tonic bar and a chef-driven hand-roll concept unless something next door is pulling in a crowd worth the upgrade.
That something sits directly next to The Lakes at the Civic Arts Plaza, home to the Bank of America Performing Arts Center and its two venues, the Fred Kavli Theatre and the Scherr Forum. In May, the American Theatre Guild announced its 2026-27 Broadway in Thousand Oaks season, and it's a bigger lineup than the venue has carried in recent memory:
- Hadestown
- The Bodyguard
- A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical
- The Carpenters Songbook: A Live Celebration, added as a special engagement
All four are Thousand Oaks premieres, meaning none of them have played this venue before. Layer on top of that the New West Symphony's 2026 Masterpiece Series, which runs through December 5 at the same performing arts center, and you get a fall and winter calendar that's pulling more cars off the 101 for a 7 or 7:30 curtain than this stretch of the Boulevard has seen in years.
A bigger season means more people looking for dinner within walking distance of the theater before the house lights go down. The Lakes is the obvious answer, and the businesses moving in now read like they know it. A wellness grocer with a tonic bar and a hand-roll counter built around quick, shareable bites both fit a pre-show crowd better than a heavier sit-down chain ever did. Sette Sorelle, a few minutes away by car, fills the slower, sit-down-and-linger version of that same need with live music and private rooms for the group that wants to make a full night of it.
What This Actually Changes On A Wednesday
If you live within a short drive of Thousand Oaks Boulevard, the practical shift is small but real. A theater night that used to mean an early dinner in Sherman Oaks or a drive into the Valley now has a legitimate answer closer to home. You can walk from a parking spot at The Lakes past the koi pond, grab something quick or something that runs longer, and still make curtain at the Kavli without touching the freeway.
It's also worth being honest about what isn't finished yet. Sora's still-empty storefront is a reminder that "coming soon" signage at a shopping center is a plan, not a guarantee, and that the timeline between an announcement and an actual opening can stretch well past the date a company first floats. If you're planning an evening around a specific new restaurant, it's worth checking that it's actually open before you build a reservation around it, especially at The Lakes right now.
What's harder to miss is the pattern underneath all four moves. A shopping center's tenant mix is one of the more honest indicators of what a neighborhood is becoming, because leasing decisions get made with real money and real read of foot traffic, not with the optimism of a press release. The Lakes betting on a wellness grocer and a chef-driven concept, timed to a Broadway season carrying four venue premieres, is the property saying it expects more people in that stretch after dark than it has in a while. If you've lived here through the quieter years, this is the first meaningful shift in a long stretch, and it's happening in a very specific, walkable radius around Thousand Oaks Boulevard and the Civic Arts Plaza.
Keeping An Eye On What's Next
The Lakes and the block around it will likely keep shifting as the Broadway season gets underway this fall. Watch for whether Sora's storefront finally activates, and whether any other tenants follow the same logic Erewhon and Sette Sorelle are betting on.
Renee Rosen keeps a close eye on these kinds of shifts across Thousand Oaks and the wider Conejo Valley, not because a shopping center's tenant list has anything to do with a listing, but because knowing a neighborhood well enough to notice what's changing before it's obvious is the same skill either way. If you want more of these local dispatches or you're weighing a move within the Conejo Valley and want a guide who actually pays attention to blocks like this one, reach out through Renee Rosen and start the conversation.
