Why Valley Country Market matters.
Valley Country Market is a modernized shopping center where Woodland Hills' Ventura Boulevard character meets a reworked midcentury commercial property, independent Los Angeles food businesses and an evolving collection of retail and wellness concepts.
Set along Ventura Boulevard near De Soto Avenue and just steps from the commercial blocks approaching Warner Center, the center occupies a broad parcel on the northern side of the boulevard between the western San Fernando Valley floor and the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains. Low-rise storefronts wrap around a large central court, preserving the horizontal proportions of the earlier shopping center. Landscaping and exterior walkways divide the property into smaller pedestrian-scaled storefront sequences despite the breadth of the site. Food, retail and fitness businesses share the open-air arrangement, with restaurant patios carrying activity beyond individual interiors. The result is a Ventura Boulevard commercial property whose low-rise form and outdoor circulation recast the conventional Valley shopping center around a denser collection of independent food, design and wellness businesses.
What defines Valley Country Market.
Valley Country Market is best known for the extensive reinvention of the former Woodland Hills Village into a food-and-retail destination beginning during the late 2010s. Atlas Capital Group acquired the older shopping center in 2016 and brought in Runyon Group, the Los Angeles firm associated with Platform in Culver City and ROW DTLA, to oversee the redevelopment. Construction on the 70,830-square-foot property began the following spring, with a design direction drawing on 1950s Los Angeles commercial architecture. Runyon co-founder David Fishbein and the development team pursued a tenant mix weighted toward independent Los Angeles businesses alongside established brands, repositioning a conventional strip center for the western San Fernando Valley. Lodge Bread became one of the consequential early arrivals in October 2018, when chef-partners Alex Phaneuf and Or Amsalam opened their second Los Angeles bakery there after earning two James Beard Award Outstanding Baker semifinalist nominations. Merci Milo and Maude Woods followed during the same redevelopment period, and Blue Bottle Coffee subsequently joined the property. Brickstar Capital acquired the 66,721-square-foot center from Atlas Capital Group for $19.7 million in July 2022, marking another ownership turn four years after the redevelopment began reaching the public.
A second wave of leasing has substantially changed the center again during the mid-2020s, extending its original bakery-and-boutique premise into a broader concentration of restaurants, fitness studios and specialty retailers. Sweetgreen opened its Woodland Hills restaurant there in December 2024, placing the national salad company beside the development's earlier food businesses. Loqui followed in January 2025 with its fourth location, bringing the Northern Mexico-inspired taco operation and its handmade flour tortillas into the western Valley. Van Leeuwen added ice cream to the dining collection, and the fitness side expanded through Solidcore, Bunda, The Bar Method and Pure Sweat Studios. Danny Boy's Famous Original Pizza opened a 1,950-square-foot Woodland Hills location in summer 2026, carrying Daniel Holzman's New York-style slices and Sicilian squares into another dedicated food space. The Collective Shop adds a locally founded design business through interior designer Danielle Decker, whose Woodland Hills store centers antiques, art and collectible objects. The roster spans 23 listed businesses across dining, fitness, shopping, services and wellness, demonstrating how the original 2018 redevelopment has continued to change through successive generations of tenants.
How Valley Country Market fits.
Valley Country Market works as the anchor for an outing connecting Woodland Hills' planted origins with the headwaters of Los Angeles' principal river and a surviving nineteenth-century rancho residence at the western edge of the Valley.
Begin at Woodland Hills Recreation Center, established in 1958 during the decades when postwar housing was rapidly replacing the ranchland surrounding the former community of Girard. That earlier town began after Victor Girard Kleinberger acquired 2,886 acres in 1922, subdivided the tract into 6,826 lots and planted 120,000 eucalyptus, pepper and other shade trees across the development. The mature trees helped inspire the Woodland Hills name adopted by the community in 1941, connecting the modern neighborhood directly with Girard's speculative landscape campaign. The recreation center later underwent a major rebuilding completed in 2018, expanding its indoor facilities from 2,400 square feet to 12,300 square feet. Continue to the Confluence of Arroyo Calabasas and Bell Creek, where two western Valley waterways join to form the Los Angeles River. Arroyo Calabasas descends from the Santa Monica Mountains, and Bell Creek approaches from the western Valley before their channels merge near Canoga Park. Los Angeles' citywide historic-resources work recognizes the confluence as significant municipal water infrastructure dating to 1935. The location gives the immense river system a precise western beginning before its course runs east across the San Fernando Valley and turns south toward the Los Angeles Basin. Conclude at Leonis Adobe Museum, centered on an adobe structure dating to the 1840s that became the home of French Basque immigrant Miguel Leonis and his wife Espiritu Chijulla during the 1870s. Leonis expanded the earlier adobe into a two-story California Monterey-style residence with a wraparound veranda and Victorian elements while building landholdings exceeding 18,000 acres across Southern California. His death in an 1889 wagon accident triggered a prolonged inheritance struggle in which Espiritu fought to retain the property after most of his fortune had been left to relatives in France. The surviving complex also contains a 1912 barn moved twice during freeway construction and the Plummer House, relocated from West Hollywood in 1983 after fire damage threatened its survival. Leonis Adobe became Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument No. 1, placing the property at the beginning of the city's formal monument program. The progression moves from Woodland Hills' deliberately planted townsite through the confluence that begins the Los Angeles River and culminates at an adobe preserving the nineteenth-century rancho society that preceded the western Valley's suburban development.
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