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Caruso buys out leases in upscale shift at Palisades Village
High-end retailers Byredo, Aesop, Officine Generale join lineup in tony enclave
Caruso is reworking its tenant profile at Palisades Village, in an effort to attract higher end brands.
The real estate firm, run by mayoral candidate and billionaire Rick Caruso, recently signed three new tenants at the mall in Pacific Palisades, according to CBRE’s Andrew Turf and Jonathan Schley, who worked on the deals.
Byredo, a perfume and candle store known for selling its products online and marketing on social media, is moving into the mall, marking its third store in Los Angeles. The brand, which sells perfume bottles for about $200 each, already has stores on Melrose Avenue and in Silver Lake.
Caruso also signed French menswear brand Officine Generale to a lease at the mall. The store will be the brand’s first in Los Angeles and second in the U.S., behind a store in New York City.
Aesop, an Australian skincare brand owned by Brazil’s Natura & Co., is also opening a store at Palisades Village. The new store is its 10th in L.A. — it has locations from Silver Lake up to Studio City to Culver City to Venice.
Each lease is for between 1,000 to 2,000 square feet in size, according to Turf, and will replace existing tenants at the shopping center.
Exiting the center via buyouts will be shops for clothing brands Madewell and William B + Friends, as well as homewares retailer St. Frank.
Though retailers were impacted from pandemic-related closures, brands are returning to core retail hubs, such as Palisades Village. As an open-air mall, the strip fared better than closed shopping centers during the pandemic.
Rick Caruso opened the shopping center in 2018, spending more than $200 million on the development. If Caruso wins his bid for mayor, he would put his company, which also owns The Grove, into a blind trust and have someone else take over the business.
Caruso is now working with CBRE to “bring in more appropriate” tenants, Turf said, adding there are no vacant storefronts at Palisades Village. In December, e-commerce womenswear brand MISA Los Angeles signed a lease to open its first brick-and-mortar store at Palisades Village.
“The property is probably the most successful village in L.A. not named Rodeo,” he said.
It hasn’t been all sunshine and flowers. In March, Amazon announced it would close its physical bookstores, meaning Palisades Village is set to lose a corner space tenant.